Shane Hastie, Global Delivery Lead at SoftEd, joins the Product Agility podcast this week for a deep dive into the ethics behind technology and the crucial importance of maintaining ethical standards in an ever-evolving digital landscape. With a background in coaching, leadership, and Agile learning, Shane brings to the table a perspective that bridges the gap between human values and technological advancement.
Get ready to delve into a conversation that marries the intricacies of ethics with the principles of Agile in this revealing episode with Shane Hastie 🚀
Shane on LinkedIn - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanehastie/]
In this engaging episode, Shane Hastie converses with host Ben Maynard about the intersection of ethics and technology within the Agile framework. Shane unpacks the challenges faced by organisations in upholding ethical standards and the role that leaders must play in fostering an environment that emphasises moral responsibility✨
Join us as Shane elucidates on the concept of 'Mind the Ego' and the importance of ethics in technology. He highlights the impacts of ethical considerations on global delivery and the significance of integrity in Agile practices💡
Experience the blend of Shane's professional coaching expertise and his extensive background in Agile learning as he navigates through the nuances of ethical technology management and empowers listeners to integrate these values into their own practices🧠
Key Highlights:
🔍 4:08 - Getting Client Answers Through Agile Coaching
🔍 6:00 - Balancing Roles In Agile Coaching
🔍 15:17 -The Need For Professional Coaching Supervision
🔍 16:47 - Ethical Training For Agile Coaches
🔍 18:33 - Balancing Confidentiality And Accountability
🔍 23:21 - The Importance Of Trust In Coaching
🔍 29:51 - The Power Of Co-coaching
🔍 30:58 - Empowering Peer Support In Professional Development
Tune into this episode to explore with Shane Hastie the intersection of ethics and technology in the Agile space, and uncover strategies to ensure that your team operates not only with efficiency but with a strong ethical compass. Engage with us now to learn how t
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:04 <v Ben>We find ourselves here again on the Product Agility Podcast with the one and only Shane Hasty.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:05 <v Ben>Hello, Shane.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 <v Shane>Ben, thank you for having me back.
00:00:07 --> 00:00:08 <v Ben>It's been so long.
00:00:08 --> 00:00:14 <v Ben>We've managed to wash exactly the same set of clothes and wear them on the second time around.
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 <v Ben>Thank you very much for coming back for this conversation.
00:00:16 --> 00:00:21 <v Ben>Last time around we spoke about your brilliant book written in collaboration with two other gentlemen called The Rock Crusher.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:25 <v Ben>And we promised our listeners that this time around we're gonna explore.
00:00:25 --> 00:00:31 <v Ben>Well, a topic which has been close to my heart for a long time because of my own personal journey.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:45 <v Ben>It's a problem and issue which I come across all the time when people first come onto our our agile coaching course, or when I'm trying to explain agile coaching or product coaching to people, which is this lemme see if I can articulate it succinctly.
00:00:46 --> 00:01:12 <v Ben>Professional coaching is well known, and we have organizations such as the ICF being probably one of the largest, and arguably maybe the most respected international coaching bodies out there who have done a great deal for making sure that professional coaches act in an ethical way and guide the EE on their own journey without influencing, inferring, without adding any of their own thoughts into that.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 <v Ben>So it's the coach's coachee's goal.
00:01:14 --> 00:01:15 <v Ben>It's the coachee's journey.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:22 <v Ben>The coach is just facilitating that process and then all of a sudden we start talking about agile coaching and product coaching.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:26 <v Ben>And within which people then start saying, oh we need some professional coaching in this.
00:01:26 --> 00:01:33 <v Ben>And when you look back at the original Agile X-Wing of which you can find, if you Google it, I'll pop a link into the description as well.
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 <v Ben>It talks about professional coaching being part of agile coaching.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:43 <v Ben>This has now changed somewhat when I look at the agile coaching mastery will where it talks about coaching mindset and coaching skills.
00:01:43 --> 00:01:48 <v Ben>But I think that this idea around professional coaching still causes people headaches.
00:01:48 --> 00:01:57 <v Ben>How can one be or use a coaching mindset or be a professional coach in that agile coaching or product coaching capacity.
00:01:57 --> 00:02:01 <v Ben>And it's that topic which I would like us to delve into but also picking up the topic of ethics.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:07 <v Ben>Which I see is a very real problem, which is the lack of historical ethical guidance.
00:02:07 --> 00:02:16 <v Ben>I know it now exists, but actually maybe the the prevalence of unethical agile and product coaching, which is which may or may not be as wide as I suspect it is.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:28 <v Ben>So shame welcome back and in true coaching form, I'm wondering, Shane, with what I've introduced our, the world to as a topic for this conversation, where would you like to start?
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 <v Shane>Ah, where would we start?
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 <v Ben>Straight from the coaching 1 0 1 playbook.
00:02:35 --> 00:02:35 <v Ben>That one.
00:02:35 --> 00:02:37 <v Shane>So what is coaching now?
00:02:37 --> 00:02:53 <v Shane>Huge range from performance coaching like a sports coach, where they are focused on instilling skills in people and helping them enhance those skills and performance.
