Joetta Bell, of Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence and Research Division, approached SoDo Consulting in 2017 with a request to support a networking group for women called MAVENS. Created to provide networking and career development opportunities for women in this innovative division, MAVENS was looking to expand its mission to support career development and coaching for its participants. However, time constraints and geographic distances between offices meant that a traditional career-coaching framework was impossible.
After a collaborative brainstorming session with Joetta, Amy and the team at SoDo came back with a customized solution. They proposed offering a new “micro-coaching” format. Micro-coaching provided an hour-long session for each participant that allowed them to focus on collaborative problem solving, mentoring, or coaching on whatever topic the MAVEN wanted to explore. To streamline the sessions, SoDo crafted a questionnaire that was distributed and completed before each session. This gave the SoDo coaches a view into what was top of mind for their participant, and allowed them to come each meeting with relevant questions, and ideas that were individually tailored to each MAVEN. These sessions have been conducted in person and virtually, supporting the MAVENS across the globe.
The sessions have been a huge success, with the pilot event filling up in less than 30 minutes. To date, SoDo and MAVENS are partnering on micro-coaching events quarterly. Joetta continues to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback from the participants, and several women engaged with SoDo beyond their initial meeting.
As Joetta remarked:
“I can’t recommend the SoDo team highly enough. Amy and her team are very committed to supporting women, are innovative in their thinking and exceeded all expectations we had for this coaching program. We were looking for something that was non-traditional and Amy was open and flexible to all our ideas.”
Feedback from participants was honest, and filled with gratitude.
“Kathy was able to help me work through thoughts and come up with concrete goals. I really appreciated how she guided me to work through what I was thinking about rather than giving me an answer.”
“Amy gave me actionable advice about the way I should talk to my boss and I followed her advice. As a result, I was able to get the support that I needed from my boss.”
“I'm an early stage career professional and this was my first ever coaching experience as such. I was very impressed with how well the coach understood me as a person and the struggles I described - especially given the focused time of just 1 hour. I felt we covered a lot of ground in terms of general advice and also really targeted pointers that I could immediately translate into everyday work live. This was an hour very very well spend. It has had huge impact on me and how I structure my work now already.”
The micro-coaching sessions continue to be sought after, and are held twice a year. The entire SoDo team looks forward to continuing to support the Mavens as expand their skills and managerial capabilities.