 We've got Shane Hasty here with us today, all the way from New Zealand. Just so happens that we're both actually coming to you from New Zealand today. And this session is sponsored by IC Agile. You'll notice that Shane has a good connection with those guys. And so we'd love to thank IC Agile for helping to sponsor the conference. We're really thrilled to have Shane here with us today. So without any further ado, Shane, it's all over to you. Cool. John, thank you very much. Welcome, folks, Cura. All right. Present. Welcome, folks. Thank you very much indeed. So, yeah, as John says, I'm with IC Agile. I'm the Director of Community Development. But what I'm talking about today is looking broadly at the ethics of Agile coaching. So the first thing I'd like to explore is to get you to tell me. So I'd like you to go to menti.com and enter the code 26037441. So please go to menti.com, enter the code 2603741 and just put in your explanation, your definition of ethical. So when you think about something is ethical, what does that mean to you? And I'll pop up what we're going to see in the poll. So again, thank you doing the right thing, workmanship, integrity, dedicated, doing good, morally correct, honest, acceptable, do the right thing, integrity, true to yourself, legitimate, dedicated, trust, doing good, honest, bound by values, incredibly inclusive, discipline, what is right, honest, honest, being morally correct. So we kind of seem to have a reasonably good consensus about what ethical implies and means. And I'll leave this up for a while and after the session I will download these results and include them in the slide set that I will share. But let's come back and explore. So what are we going to track through today? We have a bit of a lag on the slides. So my screen currently says the agenda. So I'll just let that catch up slowly. And the topics I want to explore ethics, coaching, the ethics of coaching. And then I want to explore agile coaching as a style and approach to coaching. And then the ethics of agile coaching. There we are, it's caught up. So there is a bit of a lag on the tooling, but that's okay. Just please bear with us as we move forward. So the next thing starting into this, let's look at ethics. What are some things that we have seen from an ethical perspective? And some of you will probably remember the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Interestingly, for those that aren't aware of it, there was software in the engine control system of a particular model of Volkswagen vehicle that was deliberately designed to change the engine emissions when the monitoring system was plugged into it. So when the vehicle was running, the engine emissions were at one level, but when it was in the testing center, it actually changed the behavior of the engine to reduce the emissions. And interestingly from an ethical perspective and from a dilemma perspective, the person who went to prison as a result of this fraudulent behavior was the engineer who wrote the code, not the manager who told them what to do. Now the company was penalized quite extensively with a large fine, but the engineer who wrote the code is the one that ended up in prison. Other examples, the references again in the slides, the Cambridge Analytica scandal during the last US election, who knows what's going on in this current one. The Australian banking research and the overcharging elements there and the large government investigation that explored that and again massive penalties. The next slide, which will pop up hopefully very shortly is talking about and there's a link in there to an article from medium.com where the website displays, you know, there are X many people looking at this product right now to create that feeling of urgency. But when you right click in your browser and you say display the code, it's not a live update at all. It's a random number generator every five seconds, select a random number between three and 14 and display that to the customer. Not exactly honest behavior. And we know we have truth and advertising and so forth. But hmm. So the ethics, this quote from a BBC series. At its simplest ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives. Ethics is concerned for what is good for individuals and society. And is also described as a moral philosophy. Hmm. How does that impact us? And how does that bring us into elements of coaching? So let's let's talk about coaching itself. And I'm drawing here on from the definition from the International Coach Federation. So just bringing us back to my topic of the ethics of agile coaching and let's talk about coaching itself. ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. And hopefully the screen sharing will catch up any moment. So coaching. One of the things that I want to challenge is the common perspective that coaching is telling people what to do. And particularly in agile coaching. We see a lot of that. The the coach is the the process police person. They are defining the process the agile process the organization must take. And they are mandating common structure. I see is agile coaches falling under the the remit of the the project management office in large organizations. That's where they're reporting to and they're engaged to determine the organization's agile approach and to make sure that everyone adheres with that. But if we look at this concept of coaching from the ICF. Partnering with clients in a thought provoking create and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and potential and professional potential. That's contradictory to a lot of what we see in the wild in agile coaching. The next slide that's coming up hopefully soon. Explores the competencies that the ICF talks