Eight weeks later . . . “Let’s see what you’ve come up with. No, this is all wrong. In the first place, these ads are too small. Start over. Make them full-page and full-color. Put the headline here, the body text here, and the logo there. You need a new photograph — this one isn’t dramatic enough. Use softer lighting here. This is better, closer to what I want. This works.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of what I’m looking for — you know, what works with our customers.”

Many of us remember a time early in our careers when a manager coached us on an assignment. Although the details of the conversation varied, our boss inevitably gave us “words of wisdom” or “constructive criticism.” He or she expected us to learn in the time-honored tradition of apprenticeship, in which an expert instructs, monitors, and corrects the learner on how to do a task a certain way.

This traditional model contains a powerful implicit assumption by managers: “I’m the expert. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You’re here to learn from my experience. If you question me, you question my expertise and authority.” Unfortunately, this perspective locks both the manager and the employee into roles that don’t always serve the employee’s learning or the manager’s efforts to teach and guide. The teacher’s “performance” and expertise may take on greater importance than the learner’s improvement.

Timothy Gallwey, whose “Inner Game” philosophy has challenged most traditional coaching methodologies, often cites a valuable insight he gained about the roles of teacher and learner early in his career as a tennis pro. During a lesson, he was astonished when the student learned something before Gallwey had a chance to teach it to him. Gallwey remembers his exasperation as he thought, “How dare he . . . I haven’t shown him that yet!” Reflecting on it later, he realized that he had been more concerned with his own teaching than with the student’s learning.

What Gallwey discovered was simple — but not easy — for coaches, managers, and leaders to accept: When a coach concentrates on facilitating a person’s learning instead of on teaching, the coachee’s performance can undergo an almost magical transformation. Natural learning, based on the coachee’s learning style, happens quickly and easily — much the way we learned to walk or ride a bike. Because this kind of learning experience promotes relaxed concentration and enables us to create our own high-quality feedback, we stop trying so hard and perform almost unconsciously at increasingly effective levels. Over the years, Gallwey and others have shown that this change in focus can be effective in enhancing individual and team performance and learning in business, sports, and even music.

Partnership Coaching Defined

Effective coaching is a partnership between coach and coachee, expert and novice — a partnership whose purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results (see “Traditional Versus Partnership Coaching”). In partnership coaching, one individual works to support the learning and actions of another person or a team. Following this model, managers help people achieve what they want — through careful listening and gentle guidance — rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or to know. Shifting from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning requires a manager or coach to:

• Ask open-ended questions that focus the person’s attention on critical, relevant details rather than tell her what the coach knows.
• Create an environment that reduces interference — or negative self-talk by the learner — which can reduce the quality of the learner’s thinking and actions.
• Understand the difference between constructive criticism and edible — or usable — feedback and to make feedback learner-focused rather than teacher-focused.

INTERFERENCE MODEL

The Interference Model shows how, by reducing interference, individuals can dramatically and immediately improve their performance without learning any new skills. In an interference-free state, new learning is natural and easy

The Limitations of “Telling”

As shown in the opening example, the traditional structure used for conveying expertise and advice emphasizes telling. Although good, clear instructions are vital to the successful completion of a task, most managers find it difficult to convey information in a way that enhances a learner’s performance. In the telling mode, a coach usually assumes the employee understands what he is saying, but often the employee goes away feeling confused at best, and mistrusted and disrespected at worst.

Our informal polling of approximately 1,000 middle to senior-level managers indicates that executives use telling as a means of communication an average of 85-90 percent of the time. And yet, at least five conditions must be met for the telling approach to be effective. 1. The coach has to know exactly how to do the task. 2. The coach has to be able to articulate clearly what she does know. 3. The other person has to understand what the coach is saying. 4. The other person has to be able to translate those instructions into action. 5. The other person has to want to do the task. If one or more of these conditions is missing — which is often the case — the odds of a coach’s successfully transferring know-how to a learner are low. Moreover, the coach has likely wasted her own time, the other person’s time, and the company’s money.

According to the British author and business coaching expert Sir John Whitmore, “To tell denies or negates another’s intelligence; to ask honors it.” Yet shifting from telling to asking isn’t the only change coaches need to make in order to improve their skills; they also need to learn to ask effective questions.

The Anatomy of an Effective Question

Effective questioning uses the principle of creative tension to set up conversational structures that promote learning. According to Robert Fritz, a structure seeks to resolve the inherent tension within it, much like a stretched rubber band seeks to return to its original state. Asking a question sets up a tension that is resolved by an answer; for example, when asked “How are you?” we feel compelled to resolve the tension in the linguistic structure by responding.

