Time to leave

This is feeling more like a diary of the day but at this point I am going with whatever works quickly so I can can establish the routine and then I’ll get more critical over the content in time.

I am in the (un)fortunate position that there are more teams available to me to coach then there is time in my working week. When I first started at Envato, the coaching team Focus was always to work with our development teams as a priority, however, over time, the word is out and more people around the company seek our services. The fact goes a long way to making me feel like I work with purpose.

But, as another quarter draws to a close, I knew it was time to change my focus and shift to work closely with some of the other teams that have not had access to a dedicated coach previously.

So I find myself in transition, winding up from regularly working with five development teams (and ad hoc with other teams), to repositioning myself in an experimental format. I will work with less teams on a regular cadence (and continue to consult ad hoc to others) with the intended result of giving me space to work 1 to 1 with leaders (no doubt something I will blog on in the future).

In attempt to provide, possibly more for myself, a sense of closure with each of the teams, I am reviewing the many notes I have kept over the period of coaching them.

I had an OKR for the quarter (Jan-Mar) to complete a coaching canvas for each of the teams I support. I drafted the sections but found there was always something else begging for my attention rather than me filling it in. Lesson from this yet to be clearly defined.

But it’s not all bad. I did sit down with each of the teams and take notes on who/what/when/output of all their team rituals with the intention to use it to inform parts of the coaching canvas. That activity along mined up some immediately executable changes.

I combined the team ritual documentation with the notes I kept from all the retros I facilitated with each of the teams; at one point late last year I was running seven retros in two days and the only way to save my sanity was to record the formats I ran, the discussion points and the actions determined. Thrown into this mix I’ve added notes I take when I meet with team leaders either in a 1 to 1 or group setting. And finally I drew on discussion notes from running ‘High Performance Team Self Assessments’ (oh! another topic for a future blog). Armed with all this information I was able to produce a short, direct list of recommended and suggested activities.

One team down, three to go!

So what did I learn from all this? Something that I have read before about coaching…there is benefit in having an end to coaching. Sure there is always room for improvement and to grow, for both the coach and the team. But maintaining a high level of impact will be difficult so know when it is time to leave. You can always go back again.