00:02:53 --> 00:03:08 <v Shane>Coaching has a place, if you look at a professional sports team, they will have five or six performance coaches who get better through giving them advice, showing them what to do and teaching them the skill.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:15 <v Shane>And that is part of what we would want people to do in an agile state.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:24 <v Shane>But then at the other end of the, of that coaching spectrum is the um, what you've just done with me.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:32 <v Shane>Showing up with curiosity coming from the stance that the client has the answer within themselves.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:39 <v Shane>My job is to help them find it through powerful questions and silence and presence and so forth.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:40 <v Shane>So there's a continuum.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:51 <v Shane>LiSa Atkins, Michael Spade did a wonderful job of defining the competency framework for.
00:03:53 --> 00:03:58 <v Shane>And looking at some of the of the areas that fall into that.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:05 <v Shane>If I take those two extremes, I would say that the Agile coaching framework says across these extremes.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:14 <v Shane>The coach in an agile space needs to be able to very deliberately know what behavior is appropriate?
00:04:15 --> 00:04:32 <v Shane>So there may be times when a teach stance is perfectly appropriate if I'm working with a team and they they're struggling with implementing a particular DevOps tool.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:41 <v Shane>It's not good enough for me to take the professional coach stance and say, how would you like to start?
00:04:42 --> 00:04:48 <v Shane>It is probably better for me to say when I did this in this organization, here is how we started.
00:04:48 --> 00:04:53 <v Shane>What do you think as a mentor, or you've never done this before?
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 <v Shane>Here are the steps that are in the manual.
00:04:56 --> 00:05:00 <v Shane>Let's follow them, set them sequentially, and do you see how that works?
00:05:00 --> 00:05:15 <v Shane>Now as a teacher, the one I struggle with, which I don't think really fits particularly well in that spectrum, is the consultant telling you what to do without communicating the why behind it.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 <v Shane>So what is the stance that you're in?
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 <v Shane>What is the perspective that you're taking?
00:05:23 --> 00:05:30 <v Shane>And from that, then what is this team or individual need from me
00:05:31 --> 00:05:35 <v Ben>it reminds me of a comment that somebody put on one of my posts on LinkedIn today actually.
00:05:36 --> 00:05:37 <v Ben>Just saying how if you give up.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 <v Ben>A chisel and a hammer to a sculptor, and give them some stone.
00:05:42 --> 00:05:43 <v Ben>They'll produce something beautiful.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 <v Ben>If you give that same chisel and a hammer to a dog, they'll just chew it.
00:05:48 --> 00:06:02 <v Ben>And I think that when you look at the range of possible ways that you can intervene, the different ways, the stances, you can stand in as a, as an agile or, I love product coaching here as well because I don't think there's a huge degree of difference, if I'm honest.
00:06:02 --> 00:06:12 <v Ben>We're still talking about, having to have some experience, having had some skill in the game to be able to help people through certain situations.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:21 <v Ben>That I think this is maybe then part of my, beef, not beef, but it feels like, it feels very optimistic.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:33 <v Ben>When you look at the Agile even if you forget the Agile original agile competency that X Wing by Michael Spade and the Atkins, you look at the new Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, which is agile coaching growth wheel org.
00:06:33 --> 00:06:34 <v Ben>There's so much on there.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:48 <v Ben>I've got something called A-P-G-C-E, so say it's like a third of the Masters in Executive and Team Coaching took me, what, two years to get to that, and that is one part.
00:06:49 --> 00:06:50 <v Ben>Of the whole thing.
00:06:50 --> 00:06:55 <v Ben>And I can imagine people looking at the enormity of this and saying, wow, okay, like I've gotta learn all of this.
00:06:55 --> 00:06:57 <v Ben>And as much as we say no, you don't have to learn all of it.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:07 <v Ben>I think for people to become adequately proficient in actually having real kind of coaching skills and then be able to know when to advise and be able to facilitate.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:08 <v Ben>It's a lot to ask people.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:19 <v Shane>If we look at the vast majority of people who step into that agile coaching space, their skills are wide and often quite shallow.
00:07:20 --> 00:07:21 <v Shane>And I think that's a risk.
00:07:23 --> 00:07:34 <v Shane>The self-awareness that is necessary is incredibly important to know where your depth is and where can I step in.
00:07:35 --> 00:07:44 <v Shane>in The original framework the Agile lean practitioner as the overarching.
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 <v Shane>So yes, you bring that.
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 <v Shane>How good a teacher do you need to be?
00:07:50 --> 00:07:51 <v Shane>How good a mentor do you need to be?
00:07:52 --> 00:08:00 <v Shane>How good a facilitator, If I just look at those four and then the technical business or transformation mastery that sits underneath it.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:06 <v Shane>But if I rank myself, I think yes I'm pretty deep as an agile lean practitioner.
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 <v Shane>I have written books in the space.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:09 <v Shane>I've gone down that path.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:18 <v Shane>And I, in the widge at the bottom of the business master a business technical or transformation mastery.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:24 <v Shane>My business and product space is quite deep.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:28 <v Shane>I would not call myself a technical master at the moment.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 <v Shane>I lost rote code in anger.
00:08:30 --> 00:08:39 <v Shane>If I'm working with a a software development team, I lost rote code in anger in 2016, so my skills are out of date there.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:43 <v Shane>I would not be the right person to teach them about implementing a DevOps.
00:08:45 --> 00:08:49 <v Shane>aNd they, that self-awareness is really important to say, I'm not the right person for this.
00:08:50 --> 00:09:05 <v Shane>Let us find somebody who does that or let us explore this together because I do have some curiosity, and as long as I have made it very clear to the team, I don't know that, but I'm good at learning.
00:09:05 --> 00:09:06 <v Shane>Can we learn together?
