In the latest Talking Teams column, Allard de Jong and Georgina Woudstra explore team coaching competency 9: Engaging with the wider context and stakeholder expectations
When engaging with the wider context and stakeholder expectations, the team coach must be able to work holistically, bringing the system in which the team is operating into the room. But what are its boundaries?
Every situation will have an impact on a system at different levels simultaneously. In intervening, it’s helpful to identify who the system needs in the conversation. For team coaches, taking a systems approach means to support strategic intervention across multiple levels of the system(s). For example: imagine a team member raises a question about the team’s purpose. The team coach can choose to address an intervention initially to just this team member. This can be followed by a group level intervention to focus and confirm the team purpose at both of these levels. In turn, this could be followed by an intervention supporting connecting the team’s purpose with the organisation’s wider purpose.
One of the challenging aspects of systems is knowing where the boundary lies that separates the system from its environment. This is a potentially subjective matter. For example, the Open University (OU) has its HQ in Milton Keynes. The campus is part of the system, as are its 200,000 students and staff located worldwide. The OU specialises in distance learning, and does most of its teaching using the Internet. Is the Internet part of the OU system or of the environment?
To answer these questions, the team coach may turn to the system’s purpose:
- The entities inside the system are all those necessary for it to fulfil its purpose and that can be controlled by the system owners or managers
- The entities in the environment are all those things that affect the system but cannot be controlled by the system owners or managers
- Anything not in the system or the environment has no effect on the system’s behaviour.
By this definition, the Internet is not part of the OU but of its environment. What do you think?
Once we have a definition of this system/environment ‘gestalt’, one way to ‘bring the system into the room’ would be as follows:
- Invite the team to map out their stakeholders on a flipchart
- Place chairs in the room to represent each of these, which might include a blank space for the ‘forgotten/ missing’ piece
- Sit in each chair/stand in each of the places and speak as that stakeholder (eg, what it feels like to be there, how they perceive the rest of the system)
- Have one team member per stakeholder, or each person takes a turn with each stakeholder
- Once all positions have been explored, stand back and look at the system. The team coach might ask: “What strikes you most strongly about what’s happening in the system?”
- If there’s an appetite for this ‘empty chair’ style work, the team coach could follow up by:
– Inviting the team (all or some) to say what they would really like to say to each stakeholder, then exploring what it was like to do this.
– Inviting them to sit as the stakeholder and offer a response.
We’d love to hear your builds on this!
- Allard de Jong and Georgina Woudstra are directors at the Team Coaching Studio.
Join them for a team coaching masterclass on 14 May, 2-5pm UK time, online. Book here: http://bit.ly/37NN1uX
- Next issue: Power and authority
- Georgina Woudstra is an executive coach specialising in coaching chief executives and senior leadership teams. She is founder and principal of the Executive Coach Studio (now Team Coaching Studio).
- The TCS Team Coaching Competency Framework © Team Coaching Studio 2020 can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/2JfKdNH
- www.georginawoudstra.com
- https://teamcoachingstudio.com