As a coach, I frequently examine the impact I have on my clients as a way of measuring progress.
Organizations seeking to justify the investment in team coaching have relied upon employee and customer satisfaction surveys, productivity and retention metrics, and anecdotal evidence. However, the greatest breakthroughs from coaching often elude measurement, and if one were required to assign a price tag, each would be deemed priceless.
Cohesion
Cohesion is created when all team members share a sense of belonging to the group, and know their voices are heard and their contributions valued. Behaviors that demonstrate cohesion include a willingness to endure sacrifices for the good of the group, and defending against challenges that arise from outside the group.
Resilience
Resilience is a team’s ability to integrate new members, absorb loss, adapt to meet change, and manage pressure, while maintaining a stable, healthy environment for its members.
Clarity
Clarity is a team’s shared, lucid, clear vision of the problem or situation and its contributing factors. Once this is achieved, an effective solution can be developed.
Coaching teams is a very different proposition from coaching individuals, because my exposure and impact can be far greater. As an Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC™) practitioner, I’m often asked to explain what distinguishes my approach from other schools of thought about team coaching. We know that a team is more than a collection of individuals. Its shared strengths, weaknesses, skills, knowledge and culture combine to create what we’ve called the Third Entity. Essentially, this is the client with whom we establish the coaching relationship—not individuals on the team.
When we share this insight with teams, there is often an immediate and visceral reaction of relief. “We knew our team had its own identity, but we just didn’t know what to call it.”
- The relationship systems approach takes the focus away from an individual—”Kelly is the problem with this team”—thereby deactivating blame, defensiveness, and other obstacles we typically encounter in team coaching.
- We view individual behaviors as a signal being sent by the system, removing the need to scapegoat. Just replacing Kelly won’t fix the problem. Another employee will step in to play that role. Coaching looks deeper to identify what the system is trying to express through this behavior, and what changes the system is calling for.
- Clients come to coaching because they have problems. Your job as a coach is to help them find the solutions. The extent to which you do that is how they will measure your impact on the team.
The highest levels of satisfaction have been reported when my clients have been able to achieve one or more of the following with their teams in pursuit of solutions: cohesion, resilience, and clarity.
ORSC in action
Cohesion case study
One of my clients, a non-profit organization, came to me with some serious HR issues. Staff members felt they were treated unfairly, gossip and back-biting ensued, which was spilling into the community that the non-profit served. In some cases, these issues escalated to lawsuits.
One of the tools we explored is called Deep Democracy. It requires every member of a team to share his or her voice, no matter how unpopular the sentiment may be. Only when a team has a comprehensive view of its beliefs, knowledge and skill, can it achieve cohesion.
After an intensive and sustained coaching intervention, the executive team created a much healthier environment. They reduced the number of HR issues, achieved peace among the staff and community, and shifted their energy toward serving the high ideals around which the agency was originally built. They successfully launched a new branch of services and expanded the reach of their policy work. The primary point of contact, to his credit, internalized many of the team coaching techniques I used and now applies them with his entire organization.
Resilience case study
A successful green energy organization enlisted my aid to address a variety of issues. New staff members felt like outsiders, seasoned team members were disengaging, and information and authority weren’t being shared across hierarchical lines.
Together, we worked to create an organizational culture that acknowledges and appreciates all contributions, from the insights and lessons that the founders and first generation hires housed, to the unfiltered and unbiased perspectives of the newbies. The team members felt the increased resiliency, and were excited rather than demoralized by new challenges.
Working with this group was an important reminder that a high-functioning team (the Third Entity) outlives the lifespan of individual team members. People come and go, but a resilient team retains its power in the face of change.
Clarity case study
We’ve probably all been part of a work team that is lacking clarity. Discussions go round and round, and a general malaise sweeps the office. People don’t believe that problems can be resolved, nor do they even agree about the nature of the problems. Meetings are fruitless endeavors and morale plummets.
One of my clients found themselves in a similar spot. After several mergers with other organizations, which forced rapid growth on an already strained system, formerly high-performing people were becoming inefficient, burned out, and frustrated. Problems shape-shifted from one week to the next. The team was at risk of losing key contributors.
Through the application of this and other team coaching tools, we were able to identify that the mergers had been conducted without establishing clear roles and accountability first. Further, they did not have a clear process for decision making. The team gained clarity around the new organizational structure and decision-making protocols that would support the workload without compromising quality.
They witnessed how quickly solutions can be developed and implemented once the team has clarity around an issue. This newly optimistic and confident group has since infected the rest of the organization with these revelations, creating a nimble and responsive organizational culture that is serving them well today as they complete their latest merger and respond to the changing economy.
I’ve worked with teams for 30 years, and I continue to be surprised and delighted by the immediate and long-term impact this work has on the professional lives of my clients. Even the most ROI-focused manager would have to concede that this work is worth doing.
Author
Grace Flannery ORSCC, CPCC, ICF-PCC
Grace Flannery was an executive coach and leadership trainer with 30 years in coaching, consulting, staff, and board capacities in social services, social change, health, industry, and philanthropy. As a faculty member, she led CRR Global’s ICF-accredited Organization and Relationship Systems (ORSC™) training courses.
