What is the Zeitgeist of the software industry, and software community?
I thought I knew, but upon reflection, I’m pretty sure I don’t have a clue.
If I had to guess, I’d say it involves indifference, learned helplessness, and a Mexican standoff between management and developers. But I could be way off base.
Your thoughts, observations?
– Bob
My thanks to Beatric Düring for her recent Twitter question:
“If I wanted dive deeper into org psychotherapy – what would be crucial knowledge I would have to acquire working as an agile coach? Where can I draw the line requiring professional psychotherapy education/training?”
Is it feasible to transition from an Agile Coach into the Organisational Psychotherapist role?
Given that I was an Agile Coach for years before making the shift myself, I’d say it’s demonstrably feasible. Why might any Agile Coach consider making the shift?
For me, it was down to an increasing dissatisfaction with the (limited) value I was able to deliver in the role of Agile Coach (and latterly, Enterprise Agile Coach). Over a number of years it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that the real dysfunctions in any organisation lie outside the domain of any one functional silo. In the white space between people, and between silos, if you like. It became obvious that to deliver real change, change that’s worth having, change that makes a significant impact both on the lives of everyone involved and on the bottom line of the organisation, a more holistic, systemic intervention pays major dividends. And the Organisational Psychotherapist role implies the necessary whole-organisation scope to do that more effectively, and more often, than the Agile Coaching role.
There was also, for me, the increasing realisation that I was not actually helping things for a client by making suggestions and having an agenda (a bunch of my ideas about what future would be best for them). Organisational Psychotherapy allows us to cut through that particular Gordian Knot.
Organisational Psychotherapy is about people, and their relationships – with each other and with the collective psyche of the organisation. I hear from many Agile Coaches that this is a dawning realisation that creeps up on us over several years, at least. Process and management issues fade in importance the more we coach. Ultimately, into utter insignificance.
So, to Beatric’s two questions:
What knowledge, accessible to an Agile Coach, is crucial to diving deeper into Organisational Psychotherapy ?
The journey, for me, was eased by various spells as an Enterprise Agile Coach. This helped me acquire a practical angle on the whole Lean / System Thinking / Synergistic perspective, looking at organisations as a whole, rather than being limited to intervention horizons within a single function (most often, the Software Development or Software Engineering function). Maybe an Agile Coach could transition into Organisational Psychotherapy without that system-wide appreciation. I’d be interested to hear about folks’ experiences in that regard.
On the other hand, there’s a whole world (more than a hundred years in some cases) of work and results across the more than 400 different schools of therapy that comprise the world of psychotherapy as it pertains to individuals. Much of my learning has come from reframing individual therapy techniques for application in the organisational context. I wrote a post some time ago, describing some of these, entitled My Organisational Therapy Toolkit.
How far can the Agile Coach progress in his or her personal journey towards mastering Organisational Psychotherapy, before it makes sense to seek professional psychotherapy education/training?
As far as I know, there is no recognised professional education or training for Organisational Psychotherapists. I’m entirely self-taught, and most of my most profound learning has come as a result of interacting with real live clients in real live situations. I do try to share my learnings with others, and when the demand is there I’d be happy to make that more formal, if needed.
I guess one could train as a “normal” psychotherapist, although that looks like a six to eight year full-time study commitment, at least. And I wonder just how useful much of that individual-therapy training would be useful in the context of organisational therapy?
Personally, I’ve always favoured apprenticeships or communities of practice over education/training per se.
And then there’s the whole can of worms labelled “certification”. I’m sure I could rattle up a two day “Organisational Psychotherapy Master” (COpM) certification course, with an honest-to-goodness certificate at the end of it. £2000 a pop seems like a fair price for that. But REALLY? Certified Mastery of Organisational Psychotherapy in two days? I doubt. It’s taken me ten years so far, and I’m still only scratching the surface (and being so far from Mastery, even now).
I’d feel more comfortable seeing folks apply themselves to the subject, gain some early practical experience – possibly under the wing of someone with some relevant experience – and build their own skills and experience through application and interaction. I’d suggest the watchword here is “congruence”:
Congruence means that the therapist is genuine and authentic, not like the “blank screen” of traditional psychoanalysis:
The first element [of the three core conditions of the person-centered approach to psychotherapy] could be called genuineness, realness, or congruence. The more the therapist is himself or herself in the relationship, putting up no professional front or personal facade, the greater is the likelihood that the client will change and grow in a constructive manner. This means that the therapist is openly being the feelings and attitudes that are flowing within at the moment. The term “transparent” catches the flavor of this condition: the therapist makes himself or herself transparent to the client; the client can see right through what the therapist is in the relationship; the client experiences no holding back on the part of the therapist. As for the therapist, what he or she is experiencing is available to awareness, can be lived in the relationship, and can be communicated, if appropriate. Thus, there is a close matching, or congruence, between what is being experienced at the gut level, what is present in awareness, and what is expressed to the client. (Rogers, 1980)
– Bob
Carl Rogers On Person-Centered Therapy (pdf article)
In line with the advice process, I’m posting here my intention to set up a new WordPress.com site to provide us with a dedicated online space for our interactions and archives. This will provide us with a shared home, replacing the use of my blog for this purpose, and is both in response to and anticipation of requests from our fledgling community of principle for such a facility. How long this facility will prove useful before we choose to move on again, I can’t say. I suspect somewhere between several weeks and a year or more.
I intend using the P2 theme on this site.
Would you be willing to provide some advice before I act on this intent? I intend to act on this intention circa: Monday 16 Nov 2015, Noon GMT.
– Bob
“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.”
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
In response to your kind questions and comments regarding my previous post, I mentioned that I would be writing a post to address some of those questions and comments. This is not that post (I’m still in the middle of that).
In the meantime, and hopefully to preserve some sense of momentum, might I invite you to advise me on your feelings about approaching the journey ahead (e.g. building a thing we may come to refer to as a community of principle) with a modicum of deliberate intention? Specifically, it has been my habit to follow an approach evolved over many years for this sort of thing. Presently this bears the name “Javelin”. There’s a paper on Javelin which you might care to read. Please accept my apologies in advance for labelling it a process, and for its anachronisms.
In a nutshell, the approach entails, at its heart:
The approach aims to address a bunch of risks inherent in this kind of endeavour, including the risk of spending precious time and effort on building the wrong thing(s).
Put another way, what’s the minimum amount of structure that will serve us in approaching our joint endeavour?
How does this sit with you? What advice can you offer me? Upon receipt of this advice I will be better placed to decide whether this kind of approach might fly, and what else to do instead or in addition.
– Bob
Our Javelin Process ~ Bob Marshall
Think Different 