How to Contract a Team Coaching Agreement?

In this series on Coaching the Spirit, I shall work with the Self on one set of blogs aligned with Spirituality, and with the Systemic approach in human intervention, especially coaching, which I believe is equally spiritual on a parallel series of blogs. I seek your indulgence in case of discomfort. In the systemic approach, we move from individual and Self issues to team-related factors that align with organisational reality.?

The starting point in teamwork, as it is in individual coaching is the contracted agreement. In a team coaching agreement, the entire team, each team member and the coach own the agreement together and commit to working towards it together. The complexity, however, increases in a systemic team coaching approach with additional factors brought in by multiple stakeholders. This needs to be understood by team members with other team intervention modalities.?

What one needs to work in guiding, exploring with, and coaching teams and groups to awareness is client-centric empathetic and generative listening skills, not labels. What the team or group needs is a clear intent to work together.?

As in individual coaching, team coaching agreements require clarity in terms of objectives and goals for the entire coaching journey, as well as for each session. The goals need to be meaningful in how they add value to the team, its members and their stakeholders, and the organisation. There need to be defined measures of evidenced achievement of these goals through the coaching journey. The focus areas of challenges to be addressed and overcome need to be understood to the extent possible before the start.?

In all coaching work, the major effort lies in creating awareness of the challenges lying between present reality and the desired goals. In a systemic approach, one starts to look at the impact all stakeholders, from past to future, within and outside the individual, have on the desired goals of the client, and the complexity increases multi-fold. Various factors of organisational culture, vision, values, and mission affect the context of the aspired goals from multiple stakeholder perspectives.??

The team identity needs to be established, independent of its members, leader and coach. This requires a strong and purposeful intent to aspire to, irrespective of who its members are, leader or coach. The team needs to own itself.

Engaging Stakeholders?

In a team or group work using the systemic approach, stakeholder impact discovery needs to be better structured. It is very critical that the team reduces potential stakeholder-related challenges by getting their buy-in to the organizational goals at the contracting level. This becomes essential while addressing change, and requires looking at each decision to be made from the multiple-lens perspective of a fly. The problem is that this is rarely done.?

During the pandemic, the goal of expanding their network of warehouses and trucking in a large logistics company was stymied by resistance from an unexpected source, which the company had not even considered a stakeholder. The communities in which the warehouses were to be built opposed and prevented the movement of trucks to these locations for fear of contamination. Could this possibly have been identified by a process that included stakeholder view collection before goals were contracted??

It's relatively simpler to establish the purpose, meaning and impact of the desired goals with the members, the team and the organisation. This can be done through climate and cultural survey tools, and individual interviews following the surveys. The bigger challenge is to identify what value and impact the desired organisational goals will hold for its stakeholders, and to establish a contract with them, in some cases through indirect information.?

This is complicated because many of the stakeholders may be from the emerging future and external to the organisation. In some senses, this is akin to scenario planning for the future. Depending on the long-term nature of the goals, sponsors would need to decide how far they wish to expand the stakeholder network.?

Techniques

Here are a few powerful techniques to support the process of obtaining multiple stakeholder views from within the team.

Multiple Voices?

We have used a variation of the Theory U concepts of closed mind, heart and will to form 4 voices that represent the voices of

·??????Judgment

·??????Cynicism

·??????Fear

·??????Transformation

The team splits into 4 groups in a 2x2 matrix, each addressing one of the voices. The subgroup, as a whole, moves to the next voice, finally each person voicing all 4. When facilitated well, this evokes powerful insights.?

Constellation

Team members stand distanced from a central figure representing a person or an issue, and facing or turning away, depending level of relationship and acceptance. Coach asks questions that require them to respond by changing their position with the central issue as well as other members.?

Polarities

Team members look at the values and fears of the goals based on impact and implications. For instance, if a stated goal is to centralise certain functions, then values and fears for both centralising and decentralising are listed and discussed to arrive at a both-and perspective of reconciling.?

Reflection

·??????How often do you look at multiple stakeholder perspectives in taking decisions??

·??????What difference does that make?

Coacharya has been one of the pioneers in using the Systemic approach based on OD in coaching, training and consulting. Cindy and I run a program on Systemic Team Coaching in alignment with ICF ACTC and EMCC ESIA for credentialed coaches, from next week. Those interested may contact [email protected]

Please do write in, resonant or dissonant. Let’s have a conversation.?Please share with others who may benefit.?

Ram is a co-founder and mentor at Coacharya?https://coacharya.com . Ram's focus is the integration of Eastern wisdom with modern science, spiritually, systemically and sustainably. Visit Coacharya.