Weeknotes S11 Ep8 / Coaching Journal week 4
Practice / Feedback / Reflection
It’s been a long week and as I write this I am in bed watching Drag Race on iPlayer, it’s about 8pm *facepalm*. Part of what might have made it feel long is the amount of extracurricular activities I packed in, plus I had a few later working nights this week.
On Monday I had a coaching session in the evening, then on Tuesday I had a coaching session immediately followed by the first meetup of the Systems Thinking for Service Designers course (that kicks off next week). On Wednesday night I spent a couple of hours writing my coaching case history for submission, and then on Thursday evening I had a call with someone in Local Gov to pick their brains about the work they’re doing (followed by lovely virtual drinks with friends for Morgan’s birthday). So yeah, packing more in, and longer days of working, I’m tired now.
What happened this week?
This week the Community Engagement Playbook project has made more progress again as the team have been building out some of the case studies that will make it into the prototype. which is excellent. There’s only two weeks left to run on this discovery, so things are really starting to come together. On top of that there’s been some good thinking about the future of the work and how it moves away from central gov delivery and back into local gov where it belongs, which is great.
I also did another funding interview for one of our projects which (as per my weeknotes last week) is always interesting and helps me to feel useful.
On Wednesday afternoon I had a few unbroken hours of working and it was so nice to crank the music up and get a lot of work done in preparation for some more funding interviews I have coming up. It felt good, and slightly novel (?), to have the concentration and time to get those bigger chunks of stuff done.
The collaboration managers had a few good meetings together this week as well which I always enjoy and find useful, and I spent some time wrapping things up and handing them over to Michael who will be looking after them while I go and work on another project for a bit.
Another project?
Yeah, I haven’t mentioned about moving on to something else because I’m not sure I can really say much about it, and I’m not leaving MHCLH or the LDCU, just doing a project for the department. I don’t know what that will mean for weeknotes over the next few weeks but hopefully I’ll be able to reflect on what I’m learning.
I started working on little bits and pieces in any spare capacity I had over the past couple of weeks, and I’m pleased that I’ll be doing something different for a little bit and in an area I’ve not previously had any exposure to, and with a new set of people who I haven’t worked with before.
I’m learning some policy stuff, and some workings of government stuff which is already interesting. It’s been quite nice to do some reading up on it this week and it’s the first time I think I’ve ever felt studious about work. I’m trying to radiate intent and find ways to really add value, I have some ideas around workflow, asynchronous working and facilitation that I’m not sure others will have thought about so hopefully I can bring those ideas.
Coaching journal — week 4
This week I’ve had five coaching sessions with people in my cohort and one with a new person, so it was a really intense week of practice. I also had half a day of training where we worked on coaching feedback which was a nice reflective practice. On Friday I had a catch up with my coaching supervisor which was a really great opportunity to reflect and get feedback, they also offered to be my supervisor on an ongoing basis — not sure if this is the norm — but I was pleased and proud of myself nonetheless.
On top of that I had my coaching case history to write and submit ahead of deadline so that I could get some feedback. I managed to do that on Wednesday night and our trainer Mark provided some useful thoughts which, combined with feedback from my supervisor have really helped to focus my approach.
So it’s ramped up a bit this week but actually the practice and reflection has left me feeling more confident and able to be a bit more like myself and find my flow in coaching sessions.
Next week we have a full day of practice and feedback on Wednesday, followed by our assessment the week after and then (hopefully) I’ll have my accreditation! It feels like I’ve come a long way since session 1 back at the start of the month.
Systems Thinking for Service Designers
I’ve been slowly getting more anxious about this course in part because it slightly overlaps with coaching, but also because I started to really worry about the academic and theoretical side of it all — I wasn’t sure if I’d just decided to take a course that was way over my capability level. I’m still feeling a little worried because the course requires some reading each week — not my strongest suit right now — and I also have an hour long video to watch this week so I need to find the time and discipline to really sit down with it.
On Tuesday I met the cohort for the course though and it was great that this was made up of people from around the world (I counted 6 countries), and from various disciplines and industries. There are a couple of us public servants on the course, and one from the New Zealand government who I already know I’m going to get on with like a house on fire.
Anyway, I think I need to approach this with flexibility and be able to hold the ambiguity and space, that is what I understand from systems thinking so far and the sense I get from the approach being taken by our course trainer, the learning, like the practice, might be emergent not linear. There feels like there will be space for a plurality of learning experiences and outcomes which is something I’m looking forward to seeing.
Anything else?
I’ve been collecting feedback from people that I’ve worked with over the past year and I’m hoping to get more. The thing that strikes me is that I don’t have much information about what I should work on, and I think that’s maybe because people are less confident in giving feedback? I’m not saying that because I’ve only had glowing feedback, but I get a sense of people being nice, which is very nice but also kinda, not useful?
I hadn’t realised how the change from mid-year and end of year reviews to monthly conversations with your line manager has kinda shifted conversations away from future objectives more into the present moment. It’s more likely to mean: are you doing your job ok right now? Rather than: what do you need to be great at your job or to get a new one? I very much doubt that that was the intention.
I also went to a session a Non-Executive Director (NED) of the department this week which was an opportunity to hear more about the role and ask questions. He was talking about in your 20’s developing a deep insight or skill in something and not moving around lots, and it’s hard not to put those two thoughts about performance reviews and not moving around together.
Having a NED tell you that in your 20s you should stick to a skill is jarring to me because it skirts over the opportunities that some have and other’s don’t. It assumes you’ve been able to land somewhere, presumably fresh out of uni, where there is enough learning opportunity for you to get that kind of deep experience. It also assumes you can afford to stay somewhere for longer (where you’re less likely to get a pay rise), or to stay in a role that doesn’t suit you for any number of reasons.
If I had tried to develop a deep skill straight out of uni, I might still be a doctor’s surgery receptionist or maybe — a secretary? I could possibly have become an office or practice manager (all important roles but probably not the hugest amount of growth for me).
Or I could still be working for the frightfully racist boss in the tiny agency that made up my first “proper” London job (where I also got into debt every month just so that I could get a step on the ladder), but wait, no, they went out of business because of the recession.
So while the NED may have chosen his words slightly poorly, it made me a little miffed. I couldn’t have stayed somewhere to develop deep expertise, that option was just not on the table for me, I needed to move to grow as a person let alone earn more money and pull myself out of that stupid debt. So it’s really hard when people talk about too many “smart generalists” and not moving around because it’s much harder for some people to get to that point than others, and for some smart generalist is the best we could have become.
Anyway, onwards.
I’ve made it through three episodes of It’s A Sin, and I don’t have words for how I feel about that really without offering spoilers, but the ability to build so much joy and pain into single episodes is truly mind-blowing. I am so bought into the characters that whenever they exclaim “La!” I am right there with them, la-ing along.
That’s probably more than enough again, so I’m off.
Have a lovely weekend — La!
