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)
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Expanding Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit - Action (2)

Last week in kick off of this blog series, we started exploring different elements of the coaching

conversation, especially as it relates to tools and questions for teams and groups. If you haven’t read last week’s post, take a look at it here.

Another core foundation of the coaching process is action. Action creates action, and it can feel easy to coach around action.

 There is an elusive belief that to coach someone to do something quicker, faster or better, may be the best thing, but is it? A key question to explore is “is this the right action?”.

In coaching a group it’s likely that each person will have their own action plans. On a team, helping team members get clear on the collective actions which are prioritized, and what success looks like, can be a significant focus.

Questions you may want to explore as a team are:

What are the priority actions right now?

What will success look like?

How do I contribute to this collective goal?

Where might I impact others on the team  - overlap or be in conflict with?

In coaching for action, we’ll also want to keep in mind the varying layers of awareness. What else is possible? Awareness will be our focus next week.

In coaching for action, we can draw on a number of different coaching and related tools including:

1. Coaching around planning tools such as SWOT Frameworks (this strategic planning tool can provide the backbone to a rich exploration by a team around their STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITES and THREATS.
2. If you prefer an appreciative inquiry stance, coaching around the SOAR instead of the SWOT
3. Identifying what we want to START, STOP and CONTINUE Doing
4. The Stoplight framework of GREEN (Good, go), YELLOW (Cautiion, proceed slowly) and RED (STOP,  CAUTION/CRISIS)
5. One page plans
6. Urgent/important matrix made famous by Steven Covey – What are the actions which are having impact? Which are coming from a crisis mindset – yours or others?

What tools do you use in coaching for action?  Feel free to share one of your favorites in the comments below.

Six Coaching Questions to Explore around Action:

What actions are going to move you towards your goal?

What are the steps which are going to move the team forward collectively? As individuals?

If you knew you would not fail, what would you do?

To move you towards your vision, what do you need to do?

What’s the one thing you want to focus on?

What do you need to stop doing?

Next week we turn our attention to Coaching For Awareness. Stay tuned!

Enjoy the conversation,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPCC

Group Coaching Essentials | Potentials Realized

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