This is my personal review of the LeSS Coaching Camp that ended yesterday. It was a great weekend. I’ve learned much and I’ve gotten so much more confident of my own knowledge and capabilities. I could already feel this today from interactions with two different clients.
And, it was a great crowd. We were 15 coaches from 4 different countries (Germany, Russia, Tchecz Republik and UK).
What I learned:
LeSS books, training and the thinking behind it – this is a tremendous amount of wisdom. Only after the camp I realized my main learning was around understanding when a certain part of this knowledge can be fruitfully presented and under what circumstances. Teaching isn’t coaching. As coaches we are supporting our customer in owning his own way of work, instead of renting our model. As teachers we can expect a certain openness to our models. I learned a lot about where and how I feel comfortable introducing LeSS or one of it’s principles into a conversation with a client.
We dedicated a lot of time to using causal loop diagrams (CLD). I learned about facilitating adhoc CLD sessions with clients and how to prepare for educational CLD sessions. Thanks especially to Nils for this.
My main meta-learning was the camp itself. This was the first coaching camp I’ve organised. Learned a lot about that.
What I particularly enjoyed:
Campfire stories from the trenches. Hearing stories from participants of their experiences with transitions whether with LeSS or not. And in general, weather did a great job for us this three days. A lot of sun and blue sky with a lake warm enough to take a swim.
Both mornings we had volunteers to facilitate a meditation. What a connecting and relaxing way to start a camp day.
Sessions I learned a lot from all had a role play or a simulation in them. I’m glad we did so many of these.
What I was surprised by:
We talked about OKRs. Seems everyone is talking about them right now. I haven’t seen them being helpful in reality yet. Well the tool isn’t applied as it is supposed to be applied.
We had a session on systemic constellations as a coaching tool to understand the relationship between variables and compared it to using CLD for the same. I was blown away by my personal insight, wouldn’t have expected this. This method got me totally out of thinking and more into feeling. And there were new things to be experienced there. Amazing!
Thank you everyone!
We are going to do it again!