As an agile coach, one of the dilemmas I used to face was a feeling that I was on my own when it came to improving my own skills. Most of my time was spent helping my team, or individuals on my team. I came late to the concept of pair coaching in a roundabout way. I was attending the first ALE Un Conference in Berlin about 5 years ago and must have been in a talk or something given by Yves Hanoulle. He happened to be wearing his Pair Coaching t-shirt. As it turns out the term was in use way before that and Yves gives a good story about that here.
Pair coaching can deliver the same benefits as pair programming or any joint effort for that matter. Two heads on a problem yields a wider net of possible solutions. Interesting complements in terms of style and approach are discovered.
Here are a few pair coaching scenarios I have enjoyed and benefitted from recently:
Retrospectives
When we were three coaches in my office we tried to pair with each other on our team retrospectives. We kept track of who was pairing with whom by using a shared table in which we would enter the date/time/team of our next retros, who would be facilitating and who would be observing.
Sometimes the pair coaching took the form of observation/feedback where the partner would attend the retro as a silent observer and afterwards feedback to the facilitator. In these sessions where I received feedback afterwards I have always been pleasantly surprised at what my partner noticed that I had missed. I enjoy these debriefs because I have the chance to check if what I was experiencing was just me or apparent to the observer as well. They can more easily take in a whole situation with minimal filtering and give me a more objective viewpoint.
In other instances we have used pair coaching to facilitate each other’s retrospectives. The team usually benefits immediately with a fresh approach and different style than what they are used to. And I benefit because I have the chance to learn new techniques. As a silent observer, I can also maintain a more distant stance which helps me see dynamics in my team that I would otherwise miss had I been facilitating.
Pair Coaching on our leadership team
In the BLT (Barcelona Leadership Team) we meet weekly to share difficult or challenging situations that we’ve encountered in the previous week. Most of the people on the leadership team are first-time managers, and, while the leadership training our company provides us has helped immensely, we could use the continuity of these weekly sessions.
I like the comparison that Oren Ellenbogen gives in his book Leading Snowflakes between these sessions and doing code reviews. I have adopted his “Captain’s Log” system as a way of recording how I have handled difficult situations. And I update the log after a BLT session with a “code review” that includes feedback from my peers on how I could have handled the situation differently.
Pair coaching with other coaches
Last week I had the opportunity to do pair coaching with two of my peers who are based in different offices. They each had different situations they wanted my advice on. In both sessions I listened, asked open-ended questions, and tried really hard not to jump immediately to solutions. In both conversations we more or less ended the same way — my peer, having had a chance to explain the context a bit more to me, and think about it with fresh eyes, realized they needed to slow down and take things a bit more gradually.
The “a-ha” for me was recognizing the strong inclination myself and my peers have to finding solutions. It’s what we think our teams expect from us when really the greater gift would be to help them discover a solution themselves. I think in contexts where you are either the lone coach or just two or three the pressure is even greater to jump straight to the fix. Having a chance to see our situations from a different perspective gives us the time we need to slow down and evaluate before jumping to action.
I know I am lucky to have so many different opportunities to pair coach. Perhaps you do too? And if you do I encourage you to experiment with it. You just might be pleasantly surprised with the results.
