Love your work more in 2024

by Renewal Associates

My first Sufi spiritual teacher always said – “You can always love more.”  By this he meant more in terms of depth and breadth.

What would you need to do, to love your work more in 2024?  For too long we have talked about work -life balance in ways that portray work as a burden we then have to recover from.  In contrast I aim to leave each week of work more energised, alive and creative than when the week began.

So, what have I discovered enables this to happen?

  1. Discover the deeper purpose in your work. Work out who and what your work serves, for whom your work creates value and benefit. Love what you do and love those who benefit from it.
  2. Being in love with learning. Every person and team I coach and every person I train and/or supervise, I see as my next teacher. I have made a commitment that if I ever teach a course or workshop and do not: a) learn something new; b) teach something new; and c) upgrade the program, it will be the last time I teach that course.
  3. Teach what you are learning. I believe that we do not learn by being taught, only when we turn what we have read or heard into our own enacted practice. Also, that we learn most by teaching what we are learning to others, as then we need to be clear in understanding the learning and have to embody it.
  4. Always be curious. Be fascinated by everyone you meet; they all have an interesting story to tell.  Also be curious about new places, their history and culture; new subjects and ways of working different to yours.
  5. Surround yourself with great colleagues and partners. When I was in my mid-twenties and running a therapeutic community, I realised that my boss could not supervise my work, so I formed a peer supervision group and recruited people from many different organizations. My learning and love of the work quickly multiplied. Create a group of great colleagues, compatriots with a shared purpose.  Help those already in your team, by discovering their passion and helping them to develop it more fully at work.
  6. Treat every difficult person and situation that you encounter as a ‘generous lesson life has sent you.” Our most difficult clients, colleagues, bosses or teams are potentially best teachers, so rather than getting frustrated by them, ask yourself what they need you to learn.
  7. Work from source rather than from effort. Each summer I run advanced retreats at Barrow Castle near Bath UK and we explore how to work from source and renewable energy, rather than ego effort and energy that is not renewable. This entails letting go of believing it is you doing the work, and having to perform and get it right, and realise you are always working in partnership and just a channel for the work happening.
  8. Create teams that are synergistic and are more than the sum of their parts. Teams that enjoy being together, but even more love what they are collectively and collaboratively achieving together for the benefit of those they serve. Teams that have a collective purpose, remembering it is the purpose that creates the team, not the team members who create the purpose.

 I invite you to think of three easy ways you could love your work more in 2024.

I will be starting the year by teaching a Systemic Team Coaching 3-day training in Houston USA 22-24th January 2024, assisted by Steliana van de Rijt-Economu and meeting up with as many of our North American alumni who can join us on the evening of the 23rd January. I will love learning from each new trainee and how our alumni are taking the work into new worlds.  If you would love to learn with me visit https://www.renewalassociates.co.uk/stc/stc-certificate-houston/


From Grumble to Gratitude – four steps to align with life’s agenda

by Renewal Associates

 

From Grumble to Gratitude – four steps to align with life’s agenda

 I was working with an action learning group of very senior partners in one of the world’s leading professional services firms.  They were all sharing how “Time-poor they were”, how their week was over-filled with meetings and incessant e-mails and messages.  Inside me I could feel a small inner urge to join in the competition of who was the winner in being most time-poor!  However, I soon realised that the conversation was creating a joint downward spiral of helplessness, in privileged leaders who are very senior, powerful and very well paid. so decided I need to intervene.  I said: “I have been sitting here listening and wondering how any of us can be time poor, as far as I know we all have the same number of hours, minutes and seconds every day as everyone other being in the world.  What we are all privileged to have is great range of challenging opportunities, so what would happen if instead of talking about being time-poor, we discussed how we were opportunity rich, privileged to have more possible things to do every day, than we can fit in.”  The energy changed and the dialogue changed to how to make better choices among the multitude of possible activities.

I was delighted when they came back a few months later and told me how they had intervened when their staff had complained about not having enough time and told them they were “Opportunity rich.”.

One of the major ways the energy within a  team is dissipated is through time spent in what I have termed BMWs.  This does not refer to the make of well-known car, but the letters stand for  “Blame, Moan and Whine”.  As problems mount up and challenges get bigger, all of us can fall in feeling victims and hard done by and look for someone to blame.  However, the short-term relief that this may give us, is soon negated and then negatively surpassed, as individual and collective victimhood and helplessness sets in.

