During my career journey I've had the pleasure of working with some outstanding leaders and coaches through various encounters. I've come to realize that one important trait of a great coach is they tend to listen more and talk less. Now this may sound easier than it actually is.
We all bring a certain amount of skill and knowledge to the table. Great things to have, but we cannot let that get in the way of being an effective coach. We sometimes feel the need to demonstrate our expertise by constantly reminding others of it. That behavior does have its time and place, but overuse of it can result in team members disconnecting from you and reduces your effectiveness as a coach.
Everyone wants to be heard. More importantly, people want to be listened to and understood. As a coach you should adopt a behavior of active listening or keeping your responses short, direct, and focused.
As coaches, we have to remember that our teams are on a journey of discovery, self-realization and learning to execute decentralized decision making. Our job is to teach them, challenge them, and let them discover some things on their own.
I consider active listening a primary and essential coaching skill. I think as coaches, we sometimes struggle with this because we are typically wired for problem solving. The goal should be to have the team member solve their own problem with you as a coach guiding them through the process. This will require you to listen more and talk less.
Active Listening - What is it?
The art of active listening is essential for this to work. This is indeed a soft skill for coaches, scrum masters, product owners, basically everyone on the team. For a coach, it enables us to foster a culture of open communication, trust, and collaboration within Agile teams. You should be fully present and able to observe verbal and non-verbal communication. Your focus should be on providing guidance and thoughtful responses that will move team members towards improvement.
As an Agile coach, mastering this skill will enhance your ability to support teams, resolve conflicts, and enable continuous learning and growth. Active listening involves several elements that you should key in on:
Be fully present in the conversation, focusing on the speaker. Check their body language for non-verbal communication.
Seek to understand, not just hear, and respond. Try to lean into the speaker’s perspective and not let your own filters get in the way. Empathy, or the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, is extremely helpful here.
Paraphrasing and asking clarifying questions well help clear up any misunderstandings you may have about what the speaker is trying to convey. You can also summarize periodically to ensure common understanding is intact.
Try to listen to what is said, but more importantly what is not being said. Gaps in what is being conveyed, pauses or hesitations, nonverbal signals like changes in expression or body positioning shifts could indicate something is not being said. Be aware of your environment and how this may impact communication as well.
Make sure your feedback is insightful and thoughtful, and not pre-mature. Empower the speaker to explore their options, come to their own conclusions, and own their decisions.
Some areas where your active listening skills can really shine include the following:
Conversations around what your customers really need
One on one coaching sessions
Moments that require conflict resolution between team members
During Daily Standups
During Retrospectives
Communication Models
One way I have found useful to really lean in on active listening is to consider how communication works. A simple way to convey this is to visualize and model this process. An example is provided here:
Let’s discuss how this works:
Two entities are represented – the Sender and the Receiver.
o The Sender is responsible for making the information clear and complete so that the receiver can receive it correctly, and for confirming that it is properly understood.
o The Receiver is responsible for making sure that the information is received in its entirety and understood correctly.
The Sender initiates the message.
Encoding / Decoding represents the process of creating or thinking about what you want to say or what it is you heard, a translation of thoughts and ideas.
Message / Feedback represents the output of then Encoding/Decoding activity.
The message can be shared in a variety of ways via a Channel (face to face, email, phone call, video, etc.)
The Receiver will receive the message.
Noise – this represents any ‘filters’ we may have on the sending or receiving side. This includes assumptions, biases, existing knowledge on the subject, etc.
Understanding the dynamics of the communication model will help you improve your communication, check your own biases, and listen to understand.
Consider this…
You can't effectively listen and talk at the same time. Allow for time and space to hear the concern and your responses should be clear of your own filters. Experience is OK if you can make it a teachable moment.
As an Agile Coach, learn to use active listening for more than just a communication tool as I feel it is a core component of effective coaching. If you master the art of active listening, you can better understand the needs of your teams, foster trust, facilitate problem-solving, and guide teams toward continuous improvement. It is an essential skill for coaching.
What do you think about this topic? Please comment or reach out to me at earlgamble@projectagilty.com! Stay Agile!!
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