Teams, relationships, mutual trust and accountability

Article 02 January 2021

We illuminate the hidden connections in the team and the impact people have on one another - exploring how this manifests in the norms and day-to-day behaviours so teams perform at their best and find joy in what they create. We help change the conversation in the moment, and create the quality of relationships, mutual trust and accountability required to fulfil your mission. And to make this real and palpable in your interactions with those who follow you.

Energising the heart of the team

We build trust, work on tricky and sticky issues in manageable ways, and help people utilise the fullness of their talents and passions towards shared goals. The impact of our team partnering is: teams are connected to a compelling strategic purpose, clear about accountabilities, ways of working and their leadership ambition for change.

The resulting business benefits are teams have greater leadership energy and ambition, their people and those who rely on the organisation’s success have greater trust and engagement, which makes innovation, digital transformation, enhanced customer experience and growth eminently more achievable for the business.

Keeping it real and making it personal

We work with business realities whilst getting to psychological depth – we help you to see the interplay between the business and human dynamics at work in order to shift repetitive patterns of performance and behaviour.

There are no applied ‘case studies’ – everything you learn is applied to your real work, and we help you learn and change by doing real work together. We work ‘live’ with individuals and groups. Our clients say our deep expertise in reading group dynamics and our ability to adapt our approach in the moment, ensures that purpose is met in a sustainable way.

Unleashing teams in a 'Big Four' professional services firm.

A newly formed division in one of the ‘Big Four’ global professional services firms, led by a team of partners, and composed of multiple service lines and addressing multiple industrial sectors, had ambitious revenue and profitability targets.

Our work with them focused on creating a ‘team of teams’ via team coaching: the lead partners experienced Systemic Team Coaching as a leadership team and coaching on how to themselves systemically coach their own sub-teams of partners.

For the first time, this team began to speak openly about each other’s client portfolios and sector strategies, really challenging and supporting each other’s plans and each other as people. Their starting place was no longer their roles, sectors, or disciplines – nor their individual performance as leaders of their sub-teams. It was making a real difference to their clients’ businesses, creating great experiences for their people and focusing efforts and resources on areas of sustainable profitability for the firm as a whole.

Teams in service of wider systems – the ‘team of teams’

We enable leaders to pay attention to the broader forces and factors that impact performance, enabling the implementation of agile strategies to stand the test of time. Working systemically means all the team’s effort is aligned to the purpose of the organisation and what the world needs them to deliver. We get alongside you to ensure insight translates to action in all aspects of your business. A programme of work with a senior team typically lasts a year, and involves diagnostics, feedback from stakeholders, workshops, observation during regular meetings, 1:1 coaching, coaching the team leaders and action learning groups. We design the programme at the outset, and through constant review and sense checking, we adjust as the work progresses. Planned emergence describes it well.

The team owns its own development

Our work starts with helping the team to assess its current effectiveness, in the context of what is requested from stakeholders. This sometimes involves team diagnostic tools, and always involves us meeting each team member 1:1 in order to immerse ourselves in your world. With these actions, we can then paint a picture to figure out where you are now, where you want to go, and why.

Stepping into collective leadership

We help shift a group of leaders to a true leadership team – we enable a step up to collective leadership by getting connected to a shared purpose and vision for the future. This is about standing in your stakeholders’ shoes, but also about tuning in to the organisation’s evolutionary purpose and potential. It requires courage and collective energy to articulate, engage and inspire others in the mission.