Often do I hear the following statements as I  work with many senior leaders and leadership teams around the world:

“Our Board are so unhelpful and restrictive.”

“We just don’t have the time to attend to looking at the really big challenges coming over the horizon.”

“Our CEO is so controlling and never empowers us.”

“We lack the resources to do what is required.”

“Our customers keep making impossible demands.”

“If only I could get rid of X, we would have a great team.”

I am sure there are many examples you could add to this list from your own experience as a coach, or as a leader.  Every minute we listen to a person ‘BMWing’ we are supporting their descent into greater victimhood and feelings of being powerless.  Our job as coaches and team coaches is to help people move to ecological BMWs which stand for “Breath, Move and Wonder”.  To help intervene  supportively in this process I have gradually developed a four-step practice, which I have found very helpful in overcoming both personal and professional difficulties and traumas.

 

  1. Whenever a problem arrives in your life or in another’s story, reframe it not as a problem but as a challenge
    Just play back what you have heard but substituting the word challenge for the word problem
    Example:
    A: My Boss never listens
    B: I hear you have a challenge in finding a way to get heard by your Boss

 

  1. Locate the challenge not in a person, or a part or a system, but in a relationship or connection
    Challenges are always relational, for example between two people, or a person and a task or between two conflicting needs
    Example:
    A:  We can’t make a profit by meeting all the customer’s needs
    B: I hear you have not yet found a way to meet the needs of customers and investors

 

  1. See the challenge as the latest generous lesson that life has sent you, to take your learning and development to the next level
    Challenges take us to the edge of what we know and what we know how to manage or respond to.  This is the learning edge which requires us to expand our repertoire of responses, develop new thinking, new being and new doing
    Example:
    A: I never get heard in meetings
    B: It sounds like life is requiring you to  find new ways of engaging with your team to get your message across

 

  1. Find the gratitude in your heart for being given this lesson, no matter how awful and shocking it maybe at the time
    This is the hardest step of all, particularly when we are faced with a major trauma, difficulty or setback.  But it is very helpful in restoring our equilibrium and resilience
    Example:
    A: As a company we are just recovering from the Covid Pandemic
    B: Perhaps we can explore the gifts, lessons and new opportunities that Covid brought to us

 

Professor Peter Hawkins  May 2023

 


Is Your Inner Team more than the sum of its parts? 

by Peter Hawkins

Is Your Inner Team more than the sum of its parts? 

 In coaching teams over the last forty years in many parts of the world, I have realised that one of the teams that most needs coaching is our own ‘inner team’.  Each of us has many different roles which are matched by different sub-personalities.  We think we have just one ‘I’, but we have many ‘I’s.  Sometimes these different parts of ourselves complement and support each other: other times they disagree and fight together.  The great 20th century Sufi teacher Gurdjieff would point out in his teachings, that the ‘I’ that goes to bed determined to get up in the morning to get a job done before breakfast, is not the same ‘I’, as the one who wakes up tired in the morning and wants to rest in bed. 

We can start developing our inner team by discovering more about each of the team members. Each of these is cocreated in the space between us and the worlds we inhabit.   I have in my team, the teacher, the writer, the organizational consultant, the coach,  the gardener, the husband, father, and grandfather.  Then there are the less prominent members, such as the avid reader, the one who loves good food and wine and entertaining, the humorous one, the meditator, the one who loves young children,  the poet, the friend, the walker, the one who watches cricket and sport. Then there is the integrating and orchestrating ‘Self’, who witnesses these different roles and sub-personalities and who needs to play the role of the team leader. 

The next step in helping this team to be more than the sum of its parts, is to find the team purpose.  This work can be done by addressing the questions:  

  1. what can this team do through collaborating together, that they cannot do by working separately in parallel?   
  1. who and what does the team serve, which require their teamwork? 
  1. what are the top priorities that they all share? 

Only then can we turn to explore how the team members need to collaborate better to serve the collective purpose. We can inquire into which of these support each other and which ones compete for attention?  We can look at our own inner diversity and inclusion – which team members get all the limelight and demand attention, and which ones easily get overlooked and ignored? 

One way of addressing this is to use the method I developed for feedback between team members and the wider team, entitled “Team Contribution Grid” (Hawkins 2022, pp.376-377), for each of your internal team members.  You fill out a separate grid for each member.  Here is the grid I created for each of my team members to complete. 

