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)
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