I have been a big fan of Esther Derby for awhile based on her books and writings on StickyMinds and was all the more impressed by the slate of speakers at this year’s conference when I saw that she was doing the lunchtime keynote. The subject of her speech was on peer coaching (or more correctly Introducing New Ideas: Peer Coaching). Coaching as a skill for test leadership is something I am more and more interested; another serendipidous coincidence. One thing I noticed was how similar her presenting style was to Johanna’s which isn’t too surprising since they often do workshops together even so far as to have audience partcipation that involved the use of multiple pieces of paper.

  • People often change to save something of value. And to save that thing they are often willing to give something else up — at least temporarily. (opportunity cost)
  • In introducing new techniques and technologies, it is sometime easier to just introduce it without explicit permission
  • Show those whom you are teaching what is in it for them
  • It is better to be a sprinkler than a firehose — a firehose will wash away the seeds of knowledge, but the sprinkler will give just enough water
  • 5 questions to ask before starting to coach someone
    1. Are you ready to coach?
    2. Does the other person want coaching?
    3. From you?
    4. Are you open to other approaches?
    5. Are you ready to encourage rather than evaluate?
  • Coaching happens with consent. And that consent does not last forever or apply to all topics
  • The role of Coacher and Coachee will often switch when learning a new technology
  • It is important to build the relationship between the coach and coachee
  • Learn to articulate your ideas
  • Experts have lots of compiled knowledge which makes it hard for them to remember the steps people without it must do to complete a task. The downside of trained intuition?
  • If you are explaining something to someone, and they don’t understand it, whose fault is it?
  • Adults learn by hanging new knowledge to their existing frameworks
  • If you see people going down the wrong path, let them go a bit to see if they self correct, but don’t let them go too far
  • Be sure to debrief at the end of a coaching session / relationship
  • The difference between a coach and a mentor is that a mentoring relationship implies that the mentor has a deeper knowledge pool to pull from and the nature of the relationship is more developmental than a peer one