My Journey of Becoming a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) from Scrum Alliance
At the beginning of my agile coaching engagements, I met a few CSCs (Certified Scrum Coach, which converted into CEC and CTC later). I got fascinated with their approach and knowledge. That’s how I decided to pursue this journey. The other reasons were to become a better coach and improve my agile experience. This journey gave me all the opportunities and direction to grow.
I did a lot of research to understand the Scrum Alliance’s expectations from a guide level coach. I can categorize them into three big buckets:
Community engagement,
Coaching mindset, growth, competencies and
Enterprise coaching experience through various tools, techniques, models.
Please check the detailed list on the Scrum Alliance website.
I was already involved in the Agile community through speaking engagements, organizing conferences and meetups, volunteering at conferences and writing blogs. I continued doing it. It turned out to be an excellent platform to meet other coaches in the community.
For the agile coaching experience, I was consciously making choices to involve in different kinds of engagements. It became helpful for me in enriching my expertise. Working in various projects or products in software and non-software gave me a perspective to focus on the change and client’s growth. I retrospected multiple times to capture my learning and find ways of improvement. Also, I asked for feedback on my coaching from my fellow coaches and clients.
I was fortunate to get opportunities to work in different countries. I experienced a diverse culture and learned from various client engagements.
The area where I needed to focus most was coaching competencies. I attended a transformative coaching class and completed ICF ACC (Associate Certified Coach from the International Coach Federation) as my first step. After that, I joined the CTC/CEC mentorship program from Superheroes Academy and met two excellent mentors Brock Argue and Erkan Kadir. They helped me understand my coaching mindset and skills. Along the way, I got to know about the ORSC series (Organisation and Relationships System Coaching). This program was beneficial for me to learn techniques for group coaching.
I continued applying my knowledge gained from coaching programs into my agile coaching engagements. It helped me practice and self reflect on my individualized gaps for coaching competencies.
I did peer coaching with other coaches. That helped me understand and refine my coaching style. Also, I took help from other CECs in discussing and reviewing my application.
I asked many people about their favourite books on coaching, and I read them over time. Some books were mindblowing, like “The Mindful Coach” by Doug Silsbee. I remember it was my slowest reading so far because it was full of exercises.
Some other good books were:
Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins
Coaching Questions by Tony Stoltzfus
Agile Coaching Wisdom from Practitioners.
I also attended Scrum Alliance’s Path to Coaching program.
My most significant learning in this process was to be patient and enjoy the growth. It took me four passes of improvement before I got the confidence to submit my application. I took a break after each pass to refresh my mind and look at the application from a new perspective. It helped me further improve my application.
Achieving a CEC certificate was not the destination. It is the beginning of a beautiful journey for further growth, contributing to the agile community and supporting others who have the same dream.
My message to other travellers in the CTC/CEC path is
To be patient.
Make conscious efforts to improve slowly.
Meet other agile coaches and collaborate.
Ask for help from other guide level coaches.
I am open to helping anyone who wants to be CTC or CEC. I am passionate to mentor scrum masters, product owners and agile coaches. Feel free to contact me through my website or connect on LinkedIn.
“Hold on tight and enjoy the ride.” Good Luck!
