Coaching leaders of Communities of Practice

Another key theme that we are hearing in our interviews about the role of a mentor/coach within the Communities of Practice is that of a sounding board.  It’s a common term, but what does it mean?  According to Merriam-Webster it’s a noun and in this context would be a person or group on whom one tries out an idea or opinion as a means of evaluating it.  Okay, so now we can see that in a fast moving organizational setting how finding these individuals that are SMEs can be like hitting the mother lode.  It allows an individual time to perhaps get a shorter version of that 50 page long powerpoint presentation without having to follow it in a linear fashion.  This individual allows others to skip the unnecessary steps, so one could view it as a time saver?  Others view it as an individual that provides you with guidance or suggestions on how and/or where to ”focus” which for some individuals can equate to increased feelings of personal satisfaction in your work and performance.

The large set of responses we have thus far in our exploratory study is that coaching is informal and most interviewees were reluctant to even call themselves a “coach”, but rather a node in the network that was consistently available to someone else’s personal success.   These “coaches” give themselves (their time and attention) to help work on agendas, answer questions that are important to coachees and invest non trivial effort to partner with others in order to assist with the overall support of the mission of a particular Community. 

 The idea of a “label” of being a coach doesn’t seem like a comfortable one.

A common theme that I have seen in our research project thus far is that most coachee’s are in a personal exploration for not just knowledge and growth, but also inspiration.  They yearn to find someone that is committed to their own journey, but often need someone that can inspire them to “take it up a knotch”. 

 It sounds simple, but the magical formula to finding someone co-committed to your own growth is rare in our adrenaline and time improvished society today, so this is where the journey for a motivated individual and/or co-conspirators becomes important. 

I’ve seen that once a coachee has found that source of inspiration and motivation, it flourishes into a relationship that has been quite powerful in many of the coach/coachee relationship within Communities of Practice.