Why does Redgate Engineering have a coaching team?
Our coaching team sits within Engineering, providing help and support to all the groups, teams, and individuals that deliver Redgate’s products, services, and business capabilities. Our Coaches have many years experience in other roles within the software development industry, giving the team a breadth of knowledge we can also use to deliver that support.
What do we do?
Redgate Coaches believe in nurturing and empowering people, building their confidence and capabilities, to support our engineering mission. We do this by working with teams, individuals and leaders to explore, support and guide them through their challenges.
We work with people to help them explore challenges they may have, or to solve a problem, or to think through an idea. We can help people to find their career path, or help them through their leadership journey, or help them explore how they can grow as an engineer.
We also work with teams. We can help a team to explore ways to improve working practices, we can offer observations and guidance to improve the efficacy of a team and we can provide specialist support in a variety of areas.
Although the work we do with people and teams is our primary focus, we also have time set aside for wider improvement projects that still align with our mission. Examples of these include creating the progression framework (progression.red-gate.com), defining and re-launching communities of practice and setting up role specific learning pathways.
How do we help?
As Coaches, the greatest tool in our toolbox is coaching! We see coaching as helping people to come up with their own answers. We find that helping people to find their own path is so much more powerful and effective than telling them what to do.
However, we do also provide mentoring/guiding/teaching approaches where it’s appropriate. Our coaching team has a broad range of experience that we have available to share, but we favour a coaching approach where possible, choosing when it’s appropriate to switch into other modes such as mentoring.
When would you work with a coach?
We take personal/professional development seriously at Redgate. All of our people managers take responsibility for the growth of their teams, and we have supporting tools including learning pathways and a mentoring programme.
Our Coaches are a part of that system in Redgate Engineering, complementing some of our more directive development options with in-depth challenge and support.
How does it work?
When someone has identified that a Coach may be able to help them with whatever challenge they have, it all starts the same way. We have a 30 min initial chat.
In that initial chat we’ll explore the challenge and what the person is seeking. Sometimes that 30-minute chat is enough and unblocks them or perhaps a follow-on session is required to delve deeper. We may decide that this is a longer-term transformational engagement, or it may be the case that a more consultative or teaching approach is needed.
The other option that is always available is recognising that we aren’t the best people to help this person with their challenge, therefore we may refer them to someone else within Redgate, or indeed suggest that external support (such as counselling or training) is more appropriate. Our priority is giving our Redgaters the best support we can, and that might not be through us!
How do we help? Don’t take our word for it…
Here is some feedback we’ve received from a range of roles we’ve worked with, from software engineer to Engineering Managers. It shows some of the modes of operation from supportive/building confidence, to thinking partners, to growing within a role.
“After speaking with a coach for only 30 minutes, I had ideas for a structure that I was confident I could deliver. He helped me to frame my thinking to focus on the desired outcome of the session, and work towards it with the structure. He also gave some reassurance that I was (or at least sounded) confident with the subject matter from what I’d explained to him about it.” Lead Software Engineer
“Having a conversation with you and some of the questions you asked me definitely helped me challenge some of those negative thoughts I had and encouraged me to have an honest conversation with my manager. I really appreciate your help” Software Engineer
“Thanks to our conversations I gained an increased confidence in my abilities. I got more deliberate in learning from my daily experiences and learned effective techniques for dealing with common TL challenges.” Tech Lead
“I was struggling to find a way forward on a challenge and working with one of the coaches as a thinking partner really helped to unlock this. Working with someone who listens actively and challenges in just the right way has been so helpful.” Engineering Manager
“A Coach mentoring one of my Tech Leads (TL) has been invaluable. This has helped me by reducing load on me if TLs can lean on coach for support too. Also, from a TL’s point of view, they get different perspective by working with two different people i.e. EM and a coach.” Engineering Manager
… and there’s more!
Over the coming months, we’re going to be sharing more about how we operate, our thoughts on various topics and delving deeper into some areas. So watch out for these!
