28TH EMCC GLOBAL MENTORING, COACHING AND SUPERVISION CONFERENCE 2022, 8-10 JUNE, ONLINE
The idea that harmony is something we should seek in teams can be a red herring: focusing on it can negatively impact effectiveness, diversity and creativity, and enhance the chance of groupthink, said Neil Atkinson and Moira Nangle.
In their masterclass, Why a harmonious team is unlikely to be an effective team – a systems perspective on team dynamics, Nangle said that very often clients approach coaches to “help the team get on better” which she sees as a “focus in and down” which can “come with a price.”
“If we’re looking solely within the team for the team to get along, sometimes we can become guilty or at risk of just looking inside the team and looking almost downwards rather than up and out. And maybe that comes with a price: we’re not always paying attention to diversity, creativity, we might not be thinking about how we challenge each other, and we might risk this idea of groupthink,” said Nangle, who with Atkinson is Faculty on the Academy of Executive Coaching’s Systemic Team Coaching Diploma,
Instead, it’s better to adopt a “future back and outside in” approach, she said, exploring what the team needs to deliver and how we can understand stakeholder needs better: “What we’re really wanting is to encourage awareness of the wider system and to enable the different voices of the system to be heard and perhaps challenging any avoidance of stakeholder view.”
Questions Nangle and Atkinson find helpful include what is the truth that needs to be spoken, what is it that appears to be disconnected, and what is the shift that needs to be enabled?
“Our questions can be fateful, and people will often move in the direction we enquire about. Our questions as team coaches will move energy,” said Nangle.
“So if I’m faced with this question of harmony, I’ll ask questions like, who or what does this team exist to serve? What is it that this team and only this team can do? Who can help us here?”
Atkinson said, “Part of the way we work is bringing in a somatic or sense-led practice into the way we coach.”
He led participants through a somatic mapping exercise, guiding them to in turn adopt the position of coach outside the team, a member of the team, and an outside observer. Enquiries included around what can be seen, physical sensations and feelings that are present, what are they noticing that’s influencing the team or which they also influence? What is my heart telling me, what is my gut instinct telling me about what the team should be aware of that they may have the opportunity to influence?
Words of Wisdom
“What’s the difference between coaching and consulting? Consultants get paid for what they put in your brain, coaches get paid for what they pull out of your brain”
Stan Peake, director of leadership development at FSQ Consulting
“[In team coaching] we need to attend to the dance and not to the individual dancers”
Moira Nangle
“In all activities of life, from the simplest physical activities to the highest intellectual and spiritual activities, our whole effort must be to get out of our own light”
Aldous Huxley, shared by Michael Timpson
“A river without banks is a large puddle” (on the importance of contracting)
Ken Blanchard, shared by Sari Van Poelje