Team coaching

Team coaching will help a team build its vison of what it wants to be, understand the resources that it already has and take the steps to make its vision a reality.

I typically adopt a solution focussed approach.  When a team isn’t working at its best you can ask what has gone wrong and then spend time figuring out why.  This is the  logical problem solving approach on which we so often rely, but problem talk creates problems.   Solution talk creates solutions.

So, an alternative is to start from a different place:

• What do we have as a team that is working well – where is our life and our energy and what is it that has brought us to where we are today?

• If this team were the best that it could be and had solved its problems really well what would that look and feel like?

• What needs to happen and what does each of us need to do for us to deliver our vison of a future perfect?

This is an approach that draws on Appreciative Inquiry – it recasts issues in positive terms, values the resources that people already have, encourages them to build a hopeful and optimistic vision of the future as a team and commits them to specific actions to achieve that future.

As an approach this fits well with models of team effectiveness, for example, emphasising the need for clarity of vision and purpose, effective relationships, psychological safety as well as with the idea of team roles – the particular gifts and talents that each of us bring to a team.  So, for example, I may be  great critical voice able to spot the flaw in a proposal, but if that gift kills every idea before it has had time to grow and develop, then I will be doing my team a disservice.

What do you bring to your team?  Does your contribution habitually focus on one or two activities?  How does that help your team to succeed? When does it get in the way?  What could you do to ensure that the team is best able to draw on everyone’s gifs and talents?

Team Dynamics

We spend a lot of our time inside and outside work in groups, but perhaps not enough time thinking about what goes on in those groups or why people behave as they do.

One way of looking at behaviours in groups is to see them in terms of what their function or purpose seems to be.

Self-orientred behaviours

As a group member my first decision is whether I want to be in or out.  If I’m anxious about this and decide that no one is interested in me, I may decide that the best thing to do is withdraw.

Next is the question of control – am I on top or on the bottom?  Control is about relations of power, influence and authority.  Who has power?  How much do I have?  How much do I want?

Finally, there is the question of openness – how willing am I to be open to another person.  Underlying openness is the feeling of being likeable or unlikeable, lovable or unlovable.

Openness tends to be the last question that gets answered in the development of a group.  First is inclusion (am I in or out?).  Second is control (who has it and how do we relate to each other?).  Third is openness (how close and how intimate are we?).