What is tech lead coaching?
Tech lead coaching is a recurring, intimate, one on one session with a tech lead coach: a coach who is completely independent and has no vested interest in anything you do at work, other than helping you be successful as a leader.
Because the coach sits outside the situation, they can ask the question that a manager, a peer or a report all have some reason not to ask. That is the whole of the leverage, and it is why the arrangement works even when the coach knows nothing about the system your team maintains.
How does it work?
A session is thirty to sixty minutes, once a month, spent on your goals, challenges and opportunities using the GROW model.
Set the session rhythm
Thirty to sixty minutes, once a month. The interval is deliberate: it leaves a real working month for anything agreed to be tried before it is reviewed.
Name the goal for the month
Not a project milestone, but something you want to be different about how you are leading by the time you next sit down.
Work it through the GROW model
Goal, then reality, then options, then a way forward, in that order. The order is what stops an hour becoming a status update.
Carry the way forward back to work
One action and one signal that would tell you it worked. The next session opens against those two things.
A walk through the practice
Who it is for
Tech lead coaching is useful for leads of all experience levels, whether you are brand new to the role or have decades behind you. It is for people who want to take their leadership to the next level of impact and effectiveness, and it assumes nothing about the size of the team or the stack it works in.
What a session covers
- Goals - what you want to be different, stated in a way that can be reviewed next month.
- Challenges - what is actually in the way, described concretely rather than in the abstract.
- Opportunities - what is available to you that you have not yet taken up, including the options already discounted.
Two tracks of guides
The guide library is split the way the work is split. One track is written for the person doing the lead role. The other is written for the person coaching them, and covers the model, the mechanics and the first session. Reading across both tracks makes the shape of the conversation predictable from either chair.
The guide library at a glance
- Tech leads track
- Four pages, covering accountability, the skills inventory, being coached, and how the track is organised.
- Coaches track
- Five pages, covering the case for coaching, a first session, the GROW model, session mechanics, and how the track is organised.
- Published
- March 2019, in three batches.
Guides
Tech leads
- What a technical lead is accountable forThe three things a lead owns that an individual contributor does not.
- The skills a lead actually leans onA working inventory, split across the three accountabilities.
- Getting value out of being coachedHow to prepare for a session so the hour is not spent on context.
- How the tech leads track is organisedWhat is in this track and the order to read it in.
Coaches
- Yes, you can coachWhy independence, not seniority, is the qualification that matters.
- Running a first sessionA structure for the first hour, when neither side knows the other.
- The GROW model, stage by stageThe four stages, the question each one asks, and the failure each one has.
- Session mechanicsLength, cadence, notes and follow-up, and why each is set the way it is.
- How the coaches track is organisedWhat is in this track and the order to read it in.
Updates
| Date | Update |
|---|---|
| 9 March 2019 | First guide parts published across both tracks. |
| 10 March 2019 | Tech leads track parts revised. |
| 18 March 2019 | Named topic pages published across both tracks. |