Accidentally in Code

Tag: coaching

  • Co-Active Fundamentals

    In the fall, I finally took the Co-Active Fundamentals program that I had been wanting to take for some time. Once the courses went online, it was easy to sign up for one and I did so pretty much immediately.

    It was a pretty full on four days, 10-3 or 4, with minimal breaks. All over Zoom, which I find quite exhausting. At first I wasn’t sure about it, but by the end I was completely sold – it was totally worth it, I got so much out of it, and finished feeling energised. Because of the intensity and focus, it’s very hard to get to know the other people in the cohort, and that was the main thing that I felt was missing. At the end, we frantically created a group chat – imagine if we’d done that day 1!

    What drove it?

    Firstly, I’ve been working with a coach (Dani) since 2016, and it’s been a helpful source of continuity through various changes, and especially helpful when I’ve been in positions where I didn’t really have a manager (such as reporting to the CEO). Generally, I’ve found it really helpful to have someone focused on helping me be the best Cate. All of this to say – I really see the value of coaching, and wanted to understand it better.

    Secondly, I had picked up enough through osmosis to do a reasonable job coaching others, but I felt like a deeper understanding of it would particularly help me coach people to coach others.

    Thirdly, I’ve seen a lot of senior engineering leaders pick up coaching clients between roles or move out of engineering leadership into coaching, and I wanted to start seeing if that would be an option for me, and build up the qualifications for when (or if) I want them.

    What I got out of it

    • Generally it’s a transformative experience, and seeing the journey other people in my group went through was really powerful and encouraging.
    • I love the concept of “people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole”. I regularly use as a concept to share with someone how I’m approaching our interaction; it’s so powerful.
    • Similarly the idea of “designing the alliance” is so helpful, and I use it regularly.
    • It really expanded my range, and made me more willing to challenge people, pay more attention to my intuition, use inquery, and reflect more candidly back to people what I was observing in our conversations.
    • A big part of coaching is non-judgemental listening, which is a skill that anyone can (and usually should) improve, but I find as much as anything a mindset. The deliberate practice of that, observation of it in practice, and deconstruction of it helped me become a better, more present listener.
    • One of the biggest differences between coaching and management for me was the distinction of focus on the journey (coach) / focus on the outcome (manager). I think this practice, along with the way we do “management” at DuckDuckGo has helped me engage more with the journey of my directs.
    • One of the exercises was everyone was given a “being tag”, from their classmates view of them. Mine was “flower power girl”, which was hilarious, but really leaning into it was a really rich and illuminating experience.
    • As part of this I coached a practice client, which was great, and confirmed I want to do more of it. I also picked up another “practice client” at work, which has been really fun.

    What’s next?

    Currently, I’m working on the 6 week PQ program with my coach. I’m finding it really helpful personally, and it’s another lens on what coaching can do for people, that makes me even more excited about it.

    I have four more courses (Fulfilment, Balance Process, and Synergy) to go until I complete my coaching certification, and I’m booked into them over the course of 2021. Part of this requires me to take on some clients, so I need to figure out my schedule to take all of that on!

  • Powerful Questions

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    Credit: Pexels / Tookapic

    There’s a question in my coaching prep that I can never seem to answer.

    Debrief of last week’s inquiry. (a designated powerful question for the week – the power is in the asking of the question – getting curious and inquiring into its meaning for you.)

    Before each coaching session, I go through and answer the questions and reflect on what has happened in the time between. It’s so useful, and then I get to this question – the second to last – and I’m just like… what.

    2017 was an intense year for me personally and professionally, and of course set against the backdrop of the world ending. I moved to a new country, and like properly-no-longer-nomad moved – after three years of roaming the world. I ended a project that had been a big part of those three years. I committed to posting a photo a day. I travelled a lot and worked a lot more. I learned how to manage managers, worked on getting better at product and strategy, dealt with and helped others through challenges. I was a good friend to some people and a less than great one to others. I embraced some people in my life and let others fade out of it.