Three ways I currently contribute to Team Peter 

 

 

  •   
  •   
  •  
Three ways I could contribute more fully to Team Peter 

 

  •   
  •   
  •  
Three ways I receive value from team Peter 

 

 

  •   
  •   
  •   
Three ways I could receive greater value from team Peter 

 

  •   
  •   
  •  

 

Once they have all been completed, then If you can, put each separate grid on a different chair and imagine them all sitting there, and one by one giving feedback, as you stand in the middle representing the whole team. 

If this is not possible, stick them all up on a wall or white board.  Arrange them in clusters, with those who get on well together, close to each other, and those who are disconnected at a distance.  Think how they would respond to each other. 

Having listened to all the parts, as the team leader, where do you need to coach and facilitate better connections between members?  Which team members need more attention and time in the spotlight?  Which need to be less prominent and move into more of a support role? 

Now compose the message you want all your team members to hear and take on board. Completing the following seed sentences might help you do this: 

  1. Our biggest collective challenges, which requires help from all of you are……… 
  2. Together we could achieve so much more in………  by……….. 
  3. To achieve that, the help I need from all of you is……. 

 

Once you have written this, try reading it out loud imagining all the different team members in different places in the room. 

Then compose individual messages for each of the individual members. 

  1. What I value about your contribution is…… 
  2. What I find difficult about you is…… 
  3. What the difference I need from you going forward is….. 

In response to each of these, write the commitment that you need each of these roles and sub-personalities to make.  Try and be as specific as possible. 

As team leader we need to love and appreciate every member of our inner team, and not be ashamed of any one of them.  If there are any, we are ashamed of, we need to find a way of developing them to change or help them successfully leave the team.  Our biggest challenge is to help the team to be aligned to the collective purpose and key future challenges; to work together so the team becomes more than the sum of its parts. 

 

Peter Hawkins April 2023 


Dancing on The Learning Edge

by Renewal Associates

Dancing on The Learning Edge. 

 

The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.”  Ursula Le Guin (1989) 

-All Coaching, Team Coaching, Team Meetings, Conferences are most creative when they quickly travel to the ‘Learning Edge’ and discover how to be creative together at the place where are knowing no longer helps and new answers are required. 

I define the Learning Edge as the place where none of the team members has the answer, where neither the Team Leader or the Team Coach, have the answer, but everyone is clear that life and our stakeholders are requiring us to find and answer. 

What helps us travel quickly to this edge, rather than wasting time trading advice to each other’s problems and sharing pre-cooked thinking, are three processes: 

  1. Thinking outside-in: getting team members to discover who their works creates value for and what each of those stakeholders value about them, find difficult and need different going forward  
  2. Creating future back: Where does the team need to be in 3-5 years’ time in order to double its beneficial impact in the world and create greater value, with and for all its stakeholders, including the wider ecology we all share?  Visioning what success would look, sound and feel like, once we have achieved that. Then addressing the road-map to get there and what are the main barriers and blockages that need to be overcome. 
  3. Turning Problems into Challenges and Challenges into  Opportunities: now we have to reframe the barriers and blockages from being problems to being challenges and opportunities.  The great Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote 

“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way” 

One simple practice I have for doing this is when people say,’ but you cannot do x in our organization’, I simply respond with the one word: ‘yet’. 

  1. Entering the journey together with Open Mind; Open Heart and Oen Will: These are the three pre-requisites that Otto Scharmer recommends in the early stages of the U shaped journey of transformation. 

You can sense when you arrive at the learning edge, because it starts to feel scary – the excitement and anxiety increase and the road ahead is foggy and unclear.  Often at this stage teams can become desperate and turn to the team leader or team coach and imploring ask, “so what should we do?”  This has to be resisted, as otherwise the moment of discovery is quickly replaced by a moment of dependency.   

The next human reaction to resist the fresh challenge that is facing us, is to quickly search for past solutions that have worked before. Here it is essential to be reminded that “what got us to her, will not get us to there.”  New times and new challenges call for fresh new responses.  Here as team leader or team coach we have to quickly block off the easy exits, that will quickly become cul-de-sacs, and support the team in staying on the foggy cliff edge. 

