#136: The Future of Agile Coaching with Andreas Schliep

What’s next for Agile coaching? Brian Milner and Andreas Schliep dive into the shifting landscape of Agile coaching, the differences between Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, and how to carve out a sustainable career in a changing industry. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner and Andreas Schliep explore the evolving role of Agile coaching, the challenges coaches face in today’s market, and the skills needed to thrive in a shifting industry. They break down the differences between Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, discuss how to develop a personal coaching style, and emphasize the importance of integrity and resilience. From navigating layoffs to redefining what it means to be an Agile leader, this conversation offers valuable insights for anyone looking to grow in their Agile career. References and resources mentioned in the show: Andreas Schliep Certified ScrumMaster® Training and Scrum Certification Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Andreas Schliep is a Certified Scrum Trainer and executive partner at DasScrumTeam AG, helping organizations navigate complex projects with agile methodologies. A thought leader and co-author on Enterprise Scrum, he empowers teams—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—through high-impact coaching, training, and a passion for continuous learning. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We are back here for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm here as always, Brian Milner, and today I have someone we've been trying to get on here for a little bit, and I'm excited to have him here. Mr. Andreas Schliepp is with us. Andreas, thank you for being on. Andreas Schliep (00:17) Thank you for inviting me. Brian Milner (00:19) Yeah, very excited to have Andreas on here. Andreas has been in the community here for a long, time. He's been just really generous with his time and he's mentored a lot of people. He's a CST, a Scrum trainer. He's also a certified enterprise coach. So he has kind of those dual high level certifications with the Scrum Alliance. But he mentioned to me earlier, he's kind of always considered himself a Scrum trainer. But he's also a coach in this group called the Leadership Gift, or there's also another name here that they've used recently, Responsibility Immersion. So that might come to play in our conversation here because we wanted to talk about sort of the future of agile coaching and agile coaches in general. There's a lot of turmoil, there's a lot of upheaval and things that are shifting and changing every day in our profession. So I guess, you know, let's just dive into the topic here. Andreas, how do you see things currently? And, you know, in a broad sense, where do you see them going? Andreas Schliep (01:18) Yeah, so first of all, why am I concerned? So typically I say that I kind of, train coaches and I coach trainers. So most of my work is centered around the path of scrum masters and how they can kind of acquire the necessarily skills and insights to become actual coaches themselves. Or scrum coaches as I would prefer to say it. And that includes a lot of stuff like we want to e