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 <v Shane>That's okay if I am.
00:09:10 --> 00:09:14 <v Shane>I think, oh, coaching in this need help in.
00:09:16 --> 00:09:20 <v Shane>Yeah, I can help you with this and I'll go and read a book tonight and come tomorrow and I'm just ahead of you.
00:09:20 --> 00:09:21 <v Shane>But hey, it's good, right?
00:09:22 --> 00:09:22 <v Shane>Yeah, no,
00:09:24 --> 00:09:24 <v Ben>Okay.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:31 <v Ben>So in the previous episode, there was something that I really wanted to mention, and if you haven't heard that episode, and shame on you, go back and give it a listen.
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 <v Ben>And if you want a good reason to, here's why that.
00:09:34 --> 00:09:40 <v Ben>We was talking about how to get things ready for teams to deliver, to stand a good chance, they're gonna be valuable, they're gonna work.
00:09:40 --> 00:09:49 <v Ben>And speaking about how the role of business analysis or just analysis skillset sets have been slowly diminished over the years in many organizations that have embraced agile to their detriment.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:58 <v Ben>And it, I do recall one of the early things I was taught as a business analyst was that the users and customers, stakeholders, they don't actually know what they want.
00:09:59 --> 00:10:05 <v Ben>So you have to lead them to it a little bit, Ben, you will know better than them at the kind of thing that's gonna meet their needs.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:10 <v Ben>Part of your role is to help them in that respect, and they're not gonna know what they know.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 <v Ben>They're not gonna know what they want until they see it, what's what they're gonna like.
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 <v Ben>So you just make sure that it ends up being that.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:23 <v Ben>And I think that trap, that ego trap, you know that, and I think lots of business analysts have got very egotistical in the same way.
00:10:23 --> 00:10:31 <v Ben>I think historically a lot of agile coaches have got very egotistical and I think this has been to the detriment of what could have been a really marvelous thing.
00:10:31 --> 00:10:41 <v Ben>I think it's kinda slowly eroded because agile coaches are, believe they have all the answers because they've read the, they've read half the book or listened to the, which the team didn't get round to listening to.
00:10:42 --> 00:10:46 <v Ben>They come in and they fur around some words and they hold themselves well, and they're getting paid decent money.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:52 <v Ben>And so they feel that they have to give all the advice and they feel like actually they're not gonna be curious and they're not gonna listen.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:56 <v Ben>They are just going there and prove how much they're worth and feed their ego even more.
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 <v Ben>But actually, it's probably just a defense mechanism.
00:10:58 --> 00:11:12 <v Ben>But I think that's part of the issue then when we look at some of this, is that it's hard for people to have a coaching mindset and to have, the, it is called a self-mastery, which I think is a little bit of a excuse me, a bit of a wanky term for it.
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 <v Ben>But what we're talking about here is reflection and improvement.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:25 <v Ben>Yeah, it's about, who you are is how you coach, and really understanding who you are, not mastering yourself, but just understanding more about you is phenomenally useful.
00:11:25 --> 00:11:32 <v Ben>And I think lots of Agile coaches far and I, they're product coaches out there as well, but I have met very similar to this, far too egotistical for their own good.
00:11:33 --> 00:11:34 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 <v Shane>I would have to say I'm totally in agreement with you.
00:11:38 --> 00:11:44 <v Shane>Humility and self-awareness is something that I think is lacking.
00:11:44 --> 00:11:50 <v Shane>Like you, I've got, I've done a deep professional coach qualification.
00:11:50 --> 00:11:54 <v Shane>I did the New Zealand Institute of Coaching leadership and.
00:11:55 --> 00:12:02 <v Shane>That was a nine month intensive personal transformation exercise.
00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 <v Shane>And in that the know yourself was incredibly important.
00:12:07 --> 00:12:21 <v Shane>And I would encourage anyone who does hold themselves up in a coaching stance to, to go down that pathway, one of those deep professional coaching qualifications because.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:31 <v Shane>In my experience they make you more self-aware, and as you are self-aware, you can then better serve the team.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:35 <v Shane>And coaching is a service that we offer to teams.
00:12:35 --> 00:12:40 <v Shane>It should truly embody everything that we talk about in servant leadership.
00:12:40 --> 00:12:53 <v Shane>We're holding the space and even when I'm stepping into the teacher stance, I'm doing it in service of this group of people, not in service of my ego.
00:12:54 --> 00:13:06 <v Ben>There is something which somebody said to me, which I didn't wanna believe until I realized that they were probably saying it to me 'cause I really needed to hear it, which was actually, if, you wanna note a hallmark of a good coach.
00:13:07 --> 00:13:07 <v Ben>Is that there?
00:13:07 --> 00:13:08 <v Ben>They're an awesome coachee.
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 <v Ben>And actually that was one of the biggest journeys I went on personally.
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 <v Ben>Yeah, huge amount of self-awareness, huge amount of self-discovery.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 <v Ben>I came out and it annoys me to say it, but people were right.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:21 <v Ben>I came out slightly different.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:21 <v Ben>I.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:32 <v Ben>my, my COO at the time who used to have run a professional coaching company did say to me, when you go on a professional coaching course spend, you'll never see such a vast collection of broken people all in the same place.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:34 <v Ben>And you know what?
00:13:34 --> 00:13:35 <v Ben>I think everyone's a bit broken.