A good question helps individuals put aside their assumptions regarding the correct or right answer and lets more reflective and flexible responses fill the void. The word question itself suggests a “quest” for something, inviting the respondent to create or find an answer. Thus, an effective or powerful question creates a structure in which an individual or group feels compelled to seek a resolution. In addition to providing creative tension, effective questions:

• Are nonjudgmental.
• Are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) instead of closed (requiring a yes or no answer).
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality by broadening his perceptions.
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention.
• Make feedback “edible” — or easier for a learner to hear and use.
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner.

A powerful question asked with the wrong intention (such as getting the person to agree to something) isn’t as effective as a question posed from a place of genuine reflection and interest. When people feel cornered and manipulated, they are likely to be less forthcoming and thoughtful with their responses. “Yes/no” questions such as “Well, did you ever think about . . . ?” or “Wouldn’t you agree that . . . ?” can come across as accusatory because these queries often contain hidden assumptions about the speaker’s mental models regarding the best decision or the right answer. Such closed-ended questions can make people feel defensive and undermine a partnering relationship.

Surprisingly, tone of voice and body language carry approximately 92 percent of the meaning in conversations; the words themselves convey only 8 percent. The power of a good question can thus be lost if a manager comes across as condescending, negative, arrogant, or even overly solicitous. A leader who is well intended can still create crippling self-doubt within an employee by asking a good question with the wrong tone or inflection.

Overcoming Interference

In his article, “The Inner Game of Work: Building Capacity in the Workplace” (V8N6), Gallwey discusses the concept of internal interference and how it creates obstacles to learning (see “Interference Model” on p. 1). Gallwey defines interference as “the ways that we undermine the fulfillment or expression of our own capacities.” Interference can be internal or external; it impedes our performance by preventing us from concentrating and from receiving ongoing feedback. Gallwey has found that reducing interference can dramatically improve a person’s performance. Learning happens naturally when a person isn’t distracted by negative thoughts and can focus on what he is doing.

The key to reducing interference lies not in diagnosing it, but in asking questions that move learners’ attention away from judging their own performance to concentrating on the relevant details of the activity they are attempting to perform. For example, when an employee appears flustered because she doesn’t know how to resolve a problem, asking her what she is noticing about the situation or the problem, and what is and isn’t working toward resolving it, can increase her self-awareness and reduce her self-doubt, enabling her to focus calmly on the issue at hand. This self-awareness gives coachees pure, nonjudgmental, and noncritical feedback about what is actually happening. At the same time, coaches need to ask themselves, “Am I increasing or decreasing interference in this conversation?”

What, then, might the session in the opening example have sounded like if the coach had used questions to reduce the coachee’s internal interference and increase her focus?

“I want you to create the new print ad campaign. Here are copies of what we’ve done in the past. What do you think about the strategy and format we used? Here’s data from focus groups and information on how well the ads pulled. What do you think we could have done to increase those numbers? Our deadline is in eight weeks. How long do you think you will need? When can you tell me if this deadline is realistic?”

First coaching meeting: “I’ve had a chance to look at the first version of the new print ad campaign. First, I’m curious about your thinking behind this strategy. What about this style and format appeals to you? What about this approach do you think will appeal to our customers? What about these ads works better than our previous campaign?

“What concerns do you have, if any, about this strategy? Where do you think the trends for print ads are headed? Is there anything you’d like to do differently, given more time or money?

“I’m a little concerned about the size of the ads and the lack of color, but maybe I’m underestimating the impact. I guess I need to know more before I’ll feel completely comfortable with changes that feel this drastic. How will our customers respond to such changes? Will the ads cost more or less to produce? What is the impact on our overall budget?”

In the example above, the manager expresses little judgment regarding what is right or wrong, good or bad, about the proposed ad campaign. She asks open-ended, not yes or no, questions. Her intention, style, and tone convey a desire to learn the employee’s perspective and to help him think for himself and draw his own conclusions. The employee in this scenario is likely to experience much less interference than in the scenario at the beginning of the article, and thus should experience greater learning, clearer thinking, and improved performance. The responsibility for learning is placed on the employee — not on the manager. This employee will probably feel that the manager is “on his side,” supporting his development and achievement of desired results.