    I explored the extent of my capacity – taking a ~20 hour a week course on top of my rather more than 40 hour a week job in the middle of the year. But I never quite managed to recharge from that – I went straight from that into a bout of tonsillitis (whilst on vacation in the Galapagos, oh my god) that I recovered maybe 80% from but not completely – until a second round of antibiotics that I took over the new year. I felt like I was drowning in shoulds, lacking the strength or resilience to every really make progress out of the pool.

    What does this have to do with powerful questions? When it was clear to me that I was building on a shaky foundation, I embraced the idea – and need – to consolidate first. To go back to and nail the basics – where I live, how I feel, what I do. To take the things that were line items in last year’s list of forty goals and break them out into all the pieces that are required to actually cross them off this time.

    And I started looking at things and saying, “is this nailing the basics?” — the flattering invitation, the CfP that I could submit to, the new talk I could prepare. Decisions became easier, and finally…

    …finally, I understood the power of the inquiry.

     

  • The Goals Spreadsheet

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    Credit: Flickr / SaraYeomans

    At the end of the year, my coach had me make a list of 40 goals for 2017. They range from the very professional to the very personal. From the serious to the purely for fun. Of course, I broke them into sections and put them in a spreadsheet. At the start of each month I do a “commitment journal”, where I think about what I hope the next month will bring. As part of that I’ve taken to going through the list and updating it. Marking the completed ones green, the in progress ones orange, and the at risk ones red.

    As of the last update, 10 goals have been marked green. 13 are orange. 6 are red. But to look at it that way misses the point – I’ve been finding it a powerful and interesting exercise to return each month to the things that I found important at the start of the year – even if many of them would not make the list if I wrote it again today. Even if it doesn’t capture many things that I have achieved – because I had no idea they were coming.

    I’ve generally been much more into the process than the goal. I think it’s easy to have some big ideas, but if you can’t break things down and somewhat enjoy what it will take to get there it will never happen. So this is the kind of thing that I would find pointless without someone else being involved in some way. I wouldn’t make the list for myself, I wouldn’t do the monthly journal without someone to send it to. But it’s surprising to me how often I return to it the following month and how much of what I wrote down has actually happened.

    Have I got more done because of these processes? Probably not. But I have a better record of what that looked like, and I feel a better sense of progress – and that’s something.

     

  • On Coaching

    I’ve been working with a coach for the best part of a year now. I started because I called my friend Camille stressed out of my mind and she said – like a good friend will – you need someone to do this for you. It was one of the most helpful pieces of advice I have ever got and I really appreciated her giving it me.

    There’s a lot of stuff all over the internet about coaching – what it is and what you will get out of it. But here are three things that have really made a big difference to me.

    Context and Continuity

    A lot has changed over the last year – I was living (kinda) in Colombia and leading a 6 person team at a struggling startup. Now I’m living (still kinda – I guess that bit hasn’t changed) in Lisbon and leading a ~25 person team at a company that has been around for over a decade. My coach gets WTHIC, we speak three times a month and before each call I send my “prep”. She has more context on my life than almost anyone else. But she’s not part of it – she doesn’t work at the same company, we don’t move in the same social circle. This is so helpful. Often the thorny problems in our lives have so much backstory and context, and when we seek someone out to talk to we have to explain that. But like any relationship, when you invest in over the long term, it gets easier and easier to talk about things.

    The Best Cate

    Whilst coaching definitely makes me better at my job, the focus is on me holistically. Medium to long term happiness and success depend on every part of my life being sustainable.

    Personal Goals

    At the end of 2016 we did a year review, and I set 40 goals for 2017. I put it in a spreadsheet, and now we’re in Q2… I colour coded it.

    I’m terrible at personal goals, and this is why I rely on processes. My ability to define processes and execute on them is a strength – and a curse. I can blog multiple times a week for years, but can’t contemplate how to do something bigger and more nebulous. Something like… write a book. It’s much harder to define a sustainable process that will achieve that kind of larger project. I know this about myself, so I rarely set goals for myself.

    But when you work with someone else, you get another perspective on how to approach and evaluate things. It’s exciting that I defined goals for the year for once, and cool that I already achieved two of them and made progress on many others. It’s nice that I can see clearly what I important to me that I haven’t made progress on and interesting to see how my ideas of what is important have changed over the past three months.