00:13:36 --> 00:13:42 <v Ben>I think good coaching courses, let's give us a mechanism by which to deal with some of that stuff, which we haven't dealt with, and the relationships that we've built.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:49 <v Ben>Then I was still strong now, five years later with some, yeah, five years later we're still in touch and we're still meeting up.
00:13:49 --> 00:13:57 <v Ben>But the thing is that I like when someone said to me that, basically you need to get better at being a coachee, there was so much that I wasn't open and willing to have challenged about myself.
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 <v Ben>The moment I let myself be coached was the day I became a better coach.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:02 <v Ben>Different level.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:14 <v Ben>And I wonder how many product and agile coaches out there have an actual real professional coach, and you look at ICF, you wanna be a member of the ICF or EMCC or a big coaching body, you need supervision.
00:14:14 --> 00:14:21 <v Ben>If you're gonna go for that deep coaching qualification such as yourself, you're gonna do some level of group supervision because it's necessary.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:28 <v Ben>And that just isn't present in, in these in the agile coaching and the product coaching industries at the moment, there are no master coaches.
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 <v Ben>There are no people who are taking us through, and I think this is where.
00:14:31 --> 00:14:54 <v Ben>I think it gets very dangerous because you get, and I'm gonna say this, like you get egotistical overzealous product and agile coaches overstepping their boundaries, doing things that they're not capable of doing, and as a consequence then end up breaching, ethical, what I would say, ethical boundaries as to how they are intending to help or try and help an organization.
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 <v Shane>Yeah, I totally agree with you there.
00:14:58 --> 00:15:13 <v Shane>And that is one of the reasons the, that, that unethical behavior is one of the reasons why myself, Craig Smith, Alex slowly and a group of 30 plus volunteers came up with a code of ethical conduct for agile coaching.
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 <v Shane>The code is on version two.
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 <v Shane>It's published on the Agile Alliance website.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:33 <v Shane>We did this under the auspices of the Agile Alliance because they are an umbrella body for the Agile community, and we didn't want it to be linked to any of the individual certification.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:40 <v Shane>wHat I've been really pleased about is that certification bodies have.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:44 <v Shane>But scrum.org have supported it tremendously.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:49 <v Shane>IC Agile have supported it scrum Alliance and have been part of it.
00:15:49 --> 00:15:59 <v Shane>So the um, the bodies who are training agile coaches have at least started to incorporate ethics in their learning.
00:16:00 --> 00:16:04 <v Shane>And yeah, they this whole thing came out.
00:16:04 --> 00:16:13 <v Shane>Of a conversation three, four years ago at an Agile conference late at night over far too much alcohol.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:23 <v Shane>A group of us were beaning, the unethical behavior we had seen, and somebody challenged us, I can't remember who it was, and said what are you gonna do about it?
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 <v Shane>You're the community who can do something about it.
00:16:28 --> 00:16:32 <v Shane>aNd Craig and myself Craig at the time was on the Agile Alliance board.
00:16:32 --> 00:16:33 <v Shane>I had been on the board.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:43 <v Shane>We, so we knew that this mechanism existed to get initiatives done, and, and we said, okay, yes, we can try and do something about it.
00:16:44 --> 00:16:47 <v Shane>iT's been a fascinating journey and coming up.
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 <v Ben>Let's frame it for people a little bit of shame, because I can imagine people being like who cares?
00:16:52 --> 00:16:55 <v Ben>Honestly I think ethics are like morals or like emotions.
00:16:55 --> 00:17:00 <v Ben>I think it's very hard for people to be able to label one and point a one and say, that's an, that's ethical, that's an ethical consideration.
00:17:00 --> 00:17:02 <v Ben>That's a moral consideration.
00:17:02 --> 00:17:03 <v Ben>Damn I'm no expert.
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 <v Ben>I'm noting to be, but I think that maybe help frame this for people.
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 <v Ben>What are the consequences?
00:17:09 --> 00:17:14 <v Ben>Of unethical coaching in a product software, technical product organization.
00:17:14 --> 00:17:19 <v Ben>What are the consequences someone could ballsing up when it comes to that ethical guidelines?
00:17:20 --> 00:17:28 <v Shane>Let's take the first topic in the code of ethical conduct is protecting confidentiality, intellectual property, and information security.
00:17:29 --> 00:17:30 <v Shane>As a coach.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:43 <v Shane>If the people I'm working with are being open and honest with me and I'm helping them improve, I will know a lot about where they're not doing so well and I wanna help them get better.
00:17:44 --> 00:17:48 <v Shane>But then their manager comes to me and says I need to choose who to fire.
00:17:48 --> 00:17:49 <v Shane>We've got budget.
00:17:50 --> 00:17:51 <v Shane>Tell me about my people.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:52 <v Shane>What.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:53 <v Shane>What happened here?
00:17:53 --> 00:18:09 <v Shane>iF I'm acting in accordance with the, I will protect information shared with me and only disclose it for le, disclose it for legal reasons, or when I have clear agreement with my client and stakeholders, I would respond to that manager with, sorry.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:14 <v Shane>I can't tell you about the conversation I had with that person without their.
00:18:15 --> 00:18:15 <v Shane>That doesn't happen.
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 <v Ben>TO be fair if it did happen, LinkedIn would be a very quiet place.
00:18:21 --> 00:18:21 <v Shane>Yeah.
00:18:22 --> 00:18:24 <v Shane>Acting within my ability is the second one.
