Different and often unexpected challenges pop up every day, for front line employees as well as senior leaders. Literally hundreds of emails arrive daily in SLT members’ inboxes and in this volatile, uncertain, often chaotic world, where nothing is like it used to be, experts agree, that senior leaders need a new approach to dealing with the ‘new normal’. Becoming better at making decisions with incomplete information, under ever increasing time pressures and with bigger impacts to follow from bad decisions, is a big ask for any individual alone.

Ever since I heard the retired four-star general of the US Army Stanley McChrystal talk about his concept of “Team of Teams” I intuitively thought his solution was very powerful. McChrystal developed and implemented a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, ensuring that decisions made were based on the collective intelligence of all people involved. He had zoom calls with literally thousands of team leaders on the ground, during active fighting, to make sure everybody’s constructive input could be received.

This is an example of the ultimate way of ensuring that all parts of the system have an opportunity to contribute to the outcome; a slightly extreme example, granted, still; the concept has been proven by him – and rather impressively. So, how can we can use ‘the power of the team’ in our organisation?

The answer that renowned Professors Dr Peter Hawkins and Dr David Clutterbuck from the Henley School of Business came up with is: Systemic Team Coaching.

Systemic Team Coaching is a relatively new discipline within the now widely used and acknowledge leadership development approach of Coaching. How does it work?

The ‘team leader’, often the CEO, identifies that her or his team could ‘do better’. This may be due to the seemingly ubiquitous ‘silo thinking’, maybe they feel that there is more to be gained from better communication, collaboration or simply, that their Senior Leaders are too much bogged down in operational issues. Senior leaders sometimes state they don’t have the capacity to focus on their actual roles and often comment that “my staff should step up and do their jobs, so that I can do mine”.

Whatever the reason for a CEO or ‘team leader’ wanting to improve the effectiveness of their team, this need is not new. Well-known consultancy firms and individual facilitators have valiantly tried to ‘fix’ those teams. They often have their own trademarked ‘solution’, which if it was a ‘one size fits all’, we’d all know about it!

The Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI) based in the UK has refined a process that is as flexible and varied, as the teams it assists. There is no one formula that is applied to every team, no one model that provides the solution to all problems. Instead, Systemic Team Coaching applies the skills of experienced and successful one-on-one coaches to an entire team, simultaneously.

Yes, it is as challenging as it sounds!

I was intrigued how this would work, as coaching one-on-one is already a multi-modal approach requiring ‘head, heart and hands’; being open minded and fully present and ensuring flexibility and perception during the actual contact session. Then there are the years of accumulated knowledge and relevant experience to gain the authority to coach, as well as providing a safe space for the client to experiment, in order to get sustainable changes.

Having graduated recently from the GTCI as a certified Systemic Team Coach I can confirm that all of the above is required and needs to be transposed from the one-on-one coaching to team coaching. Additionally, there is the added intricacy of observing interpersonal relationships, what is going on between team members, who speaks, who is silent and what is being said – and what not? These are demands on the coach and tools of the trade.

 However, the main goal is, for the team to learn how to learn together. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Systemically coaching an entire team enables the team to learn and grow jointly, at the same time – for the benefit of the members individually, the team itself and the relevant organisation – as well as all stakeholders and the surrounding community: the entire system!

Of course, there are models and frameworks that can be applied, but there is no 5- or 7- or 10-step process that the team gets asked to work through. The overarching method is to deal with what comes to the fore. If there is conflict, let’s deal with that and use it as an opportunity to learn. There are ways to enable us to constructively address divergent views. If the team learns how to deal with conflict constructively and effectively, it can apply this repeatedly – and then can continue with getting their jobs done.

Next there might be a comment from a team member about not knowing what’s going on in another department. In that case, as a team, let’s learn together what process would be helpful and not too onerous(!) to make sure everybody is informed to a level that is useful or sufficient for them to be able to effectively do their job. Another team learning – and progress.

Whatever the individual team’s needs are, learning to deal with them, overcome them and being able to progress through these issues, will give the team the opportunity to get into a pattern of solving any issues, as they presents themselves. This is especially powerful, when so far unknown challenges pop up, like for instance a global pandemic.

The ultimate goal is, for the team to be so good at dealing with ‘issues’, that they can eventually look up and start broadening their view: not only focusing on their own challenges, but those of their staff, their customers, their stakeholders, the Board, providers, suppliers etc.

Sounds like something your team could benefit from? Feel free to get in touch: www.turbocoach.co.nz