Expanding Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit - Relationships (5)

This week’s blog post explores the topic of relationships. What are the key relationships which are going to help your group and team coaching clients move forward?

Key to coaching support with teams is supporting them around their relationships as well as results. In a team context, results can usually only be sustained for as long as relationships are strong. Think about it, if a team enjoys it’s own company, they are likely to go “above and beyond”, investing in more time to make things work. In contrast, if people do not enjoy working together, it’s unlikely that they will spend much time with each other. While results are possible for short amounts of time, the necessary amount of time needed for high performance may not be feasible

At the heart of many team issues is conflict.  Conflict is a multi-faceted topic for teams to explore, as residing within it are a variety of issues such as styles, trust, and the ability to work across differences. Think about the tools you have around this. Conflict, and styles, will be another focus here at the blog.

Success today in any business content usually entails a wide variety of different types of relationships – both internal to the organization or context someone is working within, as well as externally. 

Exercise:

As a foundation, it can be valuable to see what relationships you have and what the quality of relationships are. One exercise you might consider engaging with is that of relationship mapping. In this, you would have clients identify core relationships and then map them or locate them in relationship to the issue or the person. This visual map provides insights around what relationships exist, which are missing, and which ones need attention.

Six questions to explore around relationships:

1.       What are the core themes to notice around relationships?

2.       What are the relationships most important to you right now?

3.       As you consider each one of the relationships – what’s important? What’s possible?

4.       Who can help magnify your work or impact?

5.       What can you do to reach out on a more regular basis?

6.       What else?

 What do you want to explore around relationships with the groups and/or teams you are working with right now? 

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, PCC – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development)

Join us for an upcoming ICF CCE approved program - Group Coaching Essentials (starts Friday May 3rd -2 spots still remain - 8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (starts Friday May 3rd - 2 spots open: 10 CCEs) or the Virtual Facilitation Essentials(starts Monday May 6th  - 4 spots open - 8.5 CCEs)

Expanding Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit - Results (4)

We’re moving into week 4 of the 52 weeks of building your team and group coaching toolkit. Following closely behind the topics of coaching for action and awareness, come this week, and next week’s focus of RESULTS and RELATIONSHIPS.

When coaching teams particularly, supporting them to identify the results they are aiming for is key. This goes hand in hand with Relationships.

This week, let’s take a look at RESULTS.

On the group level, it’s likely that within a coaching group each group member will be striving for a set of individual results. There may be a common set of results people are aiming for across the group – such as “Building my business” or “Becoming a better leader”. If there is too much divergence in the goals and results coaching groups are looking for, it is possible that there is not enough synergy and cohesion.

At the team level, results may be collective as well as individual. A significant amount of the coaching process may revolve around supporting the team to:

• Clarify what results are – across the team, as it relates to other parts of the organization and/or with the overall organization;
• Create alignment around how things are measured and reported on;
• Understand everyone’s contribution;
• Understand how one task/result impacts another

Coaching Tools you might include are:

1.       SWOT

2.       Strategic Issues Mapping

3.       Exploring the Values of the team and how these are translated to action, and therefore results

4.       Action Plans

5.       What success will look like….

6.       What else?

7.       Five Whys Coaching tool

I’ll expand on each one of these in this week’s Facebook Live – join me over at Effective Group Coaching this week for the call.

Best

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development)

Join us for an upcoming ICF CCE approved program - Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs) or the Virtual Facilitation Essentials

Expanding Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit - Awareness (3)

In this week’s continuation of the Building Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit series, we’re going to explore awareness.

Awareness can be just as important as action in any coaching process. As I posed last week – is our action, the right action.

In exploring awareness with teams and groups, we usually drop “Below the waterline” into areas that are not always seen. Coaching for awareness can include areas such as:

• ·         Belief Systems
• ·         Values
• ·         Perspectives
• ·         Assumptions

When coaching a team it is these elements that get translated into behaviors. What is interesting is that many of these elements are not articulated or shared, which may lead to differences in how the behaviors are demonstrated. 

For example, if I am driven by a value of speed, I may find quick ways to do things which get the results but may not be of the same quality as someone who has a value around quality. This can lead to differing results, which sometimes is in conflict with each other.

 As we have seen in past posts, one of the greatest challenges for teams is finding alignment so that they are all pulling in the same direction.  When alignment around behaviors and results is not present, a team coach may want to “drop below the waterline” with the team in exploring beliefs, values, perspectives and assumptions. It is likely that one, or more of these, are at play.

At the group coaching level, when a coach is working with a group of new business owners for example, it can be useful to explore how these elements (beliefs, values, perspectives, assumptions) are shaping each individual in the group. Hearing from others may surface some new learning for other group members.

Coaching Areas we may find oursleves coaching around:

Beliefs (Enabling Beliefs, Limiting Beliefs, Inner Critics/Gremlins/Saboteurs)

Values

Vision

Assumptions

Perspectives

Questions to explore around awareness:

1.       In the big picture, what’s important?

2.       How are your values getting translated to action?

3.       What are the different perspectives you are holding around X topic? (i.e. growing your business).

4.       What assumptions are you making?

5.       What belief systems are shaping your actions?

6.       What else is important to note?

In my work as a mentor coach I have found that coaching around awareness can be an area that is rich and valuable. While it may not have the allure of coaching into speed and action, it is the layers or awareness that create shift and movement towards the results that matter most.

What is important for you to note this week as you coach your clients around awareness?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development)

Join us for an upcoming ICF CCE approved program - Group Coaching Essentials (starts Friday May 3rd - 4 spots still remain - 8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (starts Friday May 3rd - 3 spots open: 10 CCEs) or the Virtual Facilitation Essentials(starts Monday May 6th  - 4 spots open - 8.5 CCEs)