Here we have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, discover what we have to unlearn to free up the space for new learning to emerge, and facilitate processes for generative dialogue, where we can cocreate an answer that was in nobody’s head before we came together.  A good example of such a process is what I have termed ‘Collective Build’ ( see Hawkins 2021: pp371-372 ) 

If you want to explore both your own learning edge and how to help others learn at the edge, then I am running two summer Advanced Retreats for experienced coaches, consultants and leaders in the beautiful setting of Barrow Castle just outside the historical small city of Bath, UK on June 28th -30th and September 6th-8th 2023. Fore more details visit https://www.renewalassociates.co.uk/events/advanced-retreats/ 

 


Transforming David Kantor’s Four Player model of Team Roles

by Renewal Associates

Transforming David Kantor’s Four Player model of Team Roles

 The late David Kantor (17 December 1927 – 28 March 2021)  made a very valuable contribution to exploring different roles and communication patterns in teams.  His “Four Player” model, proposed that there are four different roles team members can play in team meetings.  These are: 

  • Mover – a person who proposes or advocates an action or strategy for the team
  • Opposer – the person who opposes what has been proposed 
  • Follower – people who agree and follow what has been proposed
  • Bystander – someone who neither supports nor opposes what has been proposed, but provides information, data, or commentary on the proposition

These are often laid out in the following model: 

Mover
Bystander
Follower
Opposer 

 These roles can be further used to explore the dominant or habitual communication patterns in a team.  Using P for a proposition; O, for an opposition, F, for the communicating of support and followership, and B – for a neutral contribution from a bystander. 

Thus, a team meeting where someone put up an idea, which is immediately opposed, followed by a different proposition, which in turn is immediately opposed would be scored as M/O/M/O. 

A meeting where a proposition is put forward and everyone just falls into line agreeing to it, would be M/F/F/F/F. 

A meeting where a Proposition is put forward and several team members provide a commentary and stories and further data, but no one agrees to make it happen would be M/B/B/B/B. 

There are many other patterns and dance between the four types of players.  If people stick to just these four player roles, the best that can be hoped for when a mover makes a proposition is that some followers, say great idea, I am up for that, while some of the bystanders bring other perspectives, data and experience that helps refine and develop the proposition, before they too become followers of the new improved idea.   

The model captures some of the often-adopted roles and interplays in traditional team meetings. However, in the many years I have been working in teams I constantly meet the need of the team to go beyond understanding the roles they are trapped in enacting, to discovering how these can transform in a way for the team to be more co-creative and generative.  This is where team coaches need not only maps to better see the current terrain of the team, but also possible new transformative pathways. That help the team mature their inter-play.   

Moving the dancers on to transform the dance. 

I have written a great deal, about how you develop co-creation and generative dialogue within leadership teams that is a key part of creating a team that is more than the sum of its parts. (See especially Hawkins 2021 and Hawkins 2022),  In relation to the role and patterns that David Kantor so usefully saw and wrote about, I have discovered that what can help the team move on further, is first for all four players to transform how they play their role.   

Mover to Challenge Framer
The first important change is when the person that brings the proposition steps back from being a Mover, trying to promote and persuade people to follow a solution, and instead frames the challenge that they are inviting the team to help them address.  I have frequently written about how, if the team do not own and buy into the challenge, they will not own and buy into the solution.  I think it was Reg Revans who said, “people do not resist change, they resist being changed”.  

Opposer to Inquirer
When the challenge has been framed and people invited to help address it, the next changed required is for the Opposer to become an inquirer, sharing any concerns not through arguing against any potential solution, but asking questions that address their concerns, or invite exploration of potential unintended consequences to different ways of addressing the challenge. 

Bystander to Contributor
To create a change in the culture of an organization or even in a team dynamic, one of the quickest ways is to mobilise the bystanders.  A Team Coach or team member can ask the people who are sitting on the side-lines watching a conflict or a stuck situation, to come out of the audience and get active on the pitch.  This involves also helping them move from being a non-committal commentator on what is happening to someone who build on what is there and develops and shapes it to the next stage of iteration and development. 

Follower to Implementer
I have witnessed many times, teams all agreeing to what is proposed but then wondering a month later why it has not happened.  Sometimes I will point out they have confused agreement with commitment.  Agreement is made with raising your hand or nodding your head and means I think it is a good idea and someone should make it happen. Commitment is embodied and means I will put my energy into making it happen. 

 With these transformed player roles, the dance can look very different.   

  1. CF.  We have a challenge X and I need the team’s help in working out how we will address it.
  2. Can you say more about what you see as the dangers and risks if we do not address X?

