Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

Chapter 3. Master Yourself

I have a confession to make. I am a recovering command-and-control-aholic. I know I’m recovering because people who meet me now say, “No! You? A command-and-control-aholic? I don’t believe it.” When I hear this, I smile and thank them, feeling very proud of my hard-won transformation. Still, I know that the command-and-control tendency runs deep, so when I start coaching an agile team, I ask the team members to call me on command-and-control behavior. They can’t imagine they will ever have to do this, but then we get into some stressful situation, and I start trying to control what they do and how they do it. They say to me, “Hey! You just morphed into the command-and-control monster. We want our coach back.” They ...