Team coaching and 'noble certainties'

Team coaching is still very new and, typical of new disciplines, those of us who practice team coaching are busy trying to explain what it is, and how it is different from other practices, such as facilitation, team building, training etc ... From these conversations emerge golden rules - all of which stand to be challenged. So, for example, we read sometimes that:

• Team coaches only work with intact teams not the individuals on those teams
• Team coaches should always work in pairs
• We need to make sure the team is stable and intact before commencing our work
• The initial formation of a team is out of our scope – we get involved once the team is formed

These mantras, and others like them, are based on individual’s experiences and they deserve to be listened to and respected. But there is no single approach to team coaching. And the body of knowledge around how teams operate is so wide and diverse, there is no substitute for conducting our own ongoing program of exploration and experimentation.

We have our own approach to team coaching. We don’t say it is the best - it is just one approach to team coaching. It’s a very straightforward approach that says our role, simply, is to help teams become more effective, and whatever helps teams become more effective is in scope. Of course, that means managing boundaries well.

Once we decided that was our scope, then we realised how much we needed to know. As I said, the body of knowledge around team effectiveness is vast. We need to explore and learn more about team development and evolution, building trust, team dynamics, managing conflict, aligning a team around goals and objectives, team identity, building a team, managing diversity, managing stakeholders, politics and systems and so on. We need to acknowledge that many teams are fluid, with people joining and leaving the team on a regular basis. We need to understand the consequences of working virtually etc …

Our approach is partly educational, sharing ideas and frameworks with teams and helping them to make sense of those models for themselves and to decide what actions to take, as a consequence.

Over the next few months, we’ll share some of those ideas and insights. In this first posting, we’ll look at communication. Before engaging a team in any conversation, we believe it is worthwhile to help the team reflect on how everyone on the team communicates with each other. It doesn’t matter what materials we share with a team, if they aren’t good at communicating, it’s unlikely they’ll succeed in making sense of those materials together.

In our sessions on communication, we introduce the idea of dialogue, a particular form of conversation that demands of team members the capacity to listen deeply to what other team members have to say and to share their own thoughts and feelings openly and respectfully. Dialogue is a big topic. One idea we share with people is the notion of ‘noble certainties’, an idea first framed by William Isaacs.

Noble certainties are those beliefs, values and judgments that get in the way of our listening. If I believe strongly in the importance of customer service, for example, and I find myself listening to the CFO talk about why we need to cut frontline costs, I may quickly find myself tuning out, because my noble certainties are getting in the way. For example, beliefs that:

• Customer service is important, above all?
• The CFO doesn’t understand the importance of customer service, all she knows about is finance stuff
• This organisation doesn’t understand the importance of customer service and I need to teach them

These noble certainties are often hidden from us. We are not aware of them. If a team wants to communicate better, then it may find it useful to spend time thinking about and sharing everyone’s noble certainties.

• As a team member – which of your noble certainties most often play out when engaging with your peers?
• As a team coach, what are your noble certainties as to what team coaching is or isn’t, and how it should be practised?

If you're interested in team coaching we invite you to have a look at our website