Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond

by Robert Galen, Jennifer Fields, Rhiannon Galen-Personick

In a nutshellDo you aspire to become a truly Badass Agile Coach? A coach with a mission of professionalism, craft, passion, accountability, and expertise that you need to bring to bear in service of your clients? Then Extraordinary Badass Agile Coaching will be your trusted guide to meet (and exceed) that mission.OverviewThe profession of Agile Coaching is, in a word, confusing. That’s because of a number of factors, gets conflated with Professional Coaching and it’s so much more than that;There isn’t a standard or generally accepted model for what it is and isn’t;Clients don’t understand it, so shared accountability is unbalanced with their coaches;There is specialized nuance around the skills of coaching at the Team, Enterprise or Organizational, Technical, and Leadership levels.This confusion has created a space where nearly anyone can claim to be an Agile Coach with little experience and narrow skills. Resulting largely in mediocrity and negative impacts for our clients, who by the way, are counting on and paying us for help.

Bob Galen has written Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching to help alleviate the confusion. The book centers on the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as the competency and skill maturity model to baseline your agile coaching skills against. Its core goal is to “raise the bar” as to what true excellence looks like and to help you establish a personal development and growth plan.

Bob intentionally uses the term Badass to create a vision of professionalism, craft, passion, accountability, and expertise that you need to bring to bear in service of your clients if you represent yourself as an “agile coach”.

Being an Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coach isn’t easy, quick, or for the faint of heart. It takes lots of hard work and dedication. It also requires a map to point you in the right direction. Consider this book that map to coaching badassery, personal growth, and client service.

Genres: Nonfiction

398 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2022

Reviews

[Gary Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-thought out book that issues a challenge to those of us involved in working with agile teams and organizations, especially in a coaching role. If you've met or heard Bob Galen before, his voice comes through throughout this book. He also was able to have co-authors write several of the chapters which allows us to benefit from multiple perspectives.

I think this is a pretty comprehensive look at agile coaching, although different people with different experience levels may want to focus on different areas discussed in the book so that they work on things that are developmentally appropriate for them at this time.

For me, the parts that resonated with me the most were the concept of a coaching dojo to practice and improve skills, the belief that each coach should have a mentor and be coached as appropriate, and that coaches should leverage multiple stances and switch between them as necessary.

Other areas that gave me a great deal to think about and act upon were the sections discussing having an ethics statement, understanding diversity and our role in helping to support all of those entrusted to our service, and the concept of coaching arcs.

The authors also include links to many references to dig deeper into critical concepts and techniques should you choose. There were also many references to ORSC MetaSkills, which I've been hearing more about recently but have not had formal training in. The concept of MetaSkills, having a common vocabulary of these skills, and intentionally deciding which skills are most likely to be useful in a given situation/conversation seems to be something worth mastering.

In summary, Bob Galen is setting the bar for how agile coaches should prepare, continuous grow, and serve their clients which I believe will push us to continually improve the value that we, as agile coaches, provide to our clients.

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

great read for Agile practitioners anywhere

Great read for Agile practitioners anywhere. Ranging from novice to “expert” all can take away more of one valuable thing to apply on your agile transformation journey.

[Jeff Bubolz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loaded with Self-Care Ideas

This is a great book for all Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches. It is loaded with tons of content to help sharpen you agile coaching saw. There are tons of reflective moments in the book that help you find ways to put the content into action.

The agile community is a better place as a result of this book.

[Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great book for leveling up as an Agile Coach. Some of the Continuous Improvement and Community Building in this book is great. However, the author takes a rather elitist position at times, and does not support it. It can be offputting.

[Jan Mikkelsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are serious about changing organization, teams, individuals and yourself, this is a must-read. There are so many tips and tricks to keep you well busy practicing and improving for a life-time. Well-written and easy to understand.

[Christoph Dibbern · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book with a WOW effect! I have never seen so many helpful practical scenarios, canvases, and explanations about the WHY of Coaching. I will use the book for my daily work and strongly recommend reading it.

[Toni SCRUMptious · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes some useful info on C-level coaching.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read of scenarios and situations that you can learn from to help you grow as a Scrum Master, and help you think of different ways to help others solve problems.

[Jens Hirschmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Valuable insights and practical tips to start and progress learning.

[zoagli · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me more than three months to get through this book, so full is it with valuable information and inspiration.