Catalysing team performance
I am deep believer in the power of teams.? Small groups of skilled people aligned towards inspirational purposes can achieve incredible things.
I am also a powerful believer in the laws of physics, and I found a fascinating overlap in these two realms recently that spoke to the impact of team coaching.
The tendency to disorder
The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a closed system always increases over time.? Entropy is a thermodynamic property that measures the degree of disorder or randomness in a system.
Entropy is often referred to as a measure of the system's "dispersion of energy."
Taking a team to be a system – metaphorically and literally – entropy can be seen as a measure of disorder, inefficiency, or lack of cohesion.
In a high-entropy team, energy is dissipated, and the team might experience conflicts, low morale, or poor communication.? Achieving the inspirational purpose is at risk.
Opening-up the team system
The thing that fascinated me, is that the trend to randomness of the second law happens in closed systems.
Most real-world systems, including teams, are open systems.
Open systems can exchange energy and matter with their surroundings. This exchange allows for the dissipation of entropy, enabling the system to maintain order or even increase its complexity.
And this is where the coach, and the coach-leader interaction become relevant.
By choosing to open the team to work with a coach, the leader introduces a potentially powerful source of energy for aligning team performance
Coach as catalyst
A team coach, working in partnership with the leader and the team, acts as a catalyst to counteract the natural tendency towards entropy.
The coach works with the team to increase the team’s capacity to:
The role of the coach is not to become a team member and provide these things, it is to catalyse the team’s ability to do them for themselves on a sustainable basis.
The challenge of sustaining order
Just as a system naturally tends towards disorder, a team can also drift back towards entropy over time.
This is why all team coaching engagements are a patient ongoing partnership between coach, leader and team to provide an ongoing catalytic impact.
The laws of physics imply all open systems require this type of conscious maintenance to avoid the natural drift to disorder.
Applying this thinking to your team might also bring full alignment of energy towards your inspirational purpose.
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About me:? Gary Armstrong helps people, teams and organisations who are stuck to find joy, fulfilment and high performance. He uses coaching and consulting to help people become clear on their purpose and goals and make transformational shifts in how they achieve them.? You can email him on [email protected] or book time with him here.? He also likes being with his family and spending time in the outdoors.