Scrum Master As A Coach
Teaching, Mentoring and Coaching
Teaching is primarily a form of direct knowledge transfer from a teacher to a student, in that, the teacher provides clear instructions and direction to the student on how to do something or the meaning of something. Then end result is well known by the teacher and the student follows the instructions to arrive at the end result.
Teaching may be in the form of structured training or lessons and is appropriate for learning specific techniques and practices and enabling the student to apply what they have learnt.
Mentoring is a form of indirect transfer of knowledge and experience from the mentor to the mentee. Mentoring may be in the form of conversations between mentor and the mentee with direct advice and the benefit of experience provided by the mentor to enable the mentee to progress forwards their objectives and goals. The mentor’s interaction, perspective and opinion form the main direction for the mentee.
Coaching is a joint collaboration between both the coach and the coachee, where the end destination may not be known, and is usually in the form of conversations between the coach and coachee. The emphasis is on the coachee’s decisions and their journey into the unknown of how they own the changes that they make towards their goals and objectives. The coach by comparison provides guidance and encourages the coachee to express their own decisions and actions of how they should reach their goals.
Coaching Mindset
It is important for a coach to understand that most often, the coachee's goals can be quite personal, which need to be respected by the coach who should provide a safe and trusting environment for the coachee to feel comfortable enough to open up and honestly discuss their aspirations.
The role of the coach is to provide a sounding board to provide guidance and empower the coachee to arrive at a suitable approach that is pertinent to them, and so a great deal of humility from the coach is needed for the coachee to realise their goals with their plan and their approach to achieve them.
Useful Techniques
Good techniques that can be used include Socratic Questioning and Active Listening to uncover deeper insights into the coachee's wishes, their drivers and why they want to achieve these aspirations, which can be quite revealing.
The Coaching Funnel and GROW Model provide some structure for good coaching conversations.