I ? We ? It: Integral Coaching in Corporate Leadership

A few years ago, my company, Praxsys Leadership , introduced a new, seemingly radical concept to a mid-sized construction company:?

Integral Coaching.

Integral Coaching may be unfamiliar to some, but it’s a proven methodology that can be used as part of business coaching, executive coaching, team coaching, sales coaching, and, of course, for anyone with a coaching practice. It can bring out excellence in others, getting to the heart of what’s true, as we’ll see in our story below.

Getting to what’s true

When we began our work together, the leadership team consisted of a half-dozen directors, each managing their individual functions in a siloed fashion. There was little collaboration and even less trust among the leaders.?

Meetings and interactions centered on these leaders’ own agendas, and each strategizing to get what their department needed was problematic. People were skeptical of how others’ plans might encroach on their own.?

With a focus this scattered, they had trouble coming together around any shared vision for the company's direction and leveraging each other’s strengths for the benefit of the organization.?

The situation was not helped by the strong set of personalities and opinions in the team—something that’s not uncommon in the construction industry—keeping them from building any semblance of alignment the company needed to respond to a changing competitive business climate.?

The company’s President and COO requested a program that would do the following:

• Support teams working more effectively, breaking down silos
• Enable people to work together, building a shared culture and values
• Improving communication both between and within teams
• Developing leadership that was both individual and collaborative?

How the process works?

The program took these leaders through sixteen group sessions over two years (eight sessions each year).?

Between sessions, they engaged in individual leadership coaching, brought their learnings to bear in their day-to-day work, and supported one another through shared visioning, peer coaching, effective feedback, and accountability.?

The program developed capacity for the leaders in three domains that we call:

?I ? We ? It

I: Focus on individual leadership development through self-awareness practices

We: Build trust and communication skills among team members

It: Construct a shared vision and collective practices to advance the team’s purpose.

The interaction of these three domains throughout the program is where change starts to happen. The work (It) gets directly impacted by the interaction with others (We) as a result of improving one's leadership style (I).?

Using various behavioral and personality typing models, participants first studied their own personalities and how those patterns influence their approach to other people, their work, and their world (I).

Team members who share their struggles, are honest about concerns, and ask for support when needs arise develop an awareness and accountability to one another.??

With this awareness and growing trust as a foundation, teams move toward looking at their relationships within the team and how each person’s unique set of behaviors impacts others (We).?

With coaching support, members built skills in handling difficult conversations, such as giving and receiving feedback, making requests, clearing up interpersonal conflicts, and addressing breakdowns in accountability without blame or shame.?

They learned tools for structuring meetings and conversations to address breakdowns in relationships and work processes by identifying the difficulty's context and causes, generating possibilities for responding and building clear alignment for action.?

Lastly, they applied this understanding in reflection and dialogue on how their “I” and “We” influence the organization as a whole “It” — and their shared vision and commitments to transform the business and even the construction industry itself.?

And then, they applied their expanded leadership competencies in taking action to implement those intentions in the business, both in their individual functional areas and in new areas for collaborating across departmental lines.?

Over the course of two years, the impact was remarkable.?

• The models incited a sea change in the organizational culture.?
• Team interaction improved, allowing for ways of developing new ideas benefiting the company.?
• Company-wide problem-solving tamped down on communication breakdowns by coming together to investigate and address issues rather than blaming others or doubling down on their agendas.?
• New, mutually beneficial ways of interacting helped resolve issues and grow the company's sustainability.
• They created a team charter to hold their unified vision, still used today as a living document to guide their actions.?

The company continues to grow and prosper thanks to applying and infusing Integral Coaching. In the three years since that team engaged in the leadership program, the company’s revenue has increased by $200 million, and the number of employees has nearly doubled.

Despite economic and financial changes, the company managed to beat forecasts based on the company leaders applying everything they have learned to respond to the fast growth and market demands.?

At the end of the two-year program, participants reported greater job satisfaction and lower work and relational stress.?

The program has expanded to include project and corporate executives, fostering greater collaboration across even farther reaches of the organization breaking down cross-functional and regional silos.

The lessons learned through learning and applying Integral Coaching methodology continue to develop a culture with deeper self-awareness, more effective communication, trust, collaboration, and a clearer sense of purpose and direction.?

The Operations group will now continue to meet regularly in self-led Coaching Circles, applying everything they have learned in the program to continue to foster excellence in their self-leadership (I), their relationships (We), and the purpose of their work (It).

Article by Cynthia Luna , Integral Coach, Faculty member at New Ventures West , and a co-founder of Praxsys Leadership.

Further Study

Discover Integral Coaching: Free events to enrich your life

Foundations of Coaching Course: A new class starts every month.

Professional Coaching Course: A new virtual and hybrid cohort begins shortly.

About New Ventures West

From its humble beginnings to one of the top accredited coaching schools in the world, New Ventures West pioneered one of the deepest, most transformative forms of human development available for coaches, leaders, and anyone looking to bring people alive in possibility.?????