“Edible” Feedback

One of the most important ways to improve an employee’s performance and create structures for learning is clear, relevant feedback about current reality — what’s working and not working about the individual’s actions. The traditional feedback model consists of an expert offering so-called “constructive” criticism. But how do people generally feel when they hear, “I have some feedback for you”? Their level of interference usually increases. They may think, “Oh, no . . . I’m about to be judged, slam-dunked, pulverized. I hope I can defend myself, or maybe even blame someone else. Let’s get this over with, or maybe I’ll just zone out.” Meanwhile, they generally don’t hear or consider the coach’s observations simply because they are not edible.

An edible suggestion is one that the coachee can actually take in and digest because it doesn’t overload her with too much negative information, too much advice, or too many suggestions to remember or internalize. This feedback model shifts the focus away from the traditional mode of the manager telling the employee what went right and wrong to one in which the employee discovers for herself what she learned. By helping the performer “debrief her own perceptions of what did and didn’t work, the coach leverages our tendency to believe our own data and observations, rather than those provided by others.

Feedback should do exactly what the word says: Feedback information that nourishes the performer, increases self-awareness and focus, and allows him to internalize useful data for learning. Providing feedback in this manner fosters learning and improvement that are intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, motivated (see “How to Give Edible Feedback”). Performer-based feedback also creates trust and better, more reflective working relationships, because the data is more easily digested. This focus enables the coach to function as a mirror, reflecting back the appropriate, relevant information in a nonjudgmental way.

The “GROW” Model of Coaching

Partnership coaching involves shifting one’s mind-set from teaching, training, and controlling to asking coachees for their desired outcomes and ideas for achieving them; reducing coachees’ internal interference; and learning to give useful, edible feedback. All these elements are woven into a process for conducting a successful coaching session described by Sir John Whitmore in his book, Coaching for Performance. His “GROW” model can help guide coaching conversations to more meaningful and realistic resolutions (see “The GROW Model” on p. 5). Although there are many effective ways to coach in a partnership style, the GROW model provides a useful framework in which the coach guides the coachee toward articulating her goals and achieving desired results. By using effective questions in a nonjudgmental tone, the coach shows respect for the coachee and helps her to take ownership for determining the path to reach her goal.

G=GOALS

The coach and coachee agree on session goals and long-term goals. To set session goals, the coach asks questions such as:

• What would you like to accomplish in the time we have available?
• What would make this time well spent?
• What would you like to achieve today? To set long-term goals, she asks:
• What would ultimate success look like to you?
• If you could create anything you want, what might that be?

R=CURRENT REALITY

Centering on current reality means describing the situation as accurately as possible, challenging assumptions that might be blocking more effective thinking and action, and raising awareness of the relevant details of what is currently happening. Good coaching involves following the coachee’s interests and thoughts and exploring what he has tried so far, without judging. Questions about current reality might include:

• How do you know your perception of X is accurate? How can you be sure?
• Whom else might you check with to get more data about the larger perspective?
• What have you tried so far?
• What are your beliefs about this particular situation? This person? The other department?

O=OPTIONS

The first challenge here is to help the coachee create as many options for potential actions toward the goal as possible without judging the ideas’ merit or practicality. The focus is on the quantity — not quality — of options. Building on the ideas and then choosing among them comes later. The idea is for the learner to stretch the boundaries of his thinking and to use creativity to unlock options he might not otherwise consider.

Once the coachee completes his list of options for action, the coach may offer any ideas she might have thought of while the coachee was brainstorming. Examples of coaching questions at this stage might include:

• If money, time, and resources were no obstacle, what options might you choose?
• What are all the different things you might do?
• What else might you do? What else?
• If you were to ask X person, what might he or she suggest?
• Who else could help?
• What might some “sky is the limit” thinking sound like?
• Would you like to hear some ideas that have occurred to me while you were brainstorming?

At some point, the coachee’s well of ideas will run dry. Now he should look over the list and select those options that seem most promising. The coach can help clarify priorities by asking questions such as:

• Which options would you like to explore further or take action on right away?
• Which would you be willing to implement?
• How would you rate these options from high to low?
• Where would you like to begin?

W=WHAT’S NEXT?

This is the stage for committing to action — stating an intention that is time-phased and observable, identifying potential obstacles, and aligning support from collaborators. Possible questions might include:

• What are you going to do and by when?
• What’s next? What steps are involved?
• How might you minimize the obstacles?
• What might be some unintended consequences of taking these actions?
• How will you collect data for feedback over time as you progress?
• On a scale of one to ten, how certain are you that you will do this?

Self-Coaching

One of the remarkable things about partnership coaching is that managers don’t have to be subject matter experts in order to coach others who are — they just have to be expert coaches. Sometimes, having less expertise on the subject