Tag: #waysofworking

Coaching Journey Vlog #5

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Coaching Vlog #5 – 1 week of coaching and part way through a coaching course

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

Coaching Vlog #4 – a bit exhausted!

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Coaching Vlog #4
A bit weary – but had an amazing week.
There are pauses, I think you will cope though 🙂

Transcript to follow

Good morning. It’s been a big week for me.
A lot has happened, lots of good things. It’s been a really awesome week. So as far as coaching goes, I ran my team charter on Wednesday. And that went really well. We actually did it in two parts. So we did the part where people have brainstormed, and on next week will actually go through and vote and come up with the actual final team charter. So that was a great exercise.

And, well, as of today, I’m officially coaching the team, with the support of the person handing over from me, which is really exciting as well, and a little bit scary, but not too scary, because I, I do know what I’m doing.

And on top of that, I have decided to do a mini retro about how the team is feeling about agile, not an agile maturity assessment as the team is only at the end of their second sprint, after all, but making sure that the team is feeling comfortable with all the different ceremonies and things like that. And that also helps me with my coaching backlog, because I’ll know what areas that the team feel least secure about. And I can focus on those as my priority. So I think that should work. Well. I haven’t told the team yet. If they watch this, they’ll find out my thing.

And other than that, I’ve got some things going on. Non coaching related. I’m not sure if I should be sharing these on my video blog? But I am going to be interviewing Moira Were from South Australia. She founded Chooks and is a member of the Order of Australia, she’s pretty amazing woman. I will be putting an invite out for that. Because what I will be doing it as a webinar, which is a first for me. So hopefully that goes really well.
I also spent time at a session yesterday that focused on Human Centered Design for employee … satisfaction, I guess, a lot about their tools. So it’s really great to see Human Centered Design implemented in a different context. So I enjoyed that and met some people that I am going to speak to again because one of the things about attending these sessions is you meet people who have the same passions that you do. And it’s easy to strike up a … connection, which you can then follow up afterwards. So I’m really glad I went to that as well.

I’m not sure what else I have to tell you this week. It has been a huge week. I’m actually a little bit brain… overwhelmed. Does that make sense? So I’m sure I’ve missed stuff but I will be talking to you again next week and so will pick up anything I missed then. Thanks.

Coaching Vlog #3 – assigned to a team!

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My latest vlog about my coaching journey.
This week I was assigned to a team.
Also features my cat (sorry!)

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