00:18:25 --> 00:18:29 <v Shane>I will be open and transparent about my skills, experience, and qualifications.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:37 <v Shane>So my story from earlier of sitting with the team on and helping them implement a particular DevOps.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:37 <v Shane>Tool.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:38 <v Shane>I've never done that.
00:18:40 --> 00:18:47 <v Shane>Not pretending that, Hey, yeah I can maybe help with this, be honest and say, I've never done that.
00:18:47 --> 00:18:51 <v Shane>I'm happy to explore it with you, or Can I find the right person for.
00:18:53 --> 00:19:03 <v Ben>I think that's has a dark, the darker side of it that I've seen is when people, they've read a coaching book, they've, or they've been, had some, subpar training around agile coaching, for example.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:03 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:19:04 --> 00:19:06 <v Ben>Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't.
00:19:06 --> 00:19:13 <v Ben>That they start putting up powerful questions, certain techniques, and actually then put people in situations that they didn't wanna deal with what's coming up.
00:19:13 --> 00:19:18 <v Ben>And I, and then they are not skillful enough to then deal with what is coming up, and as a consequence, people get harmed.
00:19:19 --> 00:19:20 <v Ben>I remember there was one moment.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:22 <v Ben>I just keep it very vague.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:43 <v Ben>And actually it was a number of moments, a number of times in numerous organizations where an Agile coach had asked somebody a very, powerful, open-ended question in a group environment without asking for permission, without having invitation, and then the person who's asked the question didn't really feel that they had any option but to answer.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:44 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 <v Ben>And I think that is such an awful situation to put another human in.
00:19:48 --> 00:19:54 <v Ben>I just it really it got to me a lot and I think that's why I was so pleased to see your, the code ethics coming out.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:58 <v Ben>Now I'm gonna loop this back around and again, maybe this is a, this is my strong opinion on it.
00:19:59 --> 00:20:08 <v Ben>If, for me, these your, the ethical step work that you did is incredibly important and it's for me as important as maybe someone saying, but actually you got powerful questions.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:09 <v Ben>Actually, we shouldn't use 'em anymore.
00:20:11 --> 00:20:12 <v Ben>As hypothetical, right?
00:20:12 --> 00:20:18 <v Ben>If someone turned around and said, powerful questions, turns out they're really dangerous, turns out they can put people in bad situations.
00:20:18 --> 00:20:22 <v Ben>They can make things go wrong, can mean that you end up giving information up and breaking confidential.
00:20:22 --> 00:20:22 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:20:22 --> 00:20:24 <v Ben>That actually say we're not gonna do powerful questions anymore.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:26 <v Ben>It's a big impact there.
00:20:26 --> 00:20:28 <v Ben>And they're all, I see Agile, an example, took that on.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:37 <v Ben>Then I would expect them to have some kind of gradual monitoring and checking process that people actually implemented that bloody learning outcome.
00:20:37 --> 00:20:50 <v Ben>But since they said about having the ethics as part of the coaching course, I am not been aware of them actually going through and spot checking or asking for retrospective courses.
00:20:50 --> 00:20:51 <v Ben>Has it actually been integrated?
00:20:52 --> 00:20:53 <v Ben>Because this is important.
00:20:54 --> 00:21:13 <v Shane>I saw something from them the other day where, with one of the learning outcomes, one set of learning outcomes was updated and it, the courses didn't need a complete reaccreditation, but we did have to, and there's a certain level there of trust in the individual and trust in the organization.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:18 <v Shane>We had to send our material in for just a quick review, so show made.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:25 <v Shane>And that everybody who teaches the course signed a document, said, I've reviewed it.
00:21:25 --> 00:21:38 <v Shane>We've had to train the trainer or shun, we've spoken to the the instructors about this content change, and they have confirmed that they understand the content change.
00:21:39 --> 00:21:41 <v Shane>And I, something about ethics.
00:21:42 --> 00:21:50 <v Shane>In the agile coaching classes that had a similar uh, assert that you have looked at this.
00:21:51 --> 00:21:52 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:21:53 --> 00:21:54 <v Ben>So let me see here.
00:21:55 --> 00:22:02 <v Ben>Um, yeah, all I've got was something saying we encourage you to make instructors aware.
00:22:04 --> 00:22:04 <v Ben>Okay.
00:22:04 --> 00:22:05 <v Ben>Back in May.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:07 <v Ben>Nothing else.
00:22:07 --> 00:22:11 <v Ben>And I'm not saying it's a blanket thing, but I would expect more of an encouragement.
00:22:11 --> 00:22:12 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:22:12 --> 00:22:17 <v Ben>Because I, like there is trust, but yeah, trust is like democracy, yeah.
00:22:17 --> 00:22:21 <v Ben>Works, works sometimes doesn't work at other times and I just make the point.
00:22:22 --> 00:22:24 <v Ben>Because there's something, it's just something I'm very passionate about.
00:22:24 --> 00:22:33 <v Ben>And I think something which really needs to have a light drawn on it, because I think this is the danger of, a lack of appreciation of one ev many people haven't been on a professional coaching course.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:34 <v Ben>I don't get it anyway.
00:22:34 --> 00:22:36 <v Ben>And two, there's been some great work done.
00:22:36 --> 00:22:37 <v Ben>So why isn't it more front and center?
00:22:38 --> 00:22:42 <v Ben>Why aren't we, why isn't there more of a movement on it?
