Yesterday I spent the day at the first Coach Retreat in Paris. Among the participants were some colleagues from Valtech, consultants from other firms, independent coaches, internal coaches and other agilists.
As Oana and Yves explained, the format of the coach retreat is to take a situation and work through it repeatedly, incorporating feedback and introducing new techniques. They had prepared 6 hypothetical situations, allowing us to choose one to focus on.
After introductions, the group proceeded to vote on the 6 proposed situations, in order to choose one to work on over the day.
Voting on a situation for the day
I’d summarise the situation we chose as follows:
Tensions are running high between the Business and IT. The Business feel the process is too rigid and that the development of new functionality takes too long. IT feel that the Business are badly organised and unable to communicate their requirements.
The situation was sketched out in a few paragraphs, with just the right level of detail to allow us to role-play the various actors while leaving room for improvisation.
Most of the day was spent role-playing around this situation in small groups, alternating 10 minutes of coaching with 5 minutes of discussion and feedback. A typical group was one or two coaches, one client (the person receiving coaching) and a few observers.
Before the sessions got underway I wondered whether we might have been better off changing the situation over the course of the day in order to get a more varied learning experience. I quickly realised that:
- Using the same situation every time allowed us to incorporate feedback and learning, and try again.
- Different participants in the role-play meant it was never really the same situation.
- Even if the starting point was the same, the conversation never played out the same way.
A few of the techniques we played with over the day:
Click, Unclick, Rewind
Not really a coaching technique, we used Click, Unclick, Rewind to take advantage of the safety of our practice environment, and to maximise our learning. It allowed us to exchange feedback and suggestions immediately without waiting for the end of the 10-minute coaching session. The ability to rewind allowed us to experiment and be a little more daring in our application of new techniques.
We realised early on that we needed to be disciplined about limiting the ‘freeze-time’ to 30 seconds. Otherwise we were burning a few minutes of coaching time instead of waiting for the post-session discussion.
Pair coaching
Sometimes there were two coaches and one client. I like this approach when coaching a team, but I found it quite different when working face-to-face with one client.
Some of the difficulties we noticed or reported:
- Sometimes the client felt a bit hassled by the barrage of questions.
- The coaches weren’t always pulling in the same direction. We experimented with establishing a strategy before the session began, but it seems that “no coaching plan survives contact with the client”…
- Sometimes, as coaches, we trod on each other’s toes. For example, one coach would ask an open question, and, during the pause while the client considered a response, the other coach would dive in with another question.
Perhaps the fact that we were working in short 10-minute cycles accentuated these difficulties. Longer sessions might allow the coaches to learn to work more effectively together.
The positive side to this approach was that it allowed one of the coaches to sit back and ponder what was being said, make connections, or even to write some post-its of points being raised.
Solution-focused coaching
This powerful technique consisted of working with the client to create a believable image of their ideal outcome. The main challenge seems to be the tendency to keep coming back to the present. For example
“So, in my ideal future, I don’t need to go to the Product Owner and ask for the acceptance criteria. He knows it’s his responsibility to provide them. The way things stand at the moment, he leaves it up to us to write them. But he’s quick to complain when they’re wrong. Like, last week he…”
This required some firmness on the part of the coach to keep the client focused on the future.
We didn’t have time to explore how we’d bridge the gap from the present to the ideal future. But simply describing that future gives all parties a better idea of where the client wants to get to. It also allows the client to begin to believe that a solution is possible, which isn’t necessarily the case at the beginning of the session.
Paint-coaching
Yves introduced this, saying painting while talking would engage different parts of the brain. The idea was to run a coaching session as normal, but with all participants painting for the duration of the session.
I participated in a session in the painting area. I was the client, and my coaches were experimenting with solution-focused coaching. They suggested that I use the painting materials and existing paintings to describe my ideal future.
I described a future of harmonious collaboration...
... but kept bringing the conversation back into the present
Other thoughts
Some other things that I noticed, learned and experienced:
- Spending a day surrounded by people who were passionate about coaching was a wonderful experience. The level of respect, listening and lack of judgment made it a great learning environment.
- The word coach means different things to different people. That, combined with each coach’s personality and previous experiences, led to hugely varied coaching styles.
- Playing the role of the person being coached was very useful. Being on the other end of some of the coaching techniques gave me more insight into how to apply the technique.
I definitely came away from day having learned a lot. A big ‘thank you’ to Oana and Yves for organising the event, and to Inspearit for the great job they did hosting it.