Table 2. Themes and Quotations From the Interview Domain Describing the Experience.

Theme	Sample quotations
Impact of the first coaching sessiona	“So, I think that–so, the most that I got, the first session, I got by far the most out of it. The other sessions were still good. I still would have done them. They were still good. But the first one was by far the highest yield … Well, after I did it, I was like this is amazing. I was like I want to do this forever.” (coachee, promoter)
	“Well, I think the first coaching session was that I felt like there was nothing to coach him on, but if he just, he, ya know he’s such a teacher and commanding the room and a nice person, I'm like, why can I not find areas of improvement. Then what we said, well you know, what do you really want to focus on, so then we kind of identified then the teaching, the focus on the teaching. Um, and then I think I could give more feedback the second time around.” (coach, detractor)
Perception that coaching quality improved over timea	“And I think that changed with the second [coaching case] where there was much more observation and also seeing what happens to the resident or the fellow. So I think we became better at it and more focused on what we were supposed to do.” (coachee, detractor)
Coaching interactions became more comfortable over timea	“I think that there was an element of the Hawthorne effect in the beginning, but you know what? It was more towards the beginning of the procedure in a 2-and-a-half hour case because, after about 30 minutes, it’s almost like you kind of fade into the woodwork. And so I felt though the operation was much more natural at that point. And then by the time we did a second and third coaching session, I felt personally, though not measurable, that there was less of that Hawthorne effect.” (coach, no response to NPS)
Importance of clinical background in coach-coachee pairingsa	“I found having somebody outside of my specialty to be probably the least useful thing about the process because… it’s very hard for a [surgeon of a different specialty] to come in who doesn’t know the disease process, who doesn’t know the steps, who doesn’t know the surgery, who doesn’t even know the instruments I’m using to come in and start commenting on those things.” (coachee, detractor)
Applying coaching feedback	“Biggest takeaways I had [from my coaching sessions] were… I communicate out loud a lot… Sometimes when you’re about to say something that’s more important than what you’ve been saying, and the room can’t differentiate what’s going on because your body language is the same… For me, since I talk a lot and project a lot, [my coach] said, ‘You can probably still do something like that where you step away, patients in lithotomy, step away, get people’s attention, you’re stepping away from the field. And that will alert them to this is more important than everything else I’ve been saying.’ So, that was 1 thing that I found very helpful… I don’t always do it because it’s going to take a little while to figure it out. But once in a while, it’s a good way to do it.” (coachee, promoter)
Benefits to the coach in addition to the coachee	“Well, (1), I’ve tried different things based on what I’ve seen in the [coachee’s] OR; (2), I have redoubled my efforts to make sure that everything is that is needed—everything that can be possibly anticipated for the operation will be there at the beginning of the case. And I’ve done that before, but [before observing my coachee’s case] I just didn’t recognize that it’s a big thing when it comes to efficiency [in the OR].” (coach, no response to NPS)

Abbreviations: NPS, Net Promoter Score; OR, operating room.

^aIndicates differences in how promoters and detractors experienced their coaching sessions.