00:22:43 --> 00:22:46 <v Ben>Maybe I'm just, yeah, I've got my head in the clouds a little bit here.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:49 <v Ben>I'm sounding on my high horse without any real Yeah.
00:22:49 --> 00:22:49 <v Ben>Know.
00:22:49 --> 00:22:51 <v Ben>I'm not getting off Mar and doing anything that you guys did.
00:22:52 --> 00:23:05 <v Shane>I'm with you in the, why hasn't, why don't more people hold onto this and hold it up and As a, as the authors the volunteer community put this together.
00:23:05 --> 00:23:08 <v Shane>We're slowly getting the message out.
00:23:09 --> 00:23:11 <v Shane>The alliance is slowly getting the message out.
00:23:12 --> 00:23:17 <v Shane>It's not a funded initiative, so that means we don't have lots of money to do marketing with it.
00:23:19 --> 00:23:24 <v Shane>But situations like this, where we are having the conversation now.
00:23:24 --> 00:23:37 <v Shane>Hopefully thousands of people will watch this and go and look at the code of ethical conduct and start to ask the coaches that they work with, have you committed to this code of ethical conduct?
00:23:38 --> 00:23:42 <v Shane>wIll organizations start to include it as part of.
00:23:44 --> 00:23:57 <v Shane>cOaching in the agreement when they engage coaches with either as employees or as consultants to, are you, have you aligned to have you committed to this code of ethical?
00:23:59 --> 00:24:06 <v Shane>So when the clients start pushing for it, I believe we.
00:24:07 --> 00:24:08 <v Ben>Yeah, no, you're right.
00:24:08 --> 00:24:12 <v Ben>'cause there is a, it is a, this is a, there's a whole system around this.
00:24:12 --> 00:24:23 <v Ben>You are absolutely right and I think that, many people will punt out an ICF accredited coach because they've told that these are people that have a high ethical standard and will proceed to do things a certain way.
00:24:23 --> 00:24:23 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:24:24 --> 00:24:33 <v Ben>And in the agile coaching world and product coaching world, still in its kind of infancy that there isn't that kind of professionalism, that comes into it from say, professionalism.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:36 <v Ben>Maybe that's harsh, but there isn't an understanding.
00:24:36 --> 00:24:36 <v Ben>It's spread into it.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:46 <v Shane>And the thing the, that the ICF has is that we don't have at the moment in the agile coaching space at all.
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 <v Shane>Is there is a there's a commitment.
00:24:50 --> 00:25:00 <v Shane>You have to sign the ICF Code of Ethical Conduct when you become an ICF accredited coach, and you are consciously putting yourself under the discipline of that body.
00:25:01 --> 00:25:03 <v Shane>So there is a complaints process.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:07 <v Shane>There is a mechanism whereby a.
00:25:08 --> 00:25:10 <v Shane>Impose a penalty.
00:25:10 --> 00:25:14 <v Shane>Now the penalty is the worst they can do is cancel your certification.
00:25:15 --> 00:25:26 <v Shane>So it's not, in life terms you're not gonna prison or anything, but it still is a, there, there is a deliberate, clear um, discipline around this.
00:25:27 --> 00:25:31 <v Shane>Now we don't have this for agile coaching and I wanna put a yet.
00:25:32 --> 00:25:38 <v Shane>One of the challenges is how and where and who will administer this thing.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:54 <v Shane>They would then, we would then need some form of a registration process, some form of a payments process to, to maintain that registration and just to pay for things like the ethics.
00:25:55 --> 00:26:05 <v Shane>Another wonderful thing that the ICF provides is if as a coach you are struggling with a, with an ethical dilemma, you can actually ask them.
00:26:06 --> 00:26:09 <v Shane>ANd they will give you advice.
00:26:10 --> 00:26:11 <v Ben>I was just looking Yeah.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:11 <v Ben>I'm with I am.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:12 <v Ben>I'm.
00:26:13 --> 00:26:14 <v Ben>Will things ever where will things change?
00:26:14 --> 00:26:24 <v Ben>Because this is where I recall doing my two recordings for the ICF and knowing that my recordings were gonna be marked against the code of ethics.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:25 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:27 <v Ben>And being prepared for that.
00:26:27 --> 00:26:29 <v Ben>And we were told about a wonderful technique called STOs.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:35 <v Ben>And say, if you go through stoker's, ask these questions and you've ticked off a vast proportion of that.
00:26:35 --> 00:26:41 <v Ben>And I think this is where, part of doing lots of analysis at the moment on certifications and certification bodies and organizations.
00:26:41 --> 00:26:42 <v Ben>Giving training.
00:26:42 --> 00:26:44 <v Ben>Providing training, and there isn't, I.
00:26:45 --> 00:26:47 <v Ben>So much of it is knowledge based and not skills based.
00:26:48 --> 00:26:48 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:26:48 --> 00:26:50 <v Ben>But there's some little tweaks that could be made perhaps.
00:26:50 --> 00:26:57 <v Ben>And to say that when you are doing a coaching demonstration, that what you're looking for is to tick off some of the kind of code of ethics guidelines.
00:26:57 --> 00:27:02 <v Ben>I think there is something around, maybe there is just some organic waver supervision.
00:27:02 --> 00:27:05 <v Ben>That group supervision could bleed its way in.
00:27:05 --> 00:27:21 <v Ben>And actually you are going through these considerations, but I think these things take a level of conscientiousness that perhaps so far has been missing in in, in our industry, which is a pity, but I would love it if it got to a point where there was it, I'm not saying it's the same as the ICF F but more ICF because I.