about. And the first of the competencies that the ICF has it's their number one element is meeting ethical guidelines and professional standards. Then they go on and talk about establishing a coaching agreement, establishing trust and intimacy with the client, having a coaching presence, active listening, powerful questioning, direct communication. Creating awareness, designing actions, planning and goal setting and managing progress and accountability. So there's some of that in a lot of agile coaching. But there's also a lot of it missing. I want to explore what that really means to us. In a conversation with Lisa Radkins, we were asking, what do you mean by ethics and morals in an agile coaching environment? And Lisa used the term that really resonated with me. What is the up with which you will not put? What is your personal line in the sand? So as an ethical coach or somebody taking an ethical perspective, it is incumbent upon you to first and foremost know yourself, to understand yourself, to be able to know what your own moral compass is, what your own ethics were. What are your limits? Where will you step away? And then you can start having conversations with others about helping, guiding, supporting, assisting them. But this starting with self is a very, very important aspect of ethics. And in the slides, I have a quote that is on the outside of a building in Atlanta where Martin Luther King had his offices at one point. And it says, you are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in. Now think about that. You are personally more responsible for becoming more ethical than the society that you grew up in. How does that start to play out? And if you're an agile coach, how does that land for you? The next thing I want to talk about, and I want to leave you just pondering that one for a while, let it stew in the background. There are coaching organizations. There's two in particular that have published codes of ethics. The International Coach Federation is one, and there's another organization that's just published a global code of ethics for coaching. And they look at different elements, the responsibility to clients in the ICF, responsibility to practice and performance, responsibility to professionalism, and responsibility to society. If you want to get hold of these, again in my slides, which I will make available, they are the International Coach Federation, just look for their code of ethics. And the other one is globalcodeofethics.org, and they talk about working with clients, professional conduct, and excellent practice as the three broad areas that coaches need to focus on in terms of their ethical practice and behaviors. And there's a lovely quote that I've pulled out from the ICF. The challenge of working ethically means that members will inevitably encounter situations that require responses to unexpected issues, resolutions of dilemmas, and solutions to problems. Now, if the sharing was working well, I would have left you to read this yourself, but forgive me for reading out a slide. This code of ethics is intended to assist those persons subject to the code by directing them to the variety of ethical factors that may need to be taken into consideration and helping to identify alternative ways of approaching ethical behavior. ICF professionals who accept the code of ethics strive to be ethical, even when doing so involves making difficult decisions or acting courageously. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where knowing thyself and being able to stand up and say, no, that is wrong, and having that called it a moral compass. So that's the ethics from coaching, from a coaching perspective. Now, I want to explore the agile coaching. And if you're not aware of this, I would point you to the Agile Coaching Institute and Lisa Adkins, a model that Lisa Adkins and Michael Spade and others put together. And it's been released under the Creative Commons license. It's often called the X-Wing. It talks about the competencies that an agile coach needs to have. And it's a diagram with four broad quadrants in an X format. At the top, you have the agile lean practitioner, somebody who applies the agile practices and lives the agile values. And if you're an agile coach, you start from the perspective of having that deep, deep, solid DNA level ingrained view of agile practices and agile values. Then on the right hand side of the model, there are the two competencies that are neutral in terms of content. That is professional coaching, partnering with clients in a creative process that inspires their personal and professional potential. So drawing heavily on that, the ideas from the ICF, and also facilitating a neutral process holder who guides groups through processes then help them come to solutions and make decisions. So on the one side are the neutral elements. And then on the other side of the third quadrant of this diagram are the content elements. And these are teaching and mentoring. So as an agile coach, yes, you will at times be required to teach teams and individuals how to do things, how to apply different agile practices and so forth. And likewise, you will be called upon to mentor individuals. So teaching groups and mentoring individuals, sharing your skill and knowledge and helping them to understand and become better at their practice. Because on the one hand the coach, the professional coach takes the perspective that the coachee, the person being coached has the solution to their own problem. And my job is to help them find that. But if they genuinely don't have that solution, then we need to provide them with content, with knowledge. And that's where the teaching and or mentoring come into play in this model. And then