I have been coaching and mentoring engineering leaders for at least a decade. There was a recent article in Forbes about formal mentoring, and now that I have mentioned it, I cannot find the specific article. If you feel like using some Google power, there is a whole pile of older ones. I cannot link it because I just hit some monthly five-article limit on Forbes articles. Unrelated to Forbes and its paywall, I learned about some interesting tools and frameworks to apply to mentees as a result of my own transcendental coaching experience.
I recently established a formal coaching relationship for an engineering leader. Finding a good coach is difficult and becomes more difficult because each person responds differently to different coaching techniques.
When I was interviewing one coach, he asked me what specific issue I needed him to help fix. I responded that we do not yet have a particular issue and we just wanted to give a developing leader a coach. The coach was super puzzled by this. He responded, “I usually do not get called in to fix something until after something is broken.”
I had an “aha” moment occur here.
Let’s go back in time for a moment first.
I developed an informal ten-week program for training new managers ten years ago. About five years later, I wrote down all the parts and created a formal boot camp. Everyone involved appreciated the training, and they were surprised how much of it was based on stuff I had to learn the hard way—from the school of hard knocks.
My “aha” moment was that most people generally do not invest in coaching or mentoring their engineering leaders until they find a gap that needs addressing. Rather than ensure they have a strong foundation for leading and managing based on some foresight and preparation, they would rather let people figure out some of the hard stuff and pay for a coach when the gaps are clear.
This strikes me as disturbing.
I respect that bean counters would rather pay for fractional coaching to solve a specific problem. However, I also think that is myopic and dangerous. Suppose your engineers are highly valuable knowledge workers. In that case, you should consider it a wise investment to prepare them to manage said high-value workers to ensure their happiness and productivity at work. Gambling the health and well-being of your engineering team is incredibly risky, and the cost of replacing key staff is significantly higher than the cost of getting coaching for your newly promoted leaders and managers.
One side effect of this is that there are many coaches out there with a toolkit for helping fix specific reactive issues and coaches with a more far-reaching and proactive curriculum of materials.
You can guess which bucket of coaches I have sorted myself into.
- If you are contemplating getting a formal coach, ask them some questions.
- Do you use any formal assessment tools on mentees?
- Do you assign “homework” for items that your mentee needs to work on?
- Do you have a comprehensive list of conversations for every particular mentee?
- How often do you provide report cards or feedback to your mentees?
If your prospective coach struggles with some of these questions or provides evasive answers, they might be a better reactive coach who can help drill down into prospective areas and help a struggling engineering leader with their day-to-day issues.
If they have good answers to these questions, they are more likely to be a good proactive coach.
I do not know if there is any correlation between the two styles. Are people who are good proactive coaches also good reactive coaches? Any answers here would be purely anecdotal.
I do both types. If I have the luxury of time, I like to get started with a proactive set of materials. However, there are times when I am brought in as a reactive coach and have to jump right into firefighting.
My secret hope in writing this is that people will talk more with their existing bosses and leaders about formal coaching. According to Forbes, there are some material benefits to this. I acknowledge that this is a very self-interested statement, and you might argue that this is a sales pitch.
I am not going to disagree.
See you all next week!
