Leading and coaching: Lessons learned from the first Patterns Amplified cohort
This article was co-written by Andreina Dyer and Orizema Cruz Pina. Both were participants of the first Patterns Amplified program cohort and served as coaches for an Incubator project team in the Patterns Getting Started program.
Introducing Ourselves
Orizema: I graduated with my BFA in Graphic Design during the summer of 2018 and soon after began as an early-career Visual Designer at IBM. My first day began in the Austin Design Studio as a participant in what is now called Patterns Getting Started, an education program for newly hired designers. For six weeks, myself and my cohort networked, attended general- and specialty-specific education sessions, and nurtured an Incubator (a real IBM-business unit sponsored) project. After concluding this immersive experience, I joined IBM Software’s Cloud Pak for Data team where I implement design guidance for several initiatives. As the years went by, I felt decreasingly challenged and eventually stagnant in my growth. When I learned about Patterns Amplified a few months after being promoted, I wasted no time in making my interest known and having a nomination submitted.
Andreina: I started my research career in academia, and I swiftly navigated into the Biotech industry, medical devices, and big pharma before landing in the wonderful tech industry where I was able to merge my passion for research and Human-Computer interactions. Before entering the enterprise world I navigated teaching and community organizing which provided me with so much perspective and a deep desire to maintain a growth mindset and continuous self-improvement. This personal motto is what inspired me to participate in the Patterns Amplified Program and officially become a Patternite.
Introducing Patterns Amplified
Like other Patterns programs, Patterns Amplified is a cohort-focused, regionally-based virtual practicum course that takes place over 4 weeks. The program was created as a means for professional designers to strengthen their Enterprise Design Thinking (EDT) facilitation and coaching skills. Although it is recommended to Patterns Getting Started graduates, those without the experience can still participate so long as all who are interested apply via manager nomination.
Patterns Amplified was structured in a way that allowed the five participants of its first cohort to fulfill most of the requirements on their own time and at their own pace. Asynchronously, we made our way through the rigorous YourLearning path (five required sections with six to thirteen activities each, one optional section with 27 activities) while each coaching a Patterns Getting Started Incubator team. Twice weekly, the cohort met with Tom Dayton, the Amplified Program Facilitator, via Webex for education sessions on facilitation, and to practice or inquire about how to improve as coaches. We’re going to provide more information about the format and structure below.
Synchronous Education Sessions
The live sessions with Tom Dayton were a great time for all of us to learn and work together. It is in this safe, judgment-free environment that we were able to ask questions and experiment using sandbox scenarios. However, two hour-long live sessions a week did not mix well with our Incubator team’s timeline, making it extremely difficult to weave our learnings into their design thinking activities.
Fortunately, Tom also encouraged us to practice outlining requirements and hammering out the information architecture for our home teams which gave us a better understanding of the products to which we’d be returning. If anything is to be added to this portion of Patterns Amplified, we’d hope for improved coordination with the Patterns Getting Started Incubator project, as well as alignment with the learning path.
“You may find that all sorts of important answers haven’t been documented because no one has dared to ask the obvious questions”
Becoming a Coach
IBM Design continues to mature with every passing year and the Patterns program plays a vital role by educating, elevating, and bringing together designers across all organizations. During Patterns Getting Started, experienced designers are often given the opportunity to connect with newly-hired Patternites by volunteering to be panelists for AMAs, presenting on personal experience with their specialty, and coaching them on Enterprise Design Thinking.
For Patterns Amplified, we were assigned to be the coaches of a Patterns Getting Started Incubator team. These teams were comprised of 5–6 designers of varying specialties (UX, visual, content, and research). As coaches, we observed the Patternites as they worked together to iterate and present weekly playbacks of their work, culminating in a final presentation of the outcomes and deliverables that the project sponsoring teams could carry forward post-program.
We were there to provide hands-on coaching to these folks as they navigated learning a new domain and providing a solution to a real IBM business problem in a matter of four weeks. Our role was focused on ensuring the team collaborated well and felt empowered to make decisions to fulfill real, complicated product needs. We were not there to fulfill the responsibilities of a director, manager, or lead so as we moved through the program, we shared personal stories and learned lessons as a way to empathize and provide practical applications of how we leverage design thinking on our home teams. Sadly, due to the intense timeframe of both Patterns programs, we were only able to impart wisdom on rare and rushed occasions.
The Amplified Learning Path
A program learning path was provided to us as a way to continue learning on our own time outside the synchronous sessions. There is no doubt that we learned valuable lessons throughout the self-driven entire learning path. We expanded our knowledge — on subjects ranging from the conjuncture of design and sales, facilitation methods, and the value of design, to career-planning, emotional intelligence, and management techniques — in a way that provided us with meaningful guidance we are sure to revisit throughout our careers.
Although we enjoyed the wide variety of subjects on the learning path, we had qualms with the lack of focus and continuity. Each week, our studies jumped from one subject to another, making it difficult for us to develop skills in an in-depth, orderly fashion. If each section of the learning path had been given a theme (leadership and requirements, coaching and hills, etc.) and group activities for discussing or practicing the activities that we experienced in isolation, we have no doubt that the clarity of our takeaways would have been further amplified.