I (2). What would success look like if we managed to collectively address that challenge? 

  1. One way I have seen this challenge being addressed elsewhere is….

C (2). What if we experimented with  …… 

C (3).  One way I would build on that is…. 

  1. These are great ideas, if I have heard you right and put all those ideas together it sounds like the first step we need to make happen is…….

Imp.  I am up for leading on making that happen. Are there 2 or 3 others that will work with me on this? 

Imp (2,3,4,)  Yes happy to support you on this.  

  1. CF. When will you bring this back to the team for us to collectively develop it further?

Imp. Two weeks today if the others of you think this is realistic? 

Thus, by transforming each of the dancers we have created a new dance between them which is more generative and co-creative dance.  But this transformation of the dance does not happen over-night, it takes clear intention, and practice, and mutual help an challenge when we all fall back on old habits and patterns. 

Peter Hawkins April 2023 

  1. Hawkins, P. (2021).  Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership.  4th edition.  London: Kogan Page
  2. Hawkins, P. (ed) (2022).  Leadership Team Coaching in Practice: Case Studies on Creating Highly Effective Teams.  3rd edition.  London: Kogan Page
  3. Kantor, D. (2012) Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders.  San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass  

 


Dr Malcolm Parlett Ph.D – Scholar in Residence, Barrow Castle

by Renewal Associates

RENEWAL FOUNDATION – SCHOLAR IN RESIDENCE
Dr Malcolm Parlett Ph.D

Dr Malcolm Parlett Ph.D one of the Scholar in Residence at Barrow Castle through the Renewal Foundation, talks to Professor Peter Hawkins about the new book he has been working on whilst on retreat at the castle as a Scholar in residence.
Malcom’s last book “Future Sense, Five explorations of whole intelligence for a world that is waking up” , the essence of which centers around five explorations; areas of human skillfulness, human capabilities and the five areas of exploration being interrelating, responding to the situation, embodying, self-recognizing and experimenting.

You can watch the interview here

There is an event you may be interested in “Working together to change our legacy” Climate Coaching Alliance. You can find more details or to register here:


How do I increase my ‘Confidence’ as a team coach?

by Renewal Associates

What do we mean by confidence?

Where does the word come from?

The prefix con, in Latin means ‘with’ or ‘connected to’.

Fidence, also comes from the Latin, and is connected to ‘fides’ which can mean either’ to have trust in,’ or ‘to have faith that’.

One of the most well-known lines in the Christian Bible is:

Nunc autem manent fides, spes, caritas, tria hæc

‘And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity or love.’

In mediaeval Christian mythology Faith, Hope and Charity were the three martyred saints who were the daughters of Sophia, or wisdom.

So, let us focus on Saint Fides, who do we need to have faith and trust with or in? We might start by saying I need to have trust and faith in the coachee, or others might say, no I must have faith and trust in my ability and expertise as a coach.  Both of these might be partially helpful in our early development as coaches.  However, the most transformational coaching happens at the learning edge, where neither the coach, or coachee have the answer, but both know in their heart of hearts that life is requiring an answer, or at the very least a response.  In the many years I have been supervising coaches and practising as a coach, I know that when we are faced with the learning edge, most of us panic and fall back on old patterns and defences.  At this place of transformation, neither the client or the coach can be fully trusted, for we are both flawed, limited learning humans.

So where to place my trust and faith?

Some people say: “trust the process”, and others “trust the relational container”.  This is a helpful relational turn in our focus and a useful next step. For here we are invested in our collective wisdom as being greater than the sum of our limited individual wisdoms, we are trusting that if we continue to explore and inquire collaboratively together, new generative thinking and being, can emerge.

I believe there is a third step, where we move from the relational to the systemic turn.  Here we place our faith and trust not in individuals, or even a collection or team of individuals, but in the greater system we are all part of.  In coaching teams, this might involve bringing in the perspectives of: other parts of the organization; the wider stakeholders; and/or past and future generations.

The fourth step is the eco-systemic turn where we move beyond placing our faith just in human individuals and  human groupings or even in  humanity as a species, but the much larger eco-system of creation, evolution, life and death.

When you encounter the panic at the learning edge, both in you and the team you are working with, do not react, or try harder, but instead pray.  It does not matter who you pray to, as long as it is a greater system than you. Some people then ask: But what if no answer comes?  My response: “Be patient and pray harder?”

