48 Roles
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
Ronald Cervero and Arthur Wilson (2001) assert that learning in any
context represents a struggle for knowledge and power. Not only is learn-
ing shaped by power relations, but it plays a role in reproducing or chang-
ing these relations. Taking this perspective, the negotiation of meaning
associated with re ecting on project and program experiences can also be
seen as a political endeavor. This means that it is important that the facili-
tator or coach not be a representative of one of the potentially compet-
ing interests at the table. When the facilitator has a speci c agenda other
than enhancing learning, his underlying assumptions—whether explicit or
implicit, hidden or overt—can distort and bias learning and re ection in
that direction, whether intentionally or not. While there is no such thing
as a truly “neutral” facilitator, having a skilled, objective facilitator whose
agenda is to help teams learn and improve helps to overcome the damag-
ing e ects of defensiveness, bias, blame, and avoidance, all of which are
symptoms of deeper issues that need to be addressed if a team’s talents are
to be best utilized to achieve its objectives.
SKILLS REQUIRED OF THE MULTI-LEVEL LEARNING COACH
The multi- level learning coach needs to have skills and knowledge in at
least four speci c areas. She needs to be a highly e ective group facilitator,
to be able to ask questions that generate deep insight, to help members
navigate organizational change, and to be familiar with the business and
technical context within which the team members conduct their work. A
discussion of each of these areas follows.
First and foremost, the coach needs many of the skills required of ef-
fective group facilitators. These include the ability to listen, observe, and
remember behaviors and conversation; to communicate clearly; to under-
stand the di erences and similarities among various perspectives; to ana-
lyze and synthesize topics of conversation; to elicit and identify underlying
assumptions; to diagnose and intervene to improve group e ectiveness; to
provide feedback without creating defensive routines; to accept feedback
without reacting defensively; to monitor and re ect on one’s own behav-
ior; to develop trust; to empathize with others; to provide support and
encouragement; and to have patience (Schwarz, 2002).
Second, in addition to these basic facilitation skills, the multi- level learn-
The Multi-Level Learning Coach 49
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
ing coach must also have the ability to foster productive re ection so that
the organization can learn from its experiences in ways that would not be
possible without such intervention. The coach must therefore have the
ability to ask the right questions at the right time—questions that foster
re ection to help clarify goals and roles, as is often the case in prospectives,
or questions that enable teams to learn from their recent experience, as
is the case in retrospectives. In this regard, the multi- level learning coach
mirrors the role that an action learning coach might play in the context of
an action learning project. In action learning, teams are assembled with
the explicit aim of developing the professional talents and skills of employ-
ees or managers by providing frequent opportunities for re ection in a
structured format (O’Neil & Marsick, 2007). Team members may work on
problems that pertain to their individual circumstances, using the group
to aid their understanding of both the problem and the range of solu-
tions, or they may work collectively on a single organizational challenge,
asking questions that focus re ection on a single problem that is critical
to the organization. In both cases, an action learning coach may assist the
group by asking—and helping others ask—“discriminating questions” or
“fresh questions” that foster deeper insights. Judy O’Neil and Victoria Mar-
sick (2007) provide a number of examples of questions that may be used
to help teams understand what’s happening or not happening with their
project, determine what should happen next, build on previous progress,
stay on track, transfer recent learning to their day- to- day job, or provide
feedback to teammates.
The third family of skills required of the multi- level learning coach
involves helping members navigate organizational change. Because the
coach also serves as a catalyst for introducing re ective practices into or-
ganizational routines, he must also be cognizant of the larger cultural and
political forces that a ect the organization, its people, and the communi-
ties of practice within which they work. It is naïve to think that the multi-
level learning coach can remain aloof from these factors. Attempting to
do so may lead to interventions that damage relationships or undermine
the e ectiveness of structured learning. Instead, the coach helps people
to navigate di cult terrain in a way that ensures their long- term com-
mitment to learning and improvement. Through discussions with both
individuals and groups, the multi- level learning coach helps people iden-
tify key stakeholders, understand their positions and points of view, and
50 Roles
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
identify the underlying needs that drive their actions, behaviors, and deci-
sions. In this way, he better assists the organization in improving its ability
to learn and adapt, helping people work collaboratively to more e ectively
overcome the defensive routines and dysfunctions that block improvement
and innovation.
Debra Lavell and Russ Martinelli (2008b) learned a number of lessons
about organizational change as they championed the introduction of ret-
rospectives into the product development process at Intel. First, they sug-
gest that coaches should start with a problem, not a solution. This means
that coaches rst need to understand and clarify their internal client’s
problem, then nd ways retrospectives can help solve those problems, not
the other way around. Second, they found it important to start small and
establish “pull” once demonstrable results were achieved, rather than to
attempt large- scale deployment right away. That meant that at Intel, the
coach began by working with a manager who she thought would be open
to the idea and subsequently gained approval to hold a two- hour face- to-
face meeting with a small team to pilot the approach. The over whelmingly
positive feedback led to the manager’s championing the approach in other
business units across Intel. By the end of the rst year, the coach had con-
ducted 15 retrospectives in that business unit alone.
Lavell and Martinelli also learned that it was important to tailor the
methodology as needed to expand upon its e ectiveness and adapt it to
the organization’s speci c culture and needs. They found, for example, that
holding retrospectives at three key times during a project or program’s life
cycle was more e ective than just conducting a postproject review. This
enabled project teams to capture learnings as they occurred, while the
memories were still fresh in their minds, so that they could capture ben-
e ts while the projects were “in ight” rather than at the end.
The coaches at Intel found that while it was critical to start small, the
momentum for retrospectives “bubbled up” to the senior management
level many times. As senior managers began to see the bene ts of these
retrospectives, they provided additional support, and this led to a broader
number of teams adopting the approach, including even those that had
previously stayed away from such practices.
The fourth and nal skill area required of successful multi- level learn-
ing coaches is a familiarity with the speci c project environment, the na-
ture of the business, and the content of the work upon which they are
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.