To celebrate my most recent certification as a Certified Team Coach from the Scrum Alliance, I would like to share the main takeaways for me along this journey.
Start with Self-Mastery
Even though I would recommend this as one of the first steps to take, I learned it’s importance late in the path. It wasn’t until I started working with the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel that I became aware of the central role that Self-Mastery plays, and why the continuous work in this area has such a big impact in our own development as coaches.
Self-mastery is broken down in three main areas:
- Emotional intelligence: this includes the exploration of our self-awareness, self-regulation, and the impact we have on the systems that we interact with.
- Balance: By achieving a healthy balance between work and personal activities, we become aware when we are stepping out of it and develop the skills to center ourselves back into balance.
- Personal transformation: If we, as Agile Coaches, expect our clients to embrace chance, we must model it ourselves first. If we invest in our own growth and learning, and then integrate all this into actions, we will be able to catalyze the change we want to see in organizations.
If you would like to explore more that this and the other competencies of the wheel, you can start here.
Build a network
Getting the certification is an individual work, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t need help. Finding a user group or a community of people that can support us when we are running out of energy is key.
You can find groups through MeetUps, Slack workspaces or paid programs that are specifically design to help navigate through the application while building a network of people with a common interest. Through this groups we can will find the opportunity to work with others going through the same experience and are willing to give honest feedback to improve.
Find a mentor
Having someone more experienced that can advise us on specific aspects of the application is a great way to move forward in the process. For me, it was hard to find a mentor at first because my income did not allow me to pay someone to help me out. Also, my network wasn’t big enough to find someone that could help me for free.
As I started building my network, I was able to find kindhearted people that would help me out and guide me through the application process. I will always be thankful to their generosity and for believing in me. Which is why I am committed to return the favor to other going through the same experience and help in any way I can.
The bottom line
In conclusion, if I were to do it all over again (which I probably will for my CEC), I would start with myself, developing and honing my own craft and my own self-awareness. Then, I would move to expanding the network around me to find likeminded people that I can learn from and that are willing to support my journey.
Please keep in mind that I’m only sharing my own experience. The list above may not work for you at all, or maybe just an item or two might be helpful for you. If you would like to experiment with any of them, I would love to hear about your results.