This protects us from the four dangers:

  1. Over investing your trust in another, which becomes a burden
  2. The arrogance of trusting yourself,
  3. Individualism and
  4. Human-centricity.

Instead, we are left with the wisdom of vulnerability, held and supported by humility and faith.

Peter Hawkins, March 22nd 2023

THE WORLD’S FIRST GTCI SYSTEMIC TEAM COACHING® GLOBAL SENIOR PRACTITIONER PROGRAM

The last chance to join an amazing global cohort of Senior Practitioners taking Systemic Team Coaching® to the next level of development. This program, led by world leading Practitioners and Authors; Professor Peter Hawkins, Colm Murphy, Dr Catherine Carr & Inge Simons


Virtual North America Systemic Team Coaching® Certificate Program 17-20 April 2023

by Renewal Associates

Virtual North American Systemic Team Coaching® Certificate Program  17-20 April 2023

Have you been wondering how to become an ICF accredited Team Coach?
 
Join our North America Systemic Team Coaching® Certificate program, which has been delivered globally for over 13 years, for an opportunity to experientially learn how to be a Systemic Team Coach with a small group of experienced coaches.
 
Facilitated by Dr Hilary Lines and Dr Catherine Carr, two preeminent Systemic Team Coaches and Thought Leaders within the field.

Program sessions are timed to suit multiple time zones (08:00 – 12:00 PT / 11:00 – 15:00 ET)

Full details on the Virtual North America Systemic Team Coaching® Certificate Program and how to apply STC CERTIFICATE© NORTH AMERICA


The world’s first Systemic Team Coaching® Global Senior Practitioner Program: claim your Early Bird 20% discount

by Renewal Associates

The world’s first Systemic Team Coaching® Global Senior Practitioner Program: claim your Early Bird 20% discount

 

Do you want to develop your range and agility in systemic team coaching thinking, doing and being?

Would you like to be a part of an amazing cohort of team coaches who are supported to double their impact in the world?

Do you want to build your capacity to engage with organizations and complex systems ?

Are you seeking to enable change, challenge and transformation at individual/team/team of teams/organizational and ecosystem levels?  

 

We are very pleased to announce that the much anticipated First Global Senior Practitioner in Systemic Team Coaching® program is now open to applications. Starting on 17th of April 2023 with a saving of US$1,000 if you apply before 1st March.

Full details on the Senior Practitioner Program and how to apply here   https://www.coaching.com/programs/gtci/sr-practitioner/brochure/

The Senior Practitioner Program will be taught by some of the most experienced Systemic Team Coaches from around the world with live engagement from international CEOs and is limited to only 240 spaces, to ensure the deepest level of learning.

We will also be discussing the details in a complimentary webinar live with myself and Colm Murphy on 20th February on ‘How to engage and partner with your clients on the team coaching journey.’ You can join by registering here:

Register for the complimentary 1-hour webinar at 5am ET on 20 Feb 2023 https://coaching.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0ScJXGv_TTyk_QzdS_FR3g

Register for the complimentary 1-hour webinar at 11am ET on February 20, 2023 https://coaching.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Hc3pq0raSgiyA6geJFN93A

Contact Details GTCI@renewalassociates.co.uk 

 

You’ll acquire crucial skills for advanced Systemic Team Coaching® in the modern business world, such as:

  • Coaching a transformational shift
  • Seeing and acting systemically
  • Helping teams develop partnerships beyond their organization
  • Coaching teams of teams and develop an integrated team coaching culture
  • Addressing complex organizational challenges
  • Developing the self-coaching team
  • Learning to coach across the boundaries
  • Coaching the “team of teams”; that is more than the sum of the teams and developing an integrated teaming culture right across an enterprise.
  • Experiencing complex organizational challenges through live sessions with international CEOs
  • Creating compelling ways to partner in meeting these challenges.

You will develop your range and agility in Systemic Team Coaching® thinking, doing and being in order to deepen and strengthen your capacity to engage with your current teams and then take your work to the next level by building your team coaching out across organizations and complex systems. In doing so, you will enable change, challenge and transformation at individual, team, team of teams, organizational and ecosystem levels.

You will learn how to grow your business further by delivering team coaching engagements, over several years in the same organization, to a number of teams while also coaching the connections between these teams, and between the teams and their stakeholders.