00:27:22 --> 00:27:29 <v Shane>The, that's in the vision for the the code of Ethics initiative is where do we go?
00:27:29 --> 00:27:32 <v Shane>We're having some conversations with the Alliance at the moment.
00:27:33 --> 00:27:39 <v Shane>Shortly there will be a mechanism on the Agile Alliance website for people to sign the code of ethics.
00:27:40 --> 00:27:43 <v Shane>And the list of signatories will then be visible.
00:27:43 --> 00:27:44 <v Shane>The public statement.
00:27:44 --> 00:27:46 <v Shane>Yes, I have committed to this.
00:27:46 --> 00:27:53 <v Shane>Will the Agile alliance ever get to the point where it will police the ethical behavior?
00:27:53 --> 00:27:54 <v Shane>I don't know.
00:27:54 --> 00:28:02 <v Ben>But that's the same way that with the ICF f it's not, yeah, I mean it's there's a quality gate as it were, but it's not police as it's down to people to, to be reported.
00:28:02 --> 00:28:04 <v Ben>But I It's reporting.
00:28:04 --> 00:28:05 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:28:05 --> 00:28:05 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:28:05 --> 00:28:06 <v Ben>Is there a mechanism to have?
00:28:06 --> 00:28:07 <v Ben>Yeah I dunno.
00:28:07 --> 00:28:08 <v Ben>It all gets a bit heavy at that point.
00:28:08 --> 00:28:10 <v Ben>People suffer think, oh, it sounds like a lot of effort.
00:28:10 --> 00:28:11 <v Ben>And are we, is there a big.
00:28:11 --> 00:28:12 <v Ben>To solve.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:18 <v Ben>What I have found very interesting is I was fortunate enough to be taught by two people called two, two people called, that's a crap By they start sentence.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:20 <v Ben>They weren't both called for the same thing.
00:28:20 --> 00:28:32 <v Ben>One person called Paul Barber and another called Lucy Whitson, who wrote a great book called building Great High Performing Teams, or Building Great Performing Teams, and they were my lecturers at Henley Business School when I did my team coaching certificate.
00:28:33 --> 00:28:37 <v Ben>And what blew me, many things blew me away about what they were talking about.
00:28:38 --> 00:28:40 <v Ben>But one of the biggest things was actually this idea of co-coaching.
00:28:41 --> 00:28:43 <v Ben>And they said when they do a team coaching for, don't do it alone.
00:28:44 --> 00:28:46 <v Ben>And I was like, oh shit, the bed.
00:28:46 --> 00:28:49 <v Ben>That's where everyone's going wrong, right?
00:28:49 --> 00:28:55 <v Ben>Because we're, because Agile coaches, product coaches are often brought in as the people that can solve all the problems when you can't solve all the bloody problems.
00:28:55 --> 00:29:01 <v Ben>And when people then turn around to me and would root this in Agile for a second, as an example, and people say I'm not a technical scrum master.
00:29:02 --> 00:29:05 <v Ben>I'm like why don't you co scrum master the team?
00:29:05 --> 00:29:10 <v Ben>Why don't two scrum masters, one technical one not look after three or four teams?
00:29:11 --> 00:29:14 <v Ben>If you're a product coach and you are, when it comes to use of research, you are not fair.
00:29:15 --> 00:29:25 <v Ben>But when it comes to helping people do other form say market research or when it comes to some prioritization techniques or road mapping, you are bang on, then find another coach that you can partner with.
00:29:25 --> 00:29:34 <v Ben>You work together and you span the system and you bring those different skill sets in so that you are not then trying to help out in areas where you should probably leave well alone.
00:29:35 --> 00:29:35 <v Ben>And I.
00:29:36 --> 00:29:40 <v Ben>Will there be a future where co-coaching uh, becomes more of a thing?
00:29:41 --> 00:29:42 <v Ben>I've certainly
00:29:42 --> 00:29:58 <v Shane>seen it and it's beautiful when it happens and I've had the opportunity a few times to work in environments where we've got multiple coach coaches who do have different strengths and then we can upon other and understanding those.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:03 <v Shane>And being able to say no, for this piece, I'm not the right person, but hey, I've got access to this person.
00:30:04 --> 00:30:07 <v Shane>tHat's, that I found really powerful.
00:30:08 --> 00:30:21 <v Shane>And having a, it's the supervision thing, but also just having a community that I can come to a peer community that I can come to and say, I'm struggling with this.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:27 <v Shane>In the code of ethic, we actually talked to that under the professional development.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:28 <v Shane>There it is.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:31 <v Shane>Introspection and continuing professional development section three.
00:30:32 --> 00:30:37 <v Shane>I will engage with a peer group or mentor to explore ethical and other challenges in my agile coaching work.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:39 <v Shane>Explicitly calling it out.
00:30:39 --> 00:30:44 <v Shane>I will seek to improve my self-awareness and effectiveness through in introspection and professional development.
00:30:45 --> 00:30:50 <v Shane>We didn't go so far as to say supervision because there isn't a supervision structure yet.
00:30:50 --> 00:31:00 <v Shane>But I've certainly benefited phenomenally from the supervision process that the IC encourage all coaches to to, to be part of.
00:31:01 --> 00:31:01 <v Shane>I
00:31:01 --> 00:31:01 <v Ben>wonder.
