A friend calls me, happy, to tell me that she did some codev, with her manager, during a seminar. A little in a hurry, I replied “it’s not codev”. “Yes, yes, she said to me, my manager had chosen a theme, we asked questions then we reformulated and we looked for solutions. She even said:” the codev is within the reach of ‘no matter who, just follow the “steps.
On this subject, I’ve already been told, “oh yes, call it whatever you want, we called it“ codev. ”So why not let poets who want to call a dog a cat? this article is in a nutshell: if you give a dog dry cat food, he may not like it.
To call codev something that is not is first of all to discredit the method itself and all the people who apply it properly. They come up against interlocutors who answer: “The codev? No thank you, we tested and it was a disaster”.
A genuine codev cannot be a disaster. For all the safeguards that the codev requires, starting with the absence of a hierarchical link (we do not do codev with his manager, even less led by his manager), voluntarism, parity, benevolence, confidentiality and above all the animation of a trained and experienced facilitator.
We are never safe from a slippage, you will tell me. Yes, but the facilitator will know how to benefit the group, and to rephrase it, because the origin of the codev is to learn by the group. A lack of benevolence, a “high” posture or a displayed contempt are just as many sources of learning that can be activated if the participants have been prepared to join a group in order to develop professionally and personally.
Beyond the discrediting of the method and, among other things, the commercial consequences for professional codevelopment facilitators, there are a considerable number of missed opportunities. Missed opportunities for those who will be refused codev because experience has shown that it was a “disaster”, when they would really need it given their isolation, the context, their workload, their loss of meaning, or their need to rely on a collective to move forward more surely.
Along the way, the belief that the codev can “be improvised” or that it is the result of a methodical follow-up of steps is gaining even coaches and support professionals to whom the codev is presented in a few words during a meeting. team coaching training.
But that’s not enough either! And I often see it when a coach tells me at the turn of a session “oh yes, but I haven’t been” trained “strictly speaking, but I have animated a lot”. Rare are those who in this case really know how to animate it.
That being said … what do we do now? At ViTi, when we are faced with this question, we value training on the one hand, and continuing education on the other. We ourselves create the spaces so that the facilitators can train, discuss, question each other, share ideas and intuitions. We try to distinguish what the codev is and what it is not.
He is not :
- A method of problem solving
- A simple process to follow
- Taxable
- A circle of opinion and points of view
- Unrolled in 30 or 45 minutes
For us, a good codev host knows:
- Differentiate between a subject that can be treated in co-development or not
- Detect a solution disguised as a question
- Differentiate between an objective and the “node”: so that the objective has not already been reached.
- Changing our ways of thinking
- Anticipate slippage in view of the starters of the sentences of the participants
- Listen to your intuition
- Be vigilant for the safety of the client and consultants
And this is what we strive to develop in the animators of our community.
He is :
- A peer learning method
- On the basis of volunteering and the desire to help and be helped
- In an exclusive setting of confidentiality, benevolence and authenticity
- In a mastery by the facilitator of the specifics of each step
- In a continuous progression of the group helped by the facilitator