 


13 NEW CHRISTMAS CRACKERS FOR SYSTEMIC TEAM COACHES

by Peter Hawkins

Introduction

This is the sixth year that I am sending a range of Systemic Team Coaching Christmas Crackers out to the wide and growing global community of team coaches around the world.  Each year I take one-line aphorisms that I have found myself using on my various trainings and make a short collection.  Like mottos and jokes in Christmas Crackers, they are there to both amuse and help us see the world differently.  I hope you enjoy them.  Previous years aphorisms are published in the 4th Edition of “Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership” (2021) published by Kogan Page.

 

  1. For this particular ‘match’ which of my inner team do I need to have on the pitch, which on the substitutes bench and which do I need to rest, so they can be used on another day.
    This was inspired not just by the Football World Cup, but also by Marita Fridjhon ‘s question: “How do we bring our best self to each unique encounter and leave our worst self at home watching T.V.”! We all have an internal team of different sub-personalities, and every systemic team coaching encounter requires us to be choiceful of which we bring into play.
  2. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction.”
    This quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is as applicable to teams as it is to personal relationships.  Often the best way to develop trust is to have a joint challenge that requires us to collaborate, should to shoulder, looking in the same direction.
  3. Destination precedes the journey; it does not come at the end.
    It is the love for the destination that inspires the journey and creates the route we need to take – read Cavafy’s great poem Ithaka.
  4. The Systemic Team Coach needs to focus on the needs of those not in the room, as much as those who are present.
    These include past, future or absent team members; the full range of stakeholders, the wider community, future generations and the ‘more-than-human’ world of our shared Earth.
  5. Do Not let small groups have an individual report back to the large group.
    The sharing of the dried up remains of a past conversation creates death by serial feedback. Enable the whole sub-group to turn what happened in their small sub-group into a springboard to start a new even richer conversation in the larger group.
  6. Be precise with your intent and instruction or you will confuse the team.
    Many coaches are excellent at asking open-ended questions but as a systemic team coach you need also to enable activities and action, and this requires being clear about the purpose the activity serves and what you are asking the team members to do.
  7. Mobilise the contribution of your extra team member.
    A recent executive team of 6 were complaining that they lacked the resource to do everything that was needed.  I asked them how they were utilising the seventh member of their team.  Who is that they asked. I replied: “She is called synergy.”
  8. If you have no idea what to do next pray.
    This can be to any God, higher power, the eco-system, life etc; it is only important that you pray to an entity bigger than you.  By praying we stop ourselves trying to be heroic or solve the issue by ourselves and develop a humility that asks for help and takes us to the learning edge.
  9. We all have the capacity to double our impact in the world – but not alone.
    Don’t just ask what I can change and what I cannot change, but rather what I can change: a) alone (very little), b) change by a new collaboration with others, and c) influence others to change.
  10. Managers delegate tasks, leaders need to commission outcomes.
    Many leadership teams, get stuck delegating tasks and wondering why the responsibility boomerangs back to them.  Leadership Teams that learn how to commission other teams, with a clear definition of what needs to be achieved, for whom,  by when and within what constraints – and then gives the ownership of ‘how to do this’ to the team, achieves much more.
  11. Originality consists in returning to the origin.
    This lovely quote from the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, connects with my constant inquiry in how we work from ‘source’ rather than from effort.
  12. To do things right first you need love, then technique.
     Another moving Antoni Gaudi quote I discovered in Barcelona this year. It helped me realise that I would rather help 100 systemic Team Coaches fall in love with teams and the world they serve, than help 1,000 learn the basic competencies.
  13. Insight is created in the Neo-cortex of our brains, but change is always embodied.
    This connects with an earlier one-liner “The Coaching Road to hell is paved with ‘aha’ moments and action plans that never get enacted.”

Happy Christmas, Hanukah, Solstice, Dōngzhì Festival, Yuletide, Saturnalia, or December holidays to all my friends, colleagues, and Blog followers everywhere.

There will be a new GTCI Gateway programs and Senior Practitioner program in 2023.

I will also be running a number of Systemic Team Coaching 3-day intensives in 2023.  In addition, I will be holding Advanced Retreats for Coaches and Team Coaches during June and September in Barrow Castle, Bath UK, and an on-line programme on supervising team coaching and Transformational Coaching, all in Bath, UK.
There are also STC Cert programmes happening in Barbados in January, UK, China, North America, Singapore and Africa. For more information visit STC Certificates

Peter Hawkins
22 December 2022
©Renewal Associates 2022