Practice week - Coaching on Training cases

Reps Coaching Training
#1

Hey Everyone,

I had a call with Dinesh and we have discussed the 2 cases, here I am sharing Dinesh’s points and my feedback & observations.

Medium: Google Hangout

CASE-1:

The coachee is a part of a small but growing community and would like to know how they can increase their numbers, enable these volunteers to make impact and make their community visible in the local tech scene.

Dinesh as a Coachee:
We have a small team of contributors - Few of them works on core contributions and other work on Public relations to manage the community-driven events and makes the core contributors share their learning.

Issues we face more often:

  1. Community spaces and Network Connectivity.
  2. Retention of students is very hard after their graduation. - Some cases students came with interest after one or two sessions they will never turn again
  3. Recognition is one big issue for contributors
  4. Support from other contributors/staff is not enough as needed.
  5. Local colleges aren’t much of supporting as we students are approaching to start a club in their college.

Approach to overcome:

  • Retention - Doing regular meetups, events, and campaigns to engage people and also helps tries to bring out new people to the community

  • Recognition, we have been transition the roles of a mentor within the community to motivate people who are working for a long time.

  • Reaching out to Mozilla reps to host a workshop at college level tech fests which make us reach out to a lot people/students.

Me(Mehul) as a coach:
Observations & Feedback:

  • I like the start by sharing problem first and what they have done to overcome.

  • I really like the approach where they recognize the individual contribution and upgrade the roles, responsibilities within the community to motivate the people, I think this way they bring the new leaders in the community.

  • Dinesh talked more about issues which they were facing and less towards solutions which were the actual case is about but in the last rapid-fire questions, I think he justified the solutions and appreciate the way he is motivating the people in his community by recognizing them. Cheers to that.

Case - 2:

The coachee is an existing member of a community who does activities as the opportunity comes (i.e new campaign, an invitation from schools) making the community stalled sometimes. The mentee wants to learn how he can step up to drive his community to a better direction.

Dinesh as a Coachee:
Issues:

  1. Lack of interest in the attendees.
  2. Lack of direction to work on core Mozilla projects.
  3. Shifting priorities of good contributors after the certain period.
  4. Lack of recognition and support.
  5. Poor engagement of contributors on taking leadership to do more for the community
  6. Lesser communication within community members.

Approach:

  • Reaching out to colleges helps to do some activities regularly and bringing enthusiastic people to do activities in the community.
  • Networking with peers and core contributors initially to upscale the skills of new/existing contributors. #TraintheTrainers
  • Having regular communication like biweekly/monthly calls to discuss on community engagement.

Me(Mehul) as a coach:
Observations & Feedback:

  • Again, really like the start by sharing problem first and approach.

  • Overall approach is very good. Some of the things I really liked are - upscale the skills by some online/offline training sessions,

  • Only have one and very strong suggestions to encourage interested people to take up roles and responsibilities of their expertise, invite them to join the existing community programs. - which also solves the issue of recognition in some cases as it motivates people to work more as a mentor.

Cc: @sayak

Thank you @dineshmv38 and see you in next call to discuss further cases. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Mehul Patel

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Reflections from Coaching Practice Week
Reflections from the Practice Week
#2

Here, sharing insights from the Day-2 call with Dinesh.

CASE-3:

The mentee is an active functional area contributor who has contributed to a couple of projects but this is the first time he’ll be involved in a community. He wants to learn how he can reach out to people inside and outside the community to grow and make quality contributors.

Dinesh as Coachee:

Blockers:

  1. Not aligning with the community.
  2. Lack of awareness between functional area and community.
  3. Lack of getting started resources to the functional area.

Approach: Preplanning.

  1. understanding the community by contacting active contributors who can share more views about what community is up to. - Listening happens here
  2. Preparing a plan to share his knowledge for better impact and good outcomes.
  3. Creating teachable learning resources out of his experiences for all kinds of contributors (beginners/Moderate/Devs) and Encouraging people to practice and hack on the learning resources.
  4. Being available for any kind of help that contributors may expect wrt to the functional area - power of questions
  5. Identifying potential contributors who can take lead to share more about the functional area. - Action Items
  6. Cross training of existing mobilizers for faster outreach about a functional area.
  7. Taking help of mobilizers to organize/join tech events where a functional doer can share more insights about the area.
  8. He/She should be able to take feedback from the community about his/her ideas. - Feedback.

Me(Mehul) as a coach:

Feedbacks - thoughts:

  • Tech guys - reach out inside and outside the community is a good idea.
  • As a Mobilizer, he should follow self-approach - they need to sit together and take personal feedback.
  • As a mobilizer, if functional doer creates video tutorials/demo, then contributors can embrace it quickly.
  • Also, we should encourage contributors to take lead in sharing these demos at their local meetups/events.

CASE-4:

Being a new rep, the mentee wants to be more involved in being a leader in his community. His community had a lot of achievements before, but it all stalled as community members slowly became inactive due to organizational changes, community conflicts, and shifting priorities. He wants to learn how he can move forward as it feels like a big task to him that he isn’t even sure if he can do something about.

Dinesh as a coachee:

Blockers:

  1. Poor communication or poor P2P connectivity with senior/core contributors and new contributors.
  2. Lower retention rates of existing contributors.
  3. Lesser understanding of what community is to in terms of new areas of contribution.
  4. Lesser transparency within community.
  5. Poor recognition for functional doers/beginners
  6. Lesser outreach outside of the community.

Approach:

  1. Taking suggestions and feedback with all the experiences from alumni or inactive contributors - to identify the root cause for a community to be stalled. - Listening happens.
  2. Preparing a plan and having an agenda for short term to make a chain of events to bring out the motivation in contributors.
  3. Promoting updates of the community through social media to seek the attention of new people - students & Dev. community
  4. Encouraging college students to take up the initiative to reach out to other colleges and sharing about community.
  5. Throwing release parties & campaigns about new tech/releases like rust & Firefox 57 releases. This makes the contributors take leadership and host their own meetups within colleges or region.
  6. we can ask functional doers to share their experiences to dev. community and also at regional tech events/meetups. - Action Items
  7. Taking feedback from senior contributors before and after the meetups helps to build a healthier community.

Me(Mehul) as a coach Feedback:

  • Overall, the approach is good and I really like the ideas to make the community active.

Thank you @dineshmv38 for sharing all your smart work. :slight_smile:

Cc: @sayak

Regards,
Mehul Patel