TPC Leadership develops leaders with a heart for leaders AND their organisations. They are engaged and passionate in what they do. They focus on the individual, but will always keep the vision and objectives of the organisation into account.
Janna Kramer, Learning & Talent Development Leader
EY – NETHERLANDS
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In this blog TPC Leadership’s Associate Partner Biran Yilancioglu discusses the importance of coaching during periods of change.
How many of you are familiar with neuroscience? The amygdala, the limbic system and the pre-frontal cortex?
I’m not going to go deep into neuroscience here but there is one thing that I want to explain so please bear with me.
Amygdala, the limbic system and the pre-frontal cortex
There are two different parts of our brain.
1) Firstly the pre-frontal cortex, the place that stores our skills like logical thinking, problem-solving, abstract thinking, decision making etc…
2) Secondly the limbic system (where our amygdala is). The task of the limbic system is basically survival. It evaluates each and every stimulus and decides if it is a threat to our survival or not. If the limbic system decides that a stimulus, (doesn’t matter what it is…a car coming at you, someone threatening you, a lion chasing you or your team going to lunch without inviting you….), is a threat it doesn’t deliver the message to the cortex. This is called amygdala high-jack. The message sticks in our limbic system and we start to behave from the limbic, not from the cortex. Meaning we can’t use our problem-solving skills! And sorry to say but, our limbic system knows only three responses fight, flight or freeze.
Uncertainty/lack of clarity
Research shows that one of the things our brain consider as a threat is uncertainty or a lack of clarity. Think about your self driving in heavy fog, unable to see the road. How do you feel?
Your brain thinks the lack of clarity and uncertainty is a threat to your survival, so you feel uncomfortable and stressed.
Logical thinking
The limbic system is actually a protection system. But sometimes it fools us and keeps us from logical thinking. Think about the people jumping from the window on the 5th floor during an earthquake… Does that make sense? No, but at the time of threat, we just can’t think logically.
So what does it have to do with change, complexity and ambiguity?
It is clear, right? Change brings uncertainty/ambiguity and again complexity also brings the ambiguity…
So when we are talking about coaching through complexity and ambiguity we are talking about helping our brains to get out of the limbic system and reach our potential in the cortex.
Next time when you think someone is resisting to change, think twice!
“What is the difference between Team Coaching and Group Coaching?”
HR Directors and professionals, like many students of our courses, get often confused by this subtle difference. This confusion may imply the loss of a significant opportunity to chose the right approach for the right people.
I want to briefly highlight this difference, and why this difference matters, hoping to shed some light about how to chose the most effective methodology.
Team Coaching defined
In general, we define Team Coaching as the art of facilitating and challenging a real team to maximize its performance and enjoyment in service of meaningful organizational goals.
Team Coaching is the art of facilitating and challenging a real team to maximize its performance and enjoyment in service of meaningful organizational goals.
According to John Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, a real team is “a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they are mutually accountable” (1993, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organisation, Harvard Business School, Boston).
In Team Coaching, the client is a real team, including the team leader and each one of their direct reports. They work together for common goals against which the whole team’s performance is evaluated. Individuals in a team are therefore interdependent.
In Team Coaching, the client is a real team.
Often real teams stumble at operating as high performing teams because of problems such as:
are unclear goals, or targets which are not compelling or not well-aligned with the wider organizational strategy and culture
team decision processes are unclear or obsolete
the team lacks effective communication guidelines and team facilitation routines
the team is missing a coordinated stakeholders management strategy
there is insufficient trust among the team members, resulting in a poor capacity of handling difficult conversations – as well as an increased level of unnecessary anxiety, stress and discomfort of the working environment.
Stumbling blocks like these can create a dramatic impact on business performance, especially when they involve boards or directive teams managing entire businesses, functions or divisions.
Team Coaches work overtime with teams by supporting them to increase awareness of the current patterns, and by challenging its members to leverage on their resources, strengths and life-giving forces to enhance team processes, relationships and performance.
Group Coaching Defined
Group Coaching is a facilitative process that leverages the experience of a group of individuals which may or not work together.
Group Coaching is a facilitative process that leverages the resources and knowledge of a group of individuals working on a common theme but having different individual performance goals.
Unlike in Team Coaching, in Group Coaching, individuals do not need to achieve common objectives for which they are interdependent, but have in common just a theme or competency all of them want to develop.
HRs often use Group Coaching as a cost-effective alternative to one to one coaching when organizations want to develop a larger number of middle managers or professional while using a reflective, empowering and bespoke approach.
Unlike traditional training, a Group Coach does not ‘teach’ or ‘lecture’ about models or theories or tools, but partners with the group in building the process and in creating an effective thinking environment. In order to achieve this, Group Coaches use different methodologies such as plenary coaching, structured questions sets, activities of buddy work, peer-consultation sets, learning diaries, discussion of critical cases etc.
Choosing the right approach
We use Team Coaching and Group Coaching not only with different targets but also in different situations and with different aims.
We implement Team Coaching when we want individuals of the same team to collaborate in order to boost team performance. It is therefore often useful when a team needs to:
Establish a compelling vision and strategy
Articulate its values and mission, translating them into coherent team practices
Enhance climate and trust during a turbulent moment
Re-establish an effective working contract when new team members enter the team
Enable hidden conflicts to emerge and manage them more safely and productively
Drive forward challenging change initiatives through clear action plans involving inter-dependent actions and the management of a complex stakeholders system.
We need Group Coaching when we want individuals from different teams or departments to share challenges and best practices in service of transversal developmental goals. Typical examples are:
supporting cultural change while enabling middle managers to own a new competency model or to develop a specific competency
developing talents by giving them a chance to integrate knowledge in behaviors after a more traditional training or management programmes
engaging groups of managers facing similar challenges to share solutions and best practices and to embed new behaviors.
As a final note: not all Team Coaches are also good Group Coaches, and the other way around. I usually advise HR professionals to verify upfront the approach of the coach they are about to engage, for example by asking how they would articulate the difference between Group and Team Coaching or what have been their previous experiences in these fields.
The key for successful coaching interventions lies in striking the ideal mix between right target, aims, approach and coach.
The key for successful coaching interventions lies in striking the ideal mix between right target, right aims, right approach and naturally right coach
Original article by Andrea Cardillo PhD, PCC – Managing Partner at TPC Leadership, Italy
For more information on team coaching please contact us.
Blog post by Brigitte Lipschutz, PhD. Developing a growth mindset.
Leadership development is grounded in the idea that it is possible to change in a significant way. Many people however do not really believe change is possible. Executive coaches often hear their clients say things like “I’m too old to change”, “this is my personality”, “this is who I am”, “he/she has been promoted to the level of his/her incompetence”.
In our free webinar “Can I change? Yes I can!”, Brigitte Lipschutz, PhD, talks about the importance of believing it is possible to change (i.e. having a “growth mindset”) for actual change to happen and about the neuroscience that makes change possible.
She tells you about neuroplasticity – the fact that everything you do, think or feel changes your brain. There is also an explanation on how you can use the principles of neuroplasticity to create a personalized brain training for your own development needs. Throughout the webinar examples are given of the idea of developing a “growth mindset”.