Top 10 Takeaways
1. Paths aren’t always paved well
A learning path is an entire journey that starts from the minute it is assigned to the moment you start applying what you’ve picked up. Whether the learning path is successive, alternative, or by level, you should be clear about the knowledge you are aiming to impart from the very beginning. If the goal is not clear to you, ask, because activities added and ordered intentionally will better guarantee the retention of the material.
2. Work alone, together
A great approach to coaching and facilitating is allowing the participants to think. Providing them with a space to work isolated from each other is vital to them being able to put down their ideas without feeling influenced or overshadowed by more vocal participants. Silence speaks volumes, so you want to provide that space before coming together as a group. Allowing people to brainwrite before they brainstorm generates more insightful inquiries and leads to improved conceptual ideation.
3. Give questions, not suggestions
Replacing that long list of suggestions with questions helps those you are guiding assess their understanding of the task at hand. You are not expected to have an immediate answer for everything so take time to filter your feedback; formulate insightful and supportive prompts that will trigger retrospection and further the conversation.
4. Emotional intelligence is a superpower
While technical skills and domain knowledge are important to have, emotional intelligence (EQ) is a superpower that can bring a coach’s effectiveness to the next level. EQ allowed us to navigate the complexities of our Incubator team’s interactions and mitigate risks by putting in place a social contract that outlined and expressed empathy, boundaries, and rules of engagement. When acting as a leader, being able to recognize when people are not in a good place psychologically is vital for their own success and that of the team.
5. Whitewater over waterfall any day
In order to prevent “prematurely specific solutions without good rationale”, ensure that the requirements on which you base designs are traceable up and down the hierarchy. This can be done by creating requirements using the whitewater method instead of the waterfall method, meaning participation and prioritization when creating the hierarchy is very frequent.
6. Hills are linchpins!
Hills are a type of user requirement that contain a who, what, and why (or wow!). Once your hierarchy has been fleshed out, use the “lowest strategic user requirements” as Hills for your roadmap. You may need to research and create lower, more tactical user requirements to support those Hills before moving on to technical requirements. Remember, not all user requirements will be hills, but all Hills should be user requirements that connect both throughout the hierarchy and across each role’s contributions on a team.
7. Saying “No” saves lives
If you are a design leader, be sure you are screening the requests you receive for your team’s labor. Those putting in a request should attempt to list some task objects prior to your commitment and your team’s subsequent deep dive using EDT activities. Assessing the goals, issues, and assumptions for potential projects, and making this process known, helps maintain the quality of your team’s labor as well as high morale among individual contributors.
8. Double-check your seating chart
Walking through EDT activities (such as mapping task flows and task objects) is undoubtedly an important step in the design process. However, a mistake often made is keeping this process exclusive to User Experience Designers with occasional input from Product Managers and Developers. Ask yourself: Does visual design have a seat at my information architecture table? Visual Designers must understand all concepts in order to translate the information architecture to an interface that your users can easily understand and are delighted to experience. A different perspective is also good for catching and filling gaps you might have missed, so don’t forget to involve all roles when establishing your product’s underlying mental models.
9. The emperor has no clothes
Asking “Why?” is not just for kids and the Backstreet Boys. We must all question critically and have patience for apparent ignorance among our teams. When we hear what we perceive to be obvious questions with obvious answers, don’t presume; instead, seek to understand the asker’s perspective by requesting context and investigating your assumptions. Doing so is invaluable to the development of thought fluency and critical thinking. So don’t be afraid to ask. You may find that all sorts of important answers haven’t been documented because no one dared to ask the obvious questions.
10. Strive to apply in real-time
When learning new concepts, processes, or methods, try applying them immediately to your projects or aspects of your everyday life. This aids in discovering nuances and misinterpretations, and questions you may have right off the bat.
Our Paths Forward
In the end, Patterns Amplified opened our eyes to the resources and professionals to which we have access for continued growth at IBM. Our peek behind the curtain revealed so many talented and experienced designers and design educators. We are appreciative and thankful for their guidance and hope to return the favor by amplifying our experience, for without them there would have been no Patterns to attend.
Additionally, we had a great experience getting to know the other three participants of this cohort, who specialized in different disciplines of design. Together, we were able to better understand the concepts and benefits of the activities we did during our synchronous education sessions.
Orizema
I’m elated to share that Patterns Amplified gave me the knowledge to lead my home team through Tom Dayton’s Task Objects activity, and subsequently, the confidence to seek out a more challenging opportunity that better aligns with my interests. For the first time in years, I am transitioning to a new team and I can’t wait to tackle their diverse visual design needs with my amplified perspective! Hopefully, this new opportunity will one day result in promotion and thus qualification for the newest Patterns program, Patterns Next Level.
Andreina
Completing the Amplified program was an excellent experience and a stepping stone for further developing my leadership and coaching skills. I also feel I have built a stronger professional network that offered valuable insights, advice, and opportunities to collaborate across business units. This program has inspired me to seek out the next step in this journey which is to complete the Patterns Next Level program which will undoubtedly be another milestone in my career at IBM.
Special thank you to Tom Dayton, Stacey Seronick, and Nicole Umphress for your hard work and contributions to this article.
Orizema is a Visual Designer on the DataOps team for IBM’s Cloud Pak for Data. By day, she is an enterprise product designer, and by night, an artist and writer that pursues every spontaneous interest.
Andreina is an Advisory Design Researcher on the IMS & HCF Infrastructure team. She spends her days improving digital experiences and researching user behavior, and her evenings organizing design community events through UX in ATX.
The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
