It was an honour to be asked by the folks at Solutions IQ to be interviewed for their Agile Amped podcast that they were recording this year at Agile 2016 in Atlanta. The interview with Mike Alexander was focussed around my talk “Coaching Nightmares: Insights we can Learn from Gordon Ramsay“. My colleague Renee Troughton was also scheduled for this interview but was unable to attend.

“Coaching can be a very lonely role, because you’re the one dealing with the dysfunctions,” said Craig Smith, an Agile coach from Brisbane, Australia. For this reason and many others, Craig set out to try to improve the overall coaching experience. Craig was collaborating with a colleague on this one night when he saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares”. Craig was instantly struck by Gordon’s “coaching” style, and the gears went to work. In his Agile2016 session “Coaching Nightmares: Insights We Can Learn from Gordon Ramsay”, Craig shows snippets of Gordon Ramsay at work in the kitchen and asks participants, “What can we learn from this? As a coach, what would I do?”

One of the big things about Ramsay’s style is that he calls it like it is because he has no stake in the game. However, coaches may resist the urge to do that, maybe because they are tied to the company or are working for a consultancy that would rather they not. But, Craig says, “In order to get people to really change, we need to call it [like it is].”

SolutionsIQ’s Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA.