Thriving Teams

In this final episode of the Thriving Teams series, you will learn what to look for when you are experiencing challenges with your team(s). What solutions are out there? What experts can adequately support you in finding a way forward for your team. Jane advises us to look for team experts who can work across the broad arch of team development modalities to prepare a team to be coached. This will allow flexibility and co-design capability with a Sponsor/Leader as the work with a team emerges.

We dive deeper into the process that creates the conditions for a team being able to unfold their potential to not just solve their challenges, but to thrive. Jane explains that in team coaching a process needs to be co-created so that the team coach can form the right partnership with a team leader to establish the conditions for the work. Based on what the team is seeking to achieve, the journey can be outlined with objectives, diagnostics and checkpoints. In this way, a whole new experience can be brought to a team – enabled by an experienced professional team coach who can support them in unfolding their potential.

Jane shares that part of why she is such an advocate for bringing in someone who has team coaching skills, as well as skills for other team development modalities, is that they bring a different lens … enabling the team to walk a path to be formally team coached perhaps something that they’ve never experienced before. In other words, to enable something different to be experienced that has the potential to realise more of the learning capacity of the team to enable them to perform more strongly together as a collective unit.

In a market saturated with team coaches and other team experts, we discuss how to actually find a qualified professional team coach. First, you can go the obvious pathway and check their team coaching qualifications from an accredited by regulatory body coaching school. What else though to seek apart from ‘the piece of paper’? Importantly, how do they talk about the distinctions between team development modalities (facilitation, consultancy, team building, team training, and team coaching) and what each can bring to the team environment? What case studies do they bring? Enquire about the team coaching component. Jane advises Team Leaders to be explorers and engage in a dialogue around the team coaching. She gives excellent examples of which questions need to be asked to ‘test’ the experience and knowledge of a team coach. What else can Leaders do? Put that person in front of the team and let the team pose that level of enquiry.

‘The dialogue is the beginning of the partnership that needs to be created between the coach and the team, and indeed the leader.’ – Jane Porter

Do you want to learn what NOT to expect from a qualified Team Coach? Also, are there ‘uncoachable’ teams?

Finally, where do you actually find qualified Team Coaches? Instead of answering that, Jane advises Leaders to ask one question. What is that question?

Listen to our last episode from the series ‘Thriving Teams’ to find this out and much more...as it is a good wrap up of our 6 episodes journey with Jane Porter.

In this episode, you will learn what a ‘good ending’ of a team coaching intervention entails, and what this looks like for a team and a team coach.

You will learn how the team and coach evaluate the work, and about the importance and power of inward reflection to nurture team awareness. This reveals learnings for the team that serve as the foundation for continuous growth long after the formal partnership with the team coach has ended.

How will you know that a team coaching intervention has been successful? What is the biggest measure of success? That’s when a team has tapped into an understanding of the power of interdependencies that exist between them, and as Jane points out, “It’s less about the output and more about what’s developed in the process.”

Notice the difference between the coaching work being complete, and the performance work being complete. “Sometimes the ending a team needs is not necessarily the ending a coach needs or wants,” expands Jane.

And how does the journey go on? We talk about the power of the coach letting go in order to allow a team to continue evolving and growing.

What’s next? Tune in for our final episode from this series: How do you get started with a Team Coach?

In this episode you will become aware of what happens in a real team coaching session.

Does ‘normal’ actually exist?  

You will understand the options a team may take when they are working with a team coach.

Jane explains there are two possible pathways, the first when working ‘offline’ in a dedicated session to achieve specific goals and outcomes, or working ‘online’ in the team’s real working environment. 

We dive deeper into the second scenario where a team coach is needed as an ‘extra set of eyes and ears’ in the business-as-usual rhythm, to raise awareness about team dynamics, patterns and processes that exist within the system of the team, and how are these are supporting or hindering team performance. 

“In my experience when a team is focused on the work the team exists to do, the job in hand, they rarely focus on the processes they are engaging in to get there, and that they rarely become aware of whether they are getting stuck or whether they are moving forward with ease. And as a team coach you are there to help them see both of these things.” - Jane Porter

Curious to learn about the ‘structure’ of a team coaching session, what team coaching is actually doing and how it serves fruitful team dialogue to develop?

Want to hear a real example and understand more about the process of real team coaching?

Tune in for Episode 4 - What happens in a team coaching session? Part 2

In this episode, you will learn about how to start the journey of team development enabled by team coaching. Who do you need to connect with first, and why? What do you need to understand before embarking on that journey? What creates and sets up a solid container for team coaching work to happen? Where team coaching is the used helping modality, what needs to be discovered before a deep dive into the work?

You will understand the importance of a dialogue, and why scoping early on in the process is integral to a successful set-up. Setting up the macro frame for the team development work is also an integral part of an effective process.

You will gain an understanding of what a ‘willing team’ is.

What does the formal contract that ‘holds’ the work normally include, and what can surprise you while on the journey?

What does the journey look like? There isn’t one answer to this question. Setting up the journey appropriate for any particular team with its unique context necessitates a skilful team coach.

“One of the skills of the team coach is to be able to listen to where the team is, what it needs and to be able to respond to that with a proposal or approach that is going to support the team to get to where they want to go.” Jane Porter

In this second episode of our podcast series Thriving Teams - Bitesize Conversations with Jane Porter, Jane unravels the key distinctions of Team Coaching as compared to other team development modalities. This will provide a clear picture on how Team Coaching really stands out as a practice. 

Imagine a Swiss Army knife… ‘the iconic symbol of versatility and resilience’.. with so many different knives combined in one device, which all serve a very specific purpose… You just need to know which is the best one of them all in any given moment to help you. Imagine now all the existent team development

modalities (team training, team building, team consulting, team facilitation, team coaching) – each has its own specific purpose and knowing how and when to use each one makes a profound difference. 

In this episode, Jane so clearly articulates where Team Coaching sits in the team development echelon and whom it serves. This is valuable knowledge in a moment when there isn’t yet a clear understanding of what real team coaching is.

Jane explores the close relationship between Team Facilitation and Team Coaching and where confusion creeps in. This is invaluable knowledge, as it assists teams we want to help understand what would actually serve them best in their current phase of development.

Another element of our conversation is how team building is different and why it provides a beautiful framework to enter into Team Coaching. 

In this podcast you will get to understand who owns the process in team coaching and how this helps release the potential that sits in the collective to unfold in a way that is sustainable. 

With clear awareness we can continue our journey and prepare to dive into the next topic, which we’ll unpack in Episode 3…the essentials of how you get started with a team coach, and what is the team coaching contracting process? 

Enjoy our conversation with Jane and please let us know what else you are curious about in team coaching?

In this episode you will learn:

What is a team? Well, because we use that word in organisations so loosely today, this is the first hurdle teams fall at.

What is the shift a working group needs to make to become a real team?

When and why do we need to be a team, and what is the core element of a real team?

Learn about the fascinating duality of living in the first, and the second team, which is explained, and is typical for executive teams.

This episode is enriched with great examples that will help give you a deeper understanding of the nuanced differences of ‘groups’ vs ‘teams’, and when they need to be which and why.

This realisation can initiate a powerful shift in executive teams’ effectiveness.

Learn more as Jane beautifully explains ‘the dance’ in this ongoing journey of teams immersed in a constantly changing internal and external environment, where there is pressure on organisations to perform and deliver, whilst at the same time serving a greater more meaningful purpose.