Today’s video blog includes 3 new teams, a launch, 3 badges and a visit from my cat Missy!
Good morning, it’s Friday again. And you may have noticed that I’m in a different location today. I am about to start day two of my coaching training at Telstra. So yesterday was lots of learning and a bit of practice, today will be lots of practice. So we’ve learned about Johari windows, about the grow model, about various other coaching techniques such as open ended questions. That’s one of the things I struggle with the most, I think. So it’s been a really good day yesterday, I’m looking forward to today, as a follow up. The last week, I have started coaching the team, and I think I’ve added some value. I will see in the long term I guess, if I actually have, and
it’s been a very fun week.
I think in my I’ve, yeah, I’ve had to really process where I’m at, the nerves of taking on my team. The confidence, you know, am I actually adding value. It was good to get into it, I do feel like, you know, maybe in a small way, I’ve added some value this week. And hopefully over the coming weeks, I’ll be able to add more. We’ve done a team charter, which has been interesting, because not all the team was able to attend the meetings. So we’ve done the team charter in two sessions so far. The first one being the brainstorming session for the various sections of the team charter, the second one, and then we kept that open for a week. The second one was the voting for which of those ideas they wanted to put through to the actual team charter. And again, because of people not able to attend the meeting, we’ve left that open for a week. And the idea being that next Wednesday, we will actually finalize the team charter and get everyone to agree to it. So I’ve actually now moved the time of that meeting so that hopefully more people will be able to attend it. That it’s been interesting. I’ve not done a team charter in three sessions before, but it seems to be working and the people who didn’t attend, were quite happy to have the opportunity and also to do that offline. So that worked out well for us, I think.
Other than that, I am ready for the weekend. But I’m also looking forward to a day of lots of practice of coaching. Where I get to be a coach, a coachee and an observer in apparently three rounds of three, so nine, nine coaching sessions, where I’ll be playing one of those roles. So that should be a fun day. And I should learn a lot and get lots of practice.
I’m also considering doing a formal coaching certification. So I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I’m going to talk to a couple of people in the team who have done that to find out what my options are. So coaching is really resonating with me. So that’s a good thing. Talk to you next week. Thanks
Transcript of the video below:
Good morning, and welcome to my third video blog about coaching. It’s been a couple of weeks. And yes, it has been two weeks, not the one that I promised. So apologies for that. The first thing that happened was that I got my second coaching badge, which I’m really pleased about. But more importantly, I ran a SWOT session to get it.
Apologies for the cat bombs.
The SWOT session (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that I ran for my fellow coaches went really well. And the best part for me was that I got feedback afterwards that a couple of the coaches, at least, really got something out of it and really enjoyed the session. So that felt brilliant, to be honest, that I actually ran a session that people got real value from.
After that, the…
I might leave that in there, I might do that. Let’s see what happens the cat just knocked the camera.
Anyway, what happened a couple of days ago, I had the expectation that I would begin my coaching in a real team around the first of August, and that’s been accelerated. Now, when something happens like that, my initial reaction is nearly always ‘well no, I’m not ready, I had another four weeks, I had another six weeks’. But as I thought about it more, I got more excited. My initial reaction was definitely panic. But as of yesterday, I started shadowing a coach who’s leaving the team at the end of June. And I’ll be taking over, she’s moving to a new team. So she’s not leaving the company, just the team. So after my initial terror, I became more excited about the opportunity, because the best way to learn is to do and also, I think I am mostly ready to do it. There’s still a lot I’m going to learn in the next few weeks before I take over the team. But I I feel like I understand the basics. And I’ve got so much support around me, as I mentioned in previous blogs, that I think that with that support, I’ll be able to really help this team to move through their agile journey. They’re very new. They just started this week, their second sprint. So they’re very new, they have got some people in the team who are familiar with agile, which will help me as well as them. And I’ll be given a really good hand over. So, I will talk to you again probably next week when I’ve got my through my handover, if not at the end of my handover before I start my new journey as the actual coach with this team. So very exciting times.
Again, apologies for the cat bombing. Thank you
The idea behind this vlog is to share my journey as I move from where I am in my career now towards something that brings me as much joy as this blog does.
This first vlog is already 2 weeks old, I had some trouble with finding editing software I could intuitively understand. Excuse the watermark! I will redo this video without it if people are interested in me doing more. It requires an investment of several hundred dollars, or to keep hunting for free software I understand!
I would love feedback on it (I was told not to look straight at the camera but it looks wrong to me for example!) and an indication of interest in more like this!
Please see below for an audio transcript:
Hi, my name is Fiona and I am the creator and author of the blog stepping out of your comfort zone where I interview people and share my own stories about stepping out of your comfort zone. Today what I wanted to talk to you about is why I created the blog, where I am in my career path at the moment and where I’d like to be. And the idea is that this vlog will be an ongoing story of how I move closer to where I’d actually like to be in my career. So I started the blog a in January this year, so about five months ago, as a result of reading some books by Dorie Clark. I recommend them if you haven’t read them. And also talking to a couple of people, my friend Mark Baker, and some people at work. What I was passionate about was sharing stories about stepping out of the comfort zone to encourage other people to do the same. I personally have found that when I step out of my comfort zone, that is when awesome things happen. And I hear lots of people nervous about doing that, they’re scared of failing. They don’t take risks. Lots of people do, don’t get me wrong, but there are people who don’t. And I feel like they’re missing out. So the idea of the blog was to say, Hey, good things happen out of the comfort zone. Why don’t you give it a try? Do something small, you know, walk a different way home, whatever it is, that step out of the comfort zone, and just see what happens. I wanted to originally do public speaking, but I’m a long way for being prepared to do that. So a blog was a logical place to start and then I worried I wouldn’t have enough stories. So the idea came up of interviewing other people.
I really love that idea but wasn’t sure other people would. Turns out when I asked lots of people were happy to share their stories and to my honour people actually thanked me in some cases for giving them a platform for sharing their stories. So it’s been really fantastic. When I was asked at a summit a couple of weeks ago, what I was passionate about, it wasn’t my day job. I love my day job, don’t get me wrong, but what I’m really passionate about is stepping out of my comfort zone and encouraging other people to do the same. So I talked to people about my blog, and then I talk to people about the fact that my blog was here, and my career was here. And I got some tips about how to bring those two closer together.
I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. But my goal is definitely to bring the two of them closer together. And one thing that has happened to do that is, I have as of Monday, four days ago, started as a ways of working coach at Telstra, where work where I’ll be learning about coaching, facilitating training, also about agile, lean, DevOps and human centred design. Now, I think that’s an excellent first step towards my ultimate goal, which I’m not sure that’s what that looks like yet. But plan is I’ve next 12 months to learn all I can about all of those seven topics, particularly coaching, facilitating and training, and then also use that time to explore what I’d like to do next. What next step brings me closer to the passion that I find doing this blog. And what I plan to do is share that journey through this video log. So I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that over time I get closer to working out what next looks like.
Some of the suggestions have been a book, including some of the stories, which could lead potentially to speaking. That’s a very ambitious target for me right now. The other option is becoming a coach to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone. And that’s something that also has some real appeal. Whether enough people are interested in that just to make it a career, again, I don’t know. But the first step is to learn about coaching, facilitating and training and discovering if I do love them as much I think I’m going to, and working out what next and in the meantime, hopefully, building up some more readership on my blog, and maybe getting some new watchers/listeners via my video blog. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk again next week. Thank you.