the fourth quadrant at the bottom of the diagram at the bottom of the X is the various levels of mastery. They talk about technical mastery, business mastery and transformation mastery being the three competency areas. And you have to have competency all around the X way, but the depth that you will go to in the different areas will be different for every individual. If I think of myself, I have a level of technical mastery, but I'm able to admit that I'm no longer the world's best programmer. I last wrote Code in Anger in 2011. So if you wanted a coach who's going to help you to implement a DevOps solution, I'm probably not the right person. On the other hand, the business mastery areas where I feel I have the depth and the strength and the experience that, yes, I can help in the product management space and the product ownership space. So if that's where your organization and your team is struggling, well, I'm your person. On the other hand, the third of those elements, the transformation mastery, I don't have the depth that many of my colleagues and other people do who have worked at that transformation level in large organizations. So again, I might be able to advise, but I can't bring a lot of that depth. So as an agile coach, I need to first of all know myself and be able to be honest with my coaches, whether that's the organization, the team or the individual, about where my competencies lie in the mastery areas. So I'd ask you to consider thinking about the coaches that you know and that you've worked with, where have you seen those elements, particularly I'm going to hone in on the mastery areas, because this is one that I think is we often over stretch ourselves. I might not know about the area, but there's a bid I'm coming in from outside. I can pretend I know about this and then I'll go and learn it just ahead of the team and then I'll teach them. And that's okay provided I've been clear and open and honest with everyone involved. This is what I'm doing. I haven't got the depth of knowledge there. I'm going to work with you. I'm going to work one step ahead of you. We will learn together. If I've done that, if I communicated it in that way, then I have been ethical in my behavior. On the other hand, if I've taken on this contract and I'm not telling anyone at all that I've never done this before, but I can do it and I've seen a lot of harm done through that process. If we think of agility and comparing the model that I've spoken about in terms of the way that the professional coaching institute talks about, the coach of the person with no skin in the game, they're neutral in terms of process. And then the agile coach looking at that X wing diagram from the agile coaching institute, there is in the work of the agile coach, there is a deliberate bias towards agility. And myself and Craig Smith have been working with a group of 23 people 2324 people under the auspices of the agile alliance to come up with a code of ethical conduct for agile coaching. The first thing that we looked at was, do we need one? Could we just borrow one of those existing code of ethics, particularly the ICF or that Global Code of Ethics? Both really solid, well thought out, well defined codes of ethical conduct for neutral coaching. And that's where we tripped over and said, you know what, that doesn't work. As an agile coach, I do bring this deliberate and positive bias towards agility as opposed to the client has the answer and I'm helping them figure it out. There will be times when actually what I'm doing is I'm showing them a path. I want, though, not to impose that path on them, but to invite them on a journey. And this is one of the important characteristics of, in our minds, that ethical coaching, that you're not as the coach coming in and saying, thou shalt work like this. It's here are some ideas, here is what we have seen. Come on a journey with us and let's explore this together in your context. And through this group, we looked at, okay, what would, what are the things that a code of ethics for agile coaching should contain? We had a lot of debate about what should be in there and what shouldn't. And we came to some guidelines that we've used. What makes something an ethical consideration? We've got three criteria to be an ethical consideration. A topic needs to be someone that they can do as soon as they sign up to the code. A new, a novice agile coach, somebody who's just at the beginning of their coaching journey can read the statement and apply this immediately in practicing their profession. They don't need extra training to figure out what this is. In order to be an ethical consideration, it must be something where there is broad agreement that violating this principle causes harm or risks causing harm to myself, to the profession or to others if I do not abide by the statement. And a very important thing that we looked at was what is the spans the breadth of agile coaching. So it was coaching, not coach. And these points must be applicable to people who are internal coaches, external coaches, and those practicing agile coaching is part of another role. For example, a manager who is expected to be a coach or somebody in the role of the scrum master taking on some or all aspects of agile coaching. So it's not about a job title, it is about that doing coaching. And having identified these, we then came up with nine broad areas. And again, I am going to read these out because our screen sharing isn't working well here. But they are included in the slide deck that I will share after the session. So first and foremost, as an ethical agile coach, I commit myself to the following. And the first topic, confidentiality and information security. And each of these topics has