00:31:02 --> 00:31:06 <v Ben>I wonder, and I think we we should probably begin to draw this conversation to a close.
00:31:06 --> 00:31:21 <v Ben>I've kept you for quite long enough, but , my thought here is that if there was a certification created, let's say for agile coaching supervision, in the same way the ICF have courses on coaching supervision, all of sudden.
00:31:21 --> 00:31:23 <v Ben>You wouldn't get everyone going onto that.
00:31:23 --> 00:31:23 <v Ben>Fair enough.
00:31:23 --> 00:31:39 <v Ben>But the thought, an effort into building up some learning outcomes, understandable from knowledge caps are to get it out there, to market that, to agile coaches to raise the awareness, might be an interesting hack to actually get people really considering what this is all about and how, it's different than.
00:31:39 --> 00:31:40 <v Ben>Professional coaching supervision.
00:31:40 --> 00:31:48 <v Ben>It would have to be different, but I think it, I think it could be different and very beneficial for any type of kind of product or agile coach.
00:31:48 --> 00:31:57 <v Ben>If it was structured in such a way that, um, spoke to solving real challenges on the ground and maintaining this ethical makes sure we were aligned ethically.
00:31:57 --> 00:32:05 <v Ben>And ultimately, and I firmly believe this, that things like co-coaching and if you look at professional team coaching particularly gives so much and there's a lot we can learn.
00:32:06 --> 00:32:07 <v Ben>From those worlds.
00:32:07 --> 00:32:13 <v Ben>So maybe one day making if as a certification was to arise, then perhaps that would begin some kind of movement.
00:32:15 --> 00:32:15 <v Shane>Yeah.
00:32:15 --> 00:32:23 <v Shane>And the challenge is that the certification at that level would need to be a competency certification, not a knowledge certification.
00:32:23 --> 00:32:24 <v Shane>Yeah.
00:32:24 --> 00:32:27 <v Shane>So the level of the IC Agile expert certifications.
00:32:28 --> 00:32:29 <v Ben>Yeah.
00:32:29 --> 00:32:29 <v Ben>I wonder.
00:32:30 --> 00:32:31 <v Ben>I wonder.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:34 <v Ben>But anyway, I was gonna go down the rabbit hole.
00:32:34 --> 00:32:37 <v Ben>But let's not do that because I've got, I'm not sure if it's gonna be interested.
00:32:37 --> 00:32:41 <v Ben>Shane Shane, thank you so much for one indulging me on this conversation.
00:32:41 --> 00:32:46 <v Ben>It's one, one I've wanting to have you for such a long time and I really enjoyed it.
00:32:46 --> 00:32:51 <v Ben>So thank you so much for being so open and honest and and just yeah, willing to have the conversation.
00:32:51 --> 00:32:51 <v Ben>It means a lot.
00:32:51 --> 00:32:52 <v Ben>Thank
00:32:52 --> 00:32:52 <v Shane>you.
00:32:52 --> 00:32:57 <v Shane>It's been an absolute pleasure and I've really enjoyed the conversations and we'll find a way to
00:32:57 --> 00:32:58 <v Ben>continue.
00:32:58 --> 00:32:59 <v Ben>I would love to.
00:32:59 --> 00:33:00 <v Ben>I'd love to.
00:33:00 --> 00:33:03 <v Ben>I'd love to meet up with you one day, but you on, you're too bloody far away.
00:33:04 --> 00:33:05 <v Ben>No, I'm too far away.
00:33:05 --> 00:33:05 <v Ben>And look at that.
00:33:05 --> 00:33:06 <v Ben>Putting it on you.
00:33:06 --> 00:33:07 <v Ben>I'm too far away, Shane.
00:33:07 --> 00:33:08 <v Ben>I'm too far away.
00:33:08 --> 00:33:16 <v Ben>If I think back to what we've spoken about, we started off looking at this whole topic on professional coaching and agile coaching and professional coaching and product coaching and, where does it start?
00:33:16 --> 00:33:18 <v Ben>What are some of the considerations we need to make?
00:33:18 --> 00:33:20 <v Ben>How does this professional coaching mindset.
00:33:21 --> 00:33:26 <v Ben>Or the coaching mindset really fit into what a lot of you listening are doing day to day.
00:33:27 --> 00:33:30 <v Ben>And I think we, we explored that and we came up with some good answers.
00:33:30 --> 00:33:45 <v Ben>And then we went on to talking about the ethical considerations and the great work Shane has done with the volunteers under the umbrella of the Agile Alliance to really make clear and agile coaching code of ethics, which is ever evolving and will have people signing up to it in the foreseeable future.
00:33:45 --> 00:33:46 <v Ben>And I do urge.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:55 <v Ben>If you're a product coach, whether you're an agile coach, whether you're someone that works with one of these coaches, one of these types of coaches, please do go check out that code of ethics.
00:33:55 --> 00:33:57 <v Ben>There'll be a link in a description.
00:33:57 --> 00:34:03 <v Ben>There's some really awesome stuff in there, and it might just, it might help you find someone that can better help you improve your performance.
00:34:04 --> 00:34:07 <v Ben>So on that note, I thank you all once again for listening.
00:34:07 --> 00:34:09 <v Ben>And again, big thank you to Shane for coming along.
00:34:10 --> 00:34:13 <v Ben>We will be back here again next week, so we'll see you then.
00:34:14 --> 00:34:14 <v Ben>Thank you very much.
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