Systemic Team Coaching STC is a complex and powerful intervention in organisations. We define it as:
A process of coaching the whole team together and apart, over a designated period of time to enable it to
- Align on common purpose
- Collaborate and learn through diversity
- Develop collective leadership
- Achieve performance objectives
- Effectively engage with their key stakeholders
- Jointly transform the wider business
To achieve this STC draws on a range of adult and organisational learning theories and practices that include
- Individual Coaching
- Group Coaching of managers/leaders who share an interest in a project but have no collective responsibility
- Team Building activities to develop a new team or one in a transitional stage to value and utilise diversity and difference
- Team Facilitation of a meeting process to help the team be more effective eg. in decision making
- Inter-Team Coaching - facilitation of teams in the wider system to collaborate
- Organisational Development - attending to how the team impacts and is impacted by organisation
The systemic team coach views the team through 6 Lenses
- Individual team members
- Interpersonal relationships
- Team Dynamics
- Team Tasks - strategy, objectives, systems
- Stakeholder interfaces
- Wider Systemic Forces
The 5 Disciplines Framework is the key structure that addressed the internal and external elements and guides the systemic team coach in attending to where the team needs to work to be most effective. These are:
- Stakeholder Expectations - what the team needs to deliver to external parties
- Team Tasks - what the team does internally to meet those expectations
- Team Relationships - interpersonal and leadership dynamics internally to the team
- Stakeholder Relationships - how the team connects to those it serves
- Team Learning - how the team develops to meet future challenges
A diagnostic tool Team Connect 360 that generates valuable data on the performance of the team now and after the STC intervention is explained and available for use.
The 5 Phase SIDER STC Process is a robust and practical method for engaging with a team. It involves
- Scoping the initial work with the Sponsor and Team Leader
- Inquiry - generating data into the how the team is performing against the 5 Disciplines (use of TC360)
- Developing an agenda for the work with the Sponsor and Team
- Execution of that agenda through coaching with the team
- Review and evaluation of results
Case studies and examples are given throughout to illustrate how the theory is applied in practice
The book addresses other important elements
- How to develop the personal and skills capability do deliver STC
- The courses to attend to take forward the material presented
- Practical guidance on how to build and STC practice
Leary-Joyce, John: - John Leary-Joyce As entrepreneurial founder and Executive Chair of AoEC John understands the importance of teamwork and the value of team coaching. Over the last 20 years he has become widely recognised as a senior transformational coach, combining this with an initial 20-year career as a Gestalt psychotherapist, group facilitator and trainer. Author of the highly acclaimed book Fertile Void, Gestalt Coaching at Work a practical and effective methodology for individual and team coaching.. With substantial team building and OD experience he has become regarded as one of the top team coaches working in large organisations especially in legal and accountancy firms. He is senior faculty on the innovative Master Practitioner Diploma in Systemic Team Coaching programme which he co-designed with Peter Hawkins and Hilary Lines and delivers worldwide. He has an MA in Executive Coaching, is an accredited coach with APECS, and ICF PCC, a qualified supervisor and frequent international conference presenter. His other passion is dancing Tango which he relates closely to leadership, coaching and teamwork.
Lines, Hilary: - Is an executive and team coach, leadership consultant and educator, with over 30 years' experience of working with senior executives in a range of sectors across the globe. A driving force for her work lies in her belief that leaders in complex organisations create value through working constructively with difference at the 'touchpoint' of their connection with others. She helps her clients look at depth at how they can bring the best of themselves to their leadership relationships, how they sometimes jeopardise their own impact, and how they can enhance and expand their individual and collective leadership presence and impact through developing greater relational agility, resilience and authenticity. Her 2013 book 'Touchpoint Leadership' (co-authored with Jacqui Scholes-Rhodes) describes how she applies her model of leadership to her coaching, team coaching and consulting practice. Hilary co-leads the Academy of Executive Coaching Master Practitioner Programme in Systemic Team Coaching and a respected supervisor of practicing team coaches. She is also a faculty member of the Teleos Leadership Institute's Coach Development Programme, based
