Don't tell people what to do but...

In Agile circles, it is popular to talk of "self-organisation" and "letting the team come up with answers".  This reflects a general view that supporting autonomy is valuable.

The mistake comes when people interpret this to mean that an effective coach / facilitator / leader only needs to reflect the team but does not bring any real insight of their own.

Two reasons why I see it as a mistake:

Cognitive load: I see this like placing the team in front of a wall of hundreds of different types of cereal and asking them to pick one... and doing this when they are tired and frustrated.  When they ask for advice... (what might be criteria for a good cereal? have you tried any of these cereals before?) ... the response is that they need to figure that out for themselves.

This is pretty much the same situation as described in the Just-Do-It - Reflect cycle.  We're creating unreasonable cognitive load because of an ideological need to appear to support autonomy.

It isn't a popularity contest: Some solutions will work and others won't actually work despite how popular they might be.  It's irresponsible to allow a team to fail catastrophically in order for them to learn a lesson.

I'm reminded of the three kinds of leaders:

• Authoritarian: "Do what I tell you to do"
• Laissez-Faire: "Do whatever you want.  Good luck."
• Democratic / Facilitative: "Let's work this out together" which means questioning, challenging, offering, guiding

Agile people tend already to realise that we don't want authoritarian coaches / facilitators / leaders but we also need to realise that we don't want laissez-faire coaches / facilitators / leaders either.