Tonight we had the wonderful Toby Sinclair for an Ask Me Anything about Coaching.
We have some posts on the Club already about Coaching:
I often think of questions after an event once I’ve mulled things over. Do you have any questions about coaching that you didn’t get to ask tonight?
Some great resources mentioned in the AMA:
Sketch notes from Dan Barrow
I’m really happy Toby made it clear that you shouldn’t be the ultimate tester and constantly exploring new techniques, tools, etc … unless you want to be a great mentor. A tennis coach is not a better tennis player than his coachee.
I’m convinced that the world of coaching is another world. Helping a developer create something great by navigating him to the goal requires technical skills and techniques and great insight in how computers work. Helping a tester/developer achieve a personal goal (e.g overcome the fear to speak in public) requires a different set of skills and great insight in how the human mind works. For me becoming a coach, feels as if I’m going from controlling and steering logical things, such as computers and software, to a much bigger challenge in trying to do that with much less logical “things” such as people and their personal development. I still have lots of exploring to do in that world and this AMA boosted my enthusiasm.
The video is now live on the Dojo 