one or two sentences that we've that we've expanded to I will protect information shared with me and won't disclose it without agreement or legal reason. The second one acting within your ability. I will be open and transparent about my skills and experience and I won't claim to have abilities or knowledge that I do not have. There's the I need to be open and honest acting within my ability. And the second point there I will be honest with the client if I believe they need another form of professional help. So if coaching is not what they need. I'm not going to continue the relationship even though it might make money. I'm going to step away and say I'm not the right person for you. Next one introspection and continuing professional development. I will engage in introspection and I will engage with a peer group or mentor to explore other ethical and other challenges in my agile coaching work. I'm not going to hold myself up self up as the fountain of all knowledge I'm going to be part of a community. I will seek to improve myself awareness and effectiveness through professional development. The next topic conflicts of interest. I will be transparent about any potential conflict of interests conflicts of interest with all who may be affected and I won't act with dishonour. I would withdraw from the relationship if a conflict conflict cannot be adequately managed. There are times when there is a legitimate conflict of interest. We're open and honest about it. Everyone understands that and that's okay. I'm not going to keep it hidden. And if that cannot be adequately managed, I'm going to step away. Social responsibility, including diversity and inclusion is the next topic. I will seek opportunities to bring different voices to the conversation and I won't condone allow or perpetuate discrimination in any form. By my action and inaction, I will strive to leave society better than I found it. The next bullet point by ensuring the relationship is valuable for both coach and client. I will ensure that the relationship remains valuable and I won't extend it unnecessarily. I will be honest about any perception of declining value. Then the agreeing on boundaries. I will ensure we have an agreed scope. I will work with the client to understand their needs rather than impose my own solution. I will not collude with an organization that is pursuing purposes at odds with the agile manifesto's values and principles. So that deep agile practitioner. The next one, the abuse of power. I will not abuse my power to influence others for personal gain. And we've had some discussion whether we even need that for personal gain or just I will not abuse my power to influence others full stop. And then the last point is the responsibility to the profession. I will uphold the reputation of the agile coaching profession. I won't condone and will challenge challenge unethical behavior and other agile coaches. I will attribute others ideas appropriately and avoid the appearance that they are mine. So those are the nine broad areas confidentiality and information security acting within your ability, introspection and continuing professional development conflicts of interest social responsibility, ensuring the relationship is valuable to both client and coach. Agree on boundaries, agreeing on boundaries, abuse of power and responsibility to the profession. We feel that if every agile coach behaved within those boundaries, we would see better outcomes in the coaching amongst the organizations who are the victims of our coaching implementations. What have we missed? So I'd like to open this up and please go back to that that mentee poll. I will move to the next point. So again, mentee.com and the code 2603741. What have we missed? What should an ethical framework for agile coaching contain? And I'm going to copy into the chat window. Those nine points. So the mentee code mentee.com code 2603741 2326 2603741 is the code. So copied in the first one, then is the second course in the chat window, it's not nicely formatted. But hopefully you can read it. We make do with the tools that work for us. Nice to see some topics coming in here. The agility and approach honesty and openness respect for current state and journey so far. Be an active listener, build trust, empathy, work with the team for their development only. Zooming out and self reflection on a periodic basis. What support are we expecting from the client? It's a two way framework. Do no harm. Ethical framework should not have a put any personal profit or we will always have to remember we have to listen to others and give them a chance to open up. Adaptability to change courage. Openness and transparency. Empathy. I will not claim to know things that I don't encourage courage. Open and honest build trust unbiased. Respect for others customer centricity. Understand the business needs of the client don't push for agile transformation. Agile is not the soul solution to everything. Being transparent be open, offer and seek help resiliency as a coach that self support understanding the journey of the client. And don't dismiss all previous earlier work as bad. Passion compassion and empathy. Mutual understanding respect for people. Wonderful. Thank you folks. Courage, courage, courage coming through. Okay. Next to, we're coming close to time. Yeah, we've got just a couple of minutes left. If you've got questions that people want to ask. We've got just a couple. Couple in the Q&A. I just pushed the wrong button. Someone was wanting you I think to expand a little bit more on the concept of the moral compass. This was asked by Sun Deep Merotra. Moral compass is is what you see when you look in the mirror. What is your set of values, principles, what