Doing Coaching Dojos weekly

My first introduction to the Coaching Dojo format was at the Agile Coach Camp Germany 2013, where a 60 minute session was facilitated by Martin Heider.

One day before the Coach Camp, some people already did a Coach Retreat, which consisted of four Coaching Dojos with four different methods (e.g. SolutionFocus, Co-Active, Apreciative Inquiry, ...)

To my knowledge the Coaching Dojo was first invented by Rachel Davies:

http://agilecoach.typepad.com/agile-coaching/2010/08/improving-agile-coaching-skills.html

And Oana Juncu und Yves Hanoulle developed the Coaching Dojo to a Coach Retreat: 

http://www.hanoulle.be/2012/01/what-is-a-coach-retreat/

Usage in my company

After introducing and trying the Coaching Dojo format in a 90 minutes session, we decided to do a Coaching Dojo regularly, 1-2 times a week.

What we now do is one round of Coaching in Dojo format (30 min):

• Setup, find Coachee & Coach (5 min)
• One round of coaching (10 min)
• Feedback from Coachee, Coach, Observers and Coach again, what he learned from the Observer-feedback (15 min)
• optional: Feedback on the Coaching Dojo

Some adjustments we did for now

• No pair coaching
• The Coachee is free to choose his Coach from the participants
• "Freestyle" or "free choice" of coaching methods
• I use predefined observation exercises for obervers to train feedback and observation skills (more info in an upcoming blogpost)

Feedback sequence

1. Coachee
2. Coach
3. Observers
4. Coach (Takeaways/Learnings)

Tipps

• Observation exercises are optional to use

The feedback is in general very good, from participants in any role in the Coaching Dojo. We keep on with the format, but will explore more coaching styles & methods in the future (and try pair coaching again)