This issue, Dr Shona Brown, Rachel Doogue, Alana Jossel and present their ‘I, WE, IT Liminal Space Model’ for Team Coaches
We, Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong, have been writing this column since 2017. In our desire to hear more voices from the field of team coaching, we have shifted our roles from authors to curators of this column. In this issue, Dr Shona Brown, Rachel Doogue, Alana Jossel and Sandy Smith present how their ‘I, WE, IT Liminal Space Model’ can illuminate opportunities for growth in a team ecosystem.
In this article we share the emerging ‘I, WE, IT Liminal Space Model’ and its component concepts and offer some insights into how we’ve been using it in our team coaching practice to support teams to fulfil their full potential.
We invite you as readers to road test the model, and to share any learnings with us to inform further development of the model.
Benefits
The I, We, IT Liminal Space Model has the potential to enhance team effectiveness by raising awareness of the team ecosystem and the liminal spaces connecting the elements of the system, empowering the team to make changes to meet the needs of the system, while also considering impact at an individual, team and system level (I, WE, IT).
Individual team members may also achieve deep change as they find more of themselves in relation to the team and show up as who they need to be for the team.
Background
During the pandemic we noticed a predominate concern for the wellness of individual team members and improving personal resilience. Most of us are more naturally aware of what I want or need, and perhaps less aware of what’s needed by others – the WE or the wider IT of the team, such as wider stakeholder needs.
We believe there’s potential to invite a much more deliberate focus in team coaching on the individual I within the team, the collective WE of the team’s members, and the team’s IT, the team identity. And hence we thought that there could be value for teams and coaches to have a model that depicts and works with all three aspects.
Key features of the model
Our work builds on other I, WE, IT models (Integral Theory Four Quadrants: Wilber, 2000), by including the concepts of team ecosystem and liminal space, which we see as particularly relevant to team coaching.
In essence, how we frame and talk about teams makes a significant contribution to how we think about and respond to challenges of working as a team. Our model provides the framing, in this sense, and lies at the heart of how we work with the model with teams (see Figure 1).
The model has two core components: the Team Ecosystem and Liminal Space.
Team Ecosystem
Thinking about a team as an ecosystem focuses attention on how the elements connect and grow. Each element has its own role, so that it contributes to the development of the whole thing (Stokols et al, 2019). In our model, I, WE, IT and the wider system within which the team sits constitutes the team ecosystem:
- I – the individual – their role, needs, identity, history, and so on
- WE – interpersonal relationships within the team, team dynamics; processes of decision making, communication, conflict
- IT – the remit of the team – what it’s required to accomplish, what team norms exist, what stakeholders require of the team
- Wider system – the wider systems involved, that can be ever-changing and require the team to respond and adapt.
When we work in teams, there’s always the opportunity to move with agility between the perspectives of I, WE, IT and wider system the team is located in to optimise our contributions in a team. With this model, we facilitate that agility, inviting teams to consider all aspects of the ecosystem.
Liminal Space
The gestalt language of liminal space (Denham-Vaughan, 2010) describes the threshold between the I, the WE, and the IT and the wider system in which the team exists. Bringing attention to this image helps individuals, teams, and team coaches navigating these transitions, recognising that individuals influence the team and wider systems, and vice versa – that the team and wider systems influence individuals.
The beautiful Italian word attraversiamo means ‘let us cross over’. The liminal space in our model is that medium of crossover between I, WE and IT and the wider system. In developing our model, and with our clients, we paid attention to significant crossover moments, where there was a shift in the team, something happened that enhanced the team identity, and added to the effectiveness and satisfaction of the team.
Using the model
We advocate using the visual model to invite people to consider the liminal spaces between I, WE, IT and wider systems. Within the dialogic conversation evoked by the image, there’s an opportunity for people to imagine new ways of thinking and acting in teams.
Team coaches can help the team explore the crossover between elements, helping the team shift its ways of working and being, and giving teams a framework to learn and grow together by engaging their collective potential. Here are some questions coaches can use:
- What’s required from the I, in being a team member in service of the WE (team)?
- What do individuals (I) need, from the other team members and the team to be the best version of themselves?
- What’s required of this team by the IT? (ecosystem, organisation and stakeholders)
- How does the IT (organisation and team purpose, vision, strategy, structure, processes) support and enable the I and the WE?
Working in this way helps the team develop its collective ability to build its effectiveness based on what’s happening in its wider systems that it needs to respond to, its individual member and collective team strengths, and its assessment of needs (see case study).
Conclusion
The I, WE, IT Liminal Space Model helps us explore and open up areas that we (as team coaches) and the team may well be blind to.
Download the white paper
- If you would like to download a white paper describing this model in full, accompanied by a handout of questions for team coaches, please visit: https://teamcoachingstudio.com/liminal-space-model/
An invitation to road test
- As with any model “the map is not the territory” (Korzybski, 1983). For this reason, we’re inviting team coaches interested in road testing the model, share learning and engage by joining our special interest group here: https://tinyurl.com/y8cubndt
Join our webinar
l We’d also love to have you at our upcoming Team Coaching Studio Community webinar to introduce the model, examine the benefits and share how to use it to increase team effectiveness. To join this community, go to: https://tinyurl.com/53ekptvd
CASE STUDY
The I who couldn’t let go and the WE who invited him over for the sake of the IT
Director, Bob, felt he was the custodian of risk of the high-profile biotech company and his resulting behaviour was having a negative impact on the wider team. The team had been struggling with this for some time and were stuck. The coach invited an exploration of the I, WE, IT Liminal Space Model through two questions:
- What do I (Bob) need from each of you?
- What do our stakeholders need?
The presence of the image as a focal point for the conversation brought a calming effect, a more relaxed and supportive dialogue. Speaking from ‘I’, Bob described feeling the pressure of managing all the business risk. His colleagues started to see how this pressure was affecting Bob and began to explore ways of supporting Bob.
The focus on stakeholders needs (IT) helped depersonalise this from an I, WE opposition, enabling Bob to be more specific on what he needed from colleagues. They arrived at an understanding that enabled them to move forward.
Our model helped Bob’s colleagues reach out to help him cross the liminal space between I and WE, in service of IT, and to make new working agreements for the benefit of all.
- Dr Shona Brown, Rachel Doogue, Alana Jossel and Sandy Smith are students on Team Coaching Studio’s 2021-2022 Diploma in Team Coaching and members of the Team Coaching Studio’s growing community of 900+ team coaches around the globe.