Helping People Do What They Want to Do

Hello everybody, I'm Damon Poole, an enterprise Agile coach. I also do a lot of coach training, whether it’s professional coaching or Agile coaching. I’m the co-author, along with Gillian Lee, of the recent book Professional Coaching for Agilists.

Hey everyone, I'm Gillian! It’s really fun to be joining you for this learning series. I’m the Director of Delivery Coaching at Neulogy, a supply chain software company in the Toronto area. I mentor product and engineering leaders on coaching and Agile ways of working.

Two Different Ways to Offer Expertise

Today, we’re going to talk about two different ways to offer expertise. Not that one is better than the other necessarily, but just different ways to look at things. If you’re an Agile coach—and we’re using the term "Agile coach" generically here—you could be a Scrum Master, a Release Train Engineer (RTE), or another coaching role.

Usually, people don’t wake up in the morning thinking, "I need coaching, pure coaching, without any expertise or opinions." They’re coming to you because they hope you can help them solve their problem, even if they haven’t given you all the particulars.

One approach is to answer their request directly and say, “Here’s how to do it,” which is advocating for a solution—also known as consulting. However, that doesn’t always work out. When it doesn’t, who’s to blame?

The other approach is to offer expertise using a coaching mindset. There are many aspects to a coaching mindset, but today we’ll focus on one: choice. When you're in a coaching mindset, you want people to make their own choices because they are more likely to follow through on what they decide for themselves.

Three Ways to Share Expertise

When sharing expertise, you can do it in a way that maximizes choice. Here are three ways to do that, progressing from the most choice to the least choice:

1. Provide a small piece of missing information that helps them move forward.
2. Offer a relevant resource that might help.
3. Share examples from your own experience.

Someone reviewing our book pointed out a great way to summarize this: provide the smallest viable amount of information at the last responsible moment. That really stuck with us.

Live Demonstration: A Skit

Let’s show you what this looks like with a little skit.

Damon: Actually, I have a real problem.

Gillian: What’s your real problem, Damon?

Damon: I’m a new Scrum Master, and I just started working with this team. I think I’m doing pretty well—I’ve had all the training, I’ve learned about retrospectives—but after six months, our retrospectives feel like zombies. It’s just, "What went well? What didn’t go well? What ideas do you have?" There’s no energy, nothing new is coming up. I don’t know what to do. What should I do, Gillian?

Gillian: Well, Damon, if you look at the Scrum Guide, it doesn’t actually tell you what retrospective format to use. You don’t have to do the same format every single time.

Damon: Really? You mean I can do anything in there?

Gillian: You got it.

Damon: Wow, that’s a small bit of missing information I didn’t have! But there’s just one problem—I don’t know any other retrospective formats. What should I do?

Gillian: A relevant resource might be the Retromat website. It offers all sorts of different retrospective formats based on the five stages of a retrospective.

Damon: Like six or seven examples?

Gillian: No, we’re talking about dozens for each stage—so, hundreds of possibilities.

Damon: That’s amazing! I’m totally going to use that. But there’s just one problem—I need to do this tomorrow. I don’t have time for research. What should I do?

Gillian: Well, one great retrospective format is the Sailboat Retrospective. It looks at "What’s the wind in your sails?" and "What’s anchoring you down?" Another format is called Timeline, where you map out events over time and discuss their impact.

Damon: Oh, I almost fell asleep at the Timeline one, but the Sailboat one—that’s inspiring! I love the imagery. I think that could really supercharge our retrospectives. Is there a facilitator’s guide you could share?

Gillian: You bet! I’ll send it right along.

Damon: That’s awesome! Thank you so much!

When to Share Expertise

Now that we’ve demonstrated one approach, let’s look at another way to offer expertise when working with someone. Even knowing when to share information is part of the coaching mindset.

In our next exercise, we’re going to show how this looks in a real coaching scenario using Mural. You’ll see how to encourage someone to explore their own options before sharing your expertise.

Interactive Coaching Exercise

We’re going to put you into Mural to practice this technique. First, you’ll write down a real issue you’re trying to figure out. Next, you’ll list the options you’re considering. Then, you’ll receive expert advice from others in the group. Finally, you’ll reflect on the advice and decide what you’re leaning toward doing.

We’ll walk through the steps and provide guidance along the way. Remember, the goal here is to encourage choice and help people think through their options rather than just jumping in with a solution.

Reflection and Takeaways

After completing the exercise, we’d love to hear your reflections. What stood out to you? How did it feel to receive suggestions in this way? Did it change the way you think about coaching?

One participant noted that this approach feels like crowdsourcing advice—a structured way to tap into the collective expertise of a group while still maintaining individual choice.

Another participant shared that sometimes, people don’t actually need advice; they just need to be heard. Simply listening can be one of the most powerful coaching tools.

Finally, someone pointed out that it’s easy to fall into the habit of overloading people with information. A key takeaway from today’s session is to provide just enough information to move the conversation forward, but not so much that it overwhelms the person.

Final Thoughts

Thank you all for participating in today’s session! We hope you found this approach valuable and that it gives you new ways to think about sharing expertise. If you have any final thoughts or questions, feel free to share them.

And remember—coaching is about empowering others to make their own choices. Sometimes, the best way to help is simply to ask the right questions.