TOGETHER
IS BETTER
SYSTEMIC TEAM COACHING
In today’s rapidly changing world, organizations need to be agile and adaptable to stay ahead. Heroic leadership is no longer enough. Building strong, high-performing teams that can work together and coach themselves is essential for success.
Systemic Team Coaching is a powerful approach to building highperforming teams that are aligned with an organization’s purpose and mission. It’s a holistic approach that goes beyond individual coaching to address the complex dynamics and interdependencies within a team.
As a Systemic Team Coach, I work with teams to uncover and address the underlying patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that can impede progress and limit success. By taking a systemic approach, I help teams achieve breakthroughs that can have a ripple effect throughout the entire organization.
Systemic Team Coaching is not just about addressing short-term challenges. It’s about building a sustainable culture that empowers teams to continuously learn and improve. By creating a safe and supportive environment where team members can express themselves openly and honestly, I help teams build trust, improve communication, and foster a culture of collaboration and innovation.
At the heart of my Systemic Team Coaching approach is the belief that every team has the potential to achieve greatness. By addressing the systemic issues that can impede progress, I help teams achieve their goals and drive value for all stakeholders.
At the end of the day, successful organizations are built on strong teams that are aligned with the organization’s purpose, mission, and values. By investing in Systemic team Coaching, you can build a culture of collaboration, purpose alignment, and high performance that drives value for all stakeholders.
Benefits of Team Coaching
Team Coaching Process
CASE STUDY
BACKGROUND
In 2022, two software development teams, A and B, were brought in for Systemic Team Coaching in a software development company with 250+ employees and $45 million revenue p.a. The teams were distributed in India and Europe and were newly formed in March 2022. The goal of coaching was to make the teams selforganized, deliver value effectively, and improve psychological safety. The engagement started in April 2022 and ended in November 2022, with a break during European summer vacation for about 6 weeks. The two co-coaches were from India and Europe.
The team coaching process started with understanding the team’s and organizational context by conducting
1-on-1 interviews of team members & key stakeholders identified by the team.
An agreement was made with the team on the team development goals based on the interview findings, as well as inputs from the LT’s vision for team development. The agreement also contained team norms, formulated by team members, to facilitate their participation in the coaching process.
Teams chose to bring important topics connected to team development goals to each session based on what was the pressing need in the team. The team coaching approach was adjusted after each session based on the feedback from the teams. Apart from the team coaching sessions, the coaches met the teams in check-ins after every session.
The leadership team had not formulated their vision for team development at the start of the team coaching engagement. The coaches supported the LT to formulate a vision for team development and handshake with teams on their team development goals. Along with the two teams, LT had their own learning curve in the team coaching engagement. The coaches supported LT through frequent sync meetings and had a specific coaching dojo for LT to support them to take on a coaching leadership style in line with the new organizational structure and LT’s vision for the org. Team A participated in 3 team coaching sessions and 1 training session, but stopped team coaching mid-way due to delivery issues. Team B participated in 4 team coaching sessions, 1 training session, and 1 coaching dojo session.
OUTCOMES AND IMPACT
The outcomes and impact of the coaching engagement were significant. For team A, the team members started using video and stayed unmuted in team meetings prompting them to speak up more than before. They expressed ideas and opinions more openly in team meetings. Hidden conflicts were surfaced, individual conflict styles mapped, and conflicts seen as neutral. Team created better visibility using kanban and understanding of bottlenecks resulting in developers helping during testing to complete work items as per the committed timeline.
For team B, developers experimented with less documentation for smaller requirements and did the analysis directly. Developers were involved in the refinement process much more, and refinement was not seen as a single meeting.
Real-life use cases were considered, stakeholders were involved earlier in the process, resulting in stakeholders having higher trust in the team. The team understood the value of conflicts and playing devil’s advocate from time to time to expand thinking.
The team also appreciated each other in the big group, understood how to work with key stakeholders, and developed a sense of family. Team members were empowered to take decisions and manage stakeholders directly, which reduced management time from PO & SM and the team now understands coaching and co-coaching.
LEARNINGS FOR THE LEADERSHIP TEAM
Before, LT was instructive and involved in problem resolution, but was unaware of their own leadership style. They also saw conflicts as bad and dissent as negative.However, after some learning and reflection, LT made some positive changes. They learned to take a coaching approach and recognized the need for clearer communication on changes. They also became aware of their own lack of coaching skills.
Moreover, LT now saw conflicts as natural and started to listen to dissent, becoming less defensive. They are convinced that a coaching style will support teams to resolve conflicts on their own. Despite feeling that they have matured, LT also recognizes that they don’t have all the answers and are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. They started their team coaching journey in the LT in 2023.
What Our Clients Say
Our team was new to the kind of work we started doing that led to difficulties to work as a team. Team coaching gave us space to talk about our problems. Instead of giving us answers, Sahana and her co-coach, made us think and solve the problems ourselves. We became strong as a team and addressed items that were pending for a long time. The coaches made me comfortable to talk in the meetings and I am very thankful for them.
I joined the team in August, a couple of months after the team coaching process had already begun. As a new member, it was important for me to understand the goals and the language of this group that had already been working together for quite a while.The team coaching sessions, guided by Sahana and her co-coach have helped me get on the same page with the rest of the team. The discussions in these sessions have also helped me see where I can best direct my efforts to contribute to the group. During these sessions, we were also able to see the goals we shared as individuals and as a group . We’ve been able to develop a shared and appreciative language to communicate with each other. Our team coaches have been wonderful. The idea of team coaching is new to me, and this has been a very valuable introduction to the whole process. I’m very happy and grateful that we had this opportunity to work with them. Thank you.
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INNER ODYSSEY. OUTER EXPRESSION