Coaching with the SDLC Skills Map
A question many of the engineers I've worked with over the years face at some point or another is:
"I feel stuck, I want to progress, but I'm not sure how; what would you recommend?"
Talking In Titles
My longstanding approach has been to try and outline the nature, responsibilities, and accountabilities of roles using job titles as an anchor but I've always found this approach somewhat lacking.
For engineers who have been in and around a mature SDLC for a while, this can be somewhat effective in citing a target Title, but it doesn't tell them how to get to their desired role. I've also found the conversation tends to move from "personal development" to "promotion" quite quickly, which entirely misses the point.
For less experienced staff, or staff who've grown up in a startup, this approach falls entirely flat because they simply don't have the exposure to mature roles/methodologies for this approach to work. I fell into such a conversation recently and found myself reaching for something to help my coachee get a better sense of things.
Enter the "Skills Map"
To try and help with this, I've started using a new tool I'm tentatively calling the SDLC Skills Map.
The purpose of the map is to provide prompts to help the coach/coachee explore ideas related to their personal development. It pairs ideas from Dan Pink's Mastery-Autonomy-Purpose approach with the Goal-Reality-Options-Which? (GROW) model to map out where the coachee is currently and where they like to get to.
Example Usage
For example, in a coaching session with a Senior Developer thinking about their next steps, we might start by mapping out their current activities:
We could then explore different ideas through the map; for example:
- Do you like working primarily on your own, or would you like to work more with people?
- What problems in How things are done frustrate you that you think you could fix?
- Are there any skills you know you don't have mastered yet that you'd like to?
From discussion, the coachee may then identify that the process elements give them a bigger kick than anything else, meaning they'd like to focus on delivery management:
This then provides the coach and coachee with a guide for helping shaping personal development objectives.
Feedback
I've not used this for long enough to have gotten a broad sense of where the edges are here, but I would be interested in hearing from other managers if they've explored similar areas with their coachees. I'm sharing early1 in case this is of use to others and to seek feedback on the tool to help refine it.
Please get in touch via my LinkedIn if you'd like to discuss.
I don't have a better way to host this presently than via a Github GIST.↩