Growing the Effort: Motivational Coaching

Hackman and Wageman (2005) posit that there are three fundamental functions that determine the level of team effectiveness. The first of these is the level of effort that group members collectively expend carrying out task work.

Coaching that addresses this level effort can be seen as motivational in character. The aim of motivational coaching interventions is to build a commitment to both the group and it's work. This commitment needs to be shared and maintained amongst all group members.

In practice this involves building an igniting purpose and a shared reason of being for the group. This is the area where we can see the importance of giving teams problems to solve rather than solutions to deliver. The problem presented to the team gives them something to unite around and a base from which to collaborate and derive a solution. This in turn builds a shared ownership around the problem and solution and an increased commitment to the team's work.

We can look towards collaborative specification approaches and tools such as Impact Mapping as examples of ways which can provide a team with an increased understanding of desired outcomes and input into possible solutions.

Due to it's character, motivational coaching is best placed at the beginning of a performance cycle. The different levels of feedback loop which operate in an Agile setting present multiple opportunities for the application of such motivational levers, e.g. at the individual feature level, at a Sprint level or higher at a release or project level. Moreover, with the use of multiple feedback loops the team will be presented with a range of opportunities to benefit from the increased engagement and commitment that motivational coaching interventions can help deliver.