guides you. And this is this comes back to knowing knowing yourself now your values that they may they're influenced. We picked them up very early in life, but they also are adapting and responding and evolving over over time. So, yeah, Sandeep, does that make sense? But it starts, it truly does start by knowing yourself, know yourself. And the what Lisa had to say in terms of what is the up with which you will not put what's your own personal boundary. Now, the work of this group is under the auspices of the Agile Alliance. And on the Alliance, there is a let me find that. I'll share this link as well. The Agile Coaching Initiative and that set of bullet points that I read through that are part of the that make up our first draft of the of the Code of Ethics. That has been that will be released on the on the Agile Alliance website very soon. We're waiting for it to be to be published and there's an email address there that where we're asking for feedback. The next step in the journey of this group, once we have this set of bullet points published is we're going on and we're producing what we're calling the ethics stories. So for each of those bullet points, we want to give examples that people can drill into. And we're looking at examples of what is ethical behavior in that context, what would unethical behavior be in that context. And then we have the hard one. What is a gray area? And in that gray area, how will you how do you make decisions? So what are the factors that come into play because it's in the gray area where things are really hard. And we want to provide advice and guidance and not by not in terms of a set of rules. But here are the things to consider. And that's what the group is currently working on producing those. We hope to release those sometime in the next couple of weeks. We've got another couple of questions here just to rip through. We're running out of time. Just to let everyone know that there will be a chance to talk to Shane after this in a meeting room. So if you've got questions, we'll tell you how to get there in just a moment. We'll try and rip through a couple of more questions just before we finish. Someone's asked, how do you deal with resistance to agile coaching? First point from there is why is there resistance? Is it because you are imposing coaching on them? Is agile being implemented as a top-down imperative? And as a coach, I'm coming in as the process police. Well, I'm sorry, that's not coaching, that's consulting. As a coach, I'm offering, I'm inviting people on a journey. The journey is in their hands. And if there is resistance, then there is something, there is a good solid reason behind that resistance. Let's work that out and figure it out together. Don't assume that resistance is because the person being coached is somehow wrong. Maybe what's being done to them is not right. Alright, next question. In the name of agile, can you tell me if ignoring a deadline is good? That's from Rohit. We have to be responsible corporate citizens. So, irrespective of your brand or model, we're part of an organization that has a requirement of us that we deliver stuff. Now, is the deadline reasonable or unreasonable? Because this goes both ways. This is the organization supporting the people, other people supporting the organization. And a mandatory imposed deadline with no valid reason. And I'm afraid in many organizations that's what deadlines are. They're a number that a senior manager has made up because it feels good to them. It has nothing to do with the ability of the teams to actually deliver. Well, at the very least, there's a need for a conversation about that. But if everyone is being open, honest and truthful, then we can have that genuine conversation about what the deadline is and what it is. Alright, we have one last question. We're over time, but these are good questions, so we'll throw one more in there. Being a coach, how can we build a coaching culture open to getting coached, open to seeking help and open to things that can be solved by seeking support? That's from Shakti. Well, I'm going to go to the Gandhi quote. Be the change that you want to see in the world. Start off by doing that for yourself and invite others along on that journey. We included that professional development as a key element of the code of conduct, that introspection and continuing professional development. Because we know that as a coach on your own, you haven't got all of the answers, but as a community of coaches. And I will point you to, if you're looking for opportunities to build that coaching muscle to the Agile coaching circles. And it's AgileCoachingCircles.org. There is a, and there are a number of them around the world that are designed to support coaches in learning their profession. All right. And one last thing before we, one last, one last thing. How to handle conflicts of interest within an Agile team? Start off by making them visible. What are the conflicts? Where do they exist? Why do they exist? Be absolutely visible and transparent and then say, okay, what is the implication to us as a team about these conflicts and trust the team to figure it out. And if that means that I as a coach need to step away, then if the conflict, if that conflict of interest is between myself and something else on that team, well, then maybe I need to be stepping away. I won't act with dishonor. I will withdraw from the relationship if a conflict cannot be adequately managed. Those are the things, the points that we put into the conflict of interest element. Thank you, Shane. It's been a great session. There's been lots of interesting things to ponder, to think about and to take away and implement in our work. Thanks, everyone. It's been great.