Why Team Coaching Is Crucial In Times of Complexity To Mitigate Stereotypes

No one is born believing in harmful stereotypes. They are learned over time. The good news is that they can be unlearned. Kevin Faulconer

Stereotypes are in the eyes of the beholder. Or should I say the brain? Our brain creates shortcuts to navigate the world, creating a bank of categorizations that can be called stereotypes. What we repeatedly experience is placed in a category so that in the future, the brain doesn't have to compute data; it selects one key criterion as a shortcut that resonates with the category and then flows into an adapted (re)action.

Let's say a German shepherd has bitten you as a kid. Decades later, your heart will race automatically when you see a four-legged dog with brown and black fur, your criterion for the "German shepherd" category. You have no control over the trigger. Conversely, when a mother hears the voice of her kid or sees one physical trait (hair color, shape of face...), she feels love instantly.

Stereotypes emerge both from personal and cultural experiences. There is no "one size fits all." Hence, deploying effective standardized actions to reduce inequality and increase diversity is difficult. We all have different shortcut criteria on top of the personalized stories we have built over time to feed our persona and seek recognition. What is common, though, is the existence of a stereotyping mechanism. Navigating life using stereotypes (or brain shortcuts) is highly useful, as it triggers an automatic, hence rapid response to our environment, however often inappropriate.

The More Complexity in the World, The More Crucial the Stereotypes

The stereotype mechanism emerged long ago when our world was vastly more straightforward. Relying on shortcuts to create an automatic response was a matter of life and death. Imagine a hunter-gatherer plucking a shrub and coming face-to-face with a bowl of beige fur, a lynx. If they didn't possess the stereotype associating beige fur with predators, they would be plucked by the lynx instead of running or hiding fast for safety.

The more the world became complex, the more it generated stimuli in our daily and professional lives. The more the stimuli evolve to be exponentially more complex and change faster, the more we rely on stereotypes. They turned out to be decisive. There is no surprise to witness the rise in right-wing supporters or hate crimes. There is too much to process, so we let our automatic response take over.

How Stereotypes Play Out In A Team?

Because of the increasing strain bearing on team members' shoulders, they rely on automatic responses to perform. Sadly, they are mostly oblivious to the process. The pressure of results and time, the increasing number of tools and platforms, the daily changes in strategy or tactics, and the existence of five different types of generations operating simultaneously in the workplace leads to an overload of information. No human can process it all without going either crazy or in burnout.

On the one hand, we have a highly complex work setting, and on the other, people who are unaware they are triggered to operate on autopilot using stereotypes. The result is an increase in stonewalling, blaming, defensiveness, or contempt that leads to silos, conflicts, sabotage, or fear. People are disconnected from who they are, each other, their environment, and the planet.

Collaborating is overwhelming, meaning paying attention to others, listening, taking in other's needs and differences, and cooperating when one can barely reach one's goal. It is easier to focus on our individual goals, what we master and control, rather than on systems because of the increased complexity.

A team has become the setting for automatic responses where people are blind to others. This is a concerning reality as collaboration is the response to navigate complexity (see a previous article highlighting the importance of interaction to be agile in a complex world).

Why Team Coaching Is Crucial to Mitigate Stereotypes?

The only way to hack the automatic response (stereotypes) is to observe and be aware of the process. You can't do so while producing, performing, and running the hamster's wheel. When things are too fast, slow down. Pause. It is easy to be busy as it feels like a flow, carried by the waves of deadlines and tasks. Furthermore, each inbound email triggers dopamine in the brain. No wonder we are addicted to being busy; it jets streams of pleasure hormones. It takes much energy to stop the inertia and embrace a meta position (one that reflects).

I witness it as a coach when clients ask me to add more exercises during training, avoiding the space to reflect, discuss, and notice. It is a sign of the overall culture we live in. That mere comment has become a stereotype to me to offer even more team coaching sessions. It is the criterion that there is a need to observe what is happening and leave the rat race for a moment to breathe.

Without team coaching and after COVID, hybrid work, and the fast-paced, complex world, people lose touch with each other and feel inadequate or unfulfilled, like robots squeezed to the max to produce as much output as possible. It results in increased sick leave, high turnover, knowledge loss, judgment, and difficulty recruiting or retaining talent.

How Team Coaching Mitigates Stereotypes?

It is a less and less straightforward commitment, as finding a time fitting everyone is difficult. Yet once in team coaching, the team members can breathe, look at themselves and each other, sense what is there, and reflect on where they want to go. People are amazed at how they share more than they thought. To be honest, I believe the work is done there; don't do anything, act, or teach; just pause and enable interactions. As a coach, no agenda is needed; the most important skill and stance is to hold the space and reveal the system to itself (you can learn the skill at ORSC) while dancing with what emerges in the moment.

Team members don't take enough time to connect, slow down, and care; they are too busy sucking dopamine while being busy. We can't blame them; I'm as much them as an external coach. It has become the new normal. Team coaching offers a space to connect to themselves. From there, they start acknowledging each other, how they interact, and with what impact. The first process is to look at the microsystem of me with myself. This is called emotional intelligence.

Once you manage your emotions within a team, you can focus on social intelligence, speaking respectfully, listening without judgment or agenda, and welcoming the other's world. It is the capacity to be yourself and let others be who they are in a social setting, like a team.

Finally, team coaching helps people connect to the system they form and how they can be a voice contributing to their unique personality and identity. System intelligence is needed to navigate complexity as it helps connect to the greater whole, tapping into its wisdom to generate solutions and ideas and be adaptative. A system is naturally emerging, creative, and intelligent when the conditions allow it. Team coaching does exactly that: bringing awareness to the system to generate its natural capacities. It takes a special coach to do so, one that can hold the space and embrace energy fluidity to be commanding or caring when needed.

Contact me when you want to learn more about team collaboration because you want to hack stereotypes and build a trusting and effective team.

SARA BIGWOOD - PCC - ORSCC