Can you describe your coaching style when it comes to engineers and give an example of how you have applied it?

My coaching style is structured and designed to match engineers interests and preferences.

In our 1:1 we discuss interests and aspirations. From there we can work on career progression, technical development, or learning more about project management, company operations, etc

We analyze situation and have written plan. We take notes about projects where we can try to apply new things and new responsibilities that the person can take on. 

Engineer T was interested to deepen his skills in distributed computing. We worked on a system that resembles Spark . When T shared that we was puzzled with strange occasional performance, I decided to help him to be more comfortable, independent using this system. I prepared by inspecting source code, and found the root cause of his issue. In 1:1 I coached T that we have source code access to the system and showed him how to find how the system works. Further I let T to produce the fix for the issue and apply it to production. Finally I encouraged T to make presentation and share with others how to use source code to solve similar issues.

Result stretched far beyond fixing a complex bug. T became unafraid of inspecting source code of a large distributed system. He would be able to do that again if situation requires. T presented the issue, his approach and methods to handle similar cases in large knowledge sharing meeting. T's image improved in the team.

I would like to address other methods I use:

- Pair engineers with mentors and coaches

- Organize knowledge sharing sessions ( At my current company I organized 4 conference like knowledge sharing sessions, that resulted in our team presenting in all hands meeting in the company)

- Facilitating attending and presenting at industry conerences (ie Databricks DATA+AI, Amazon R:invent)

- Sharing my experience when applicable in 1:1

- Suggesting and making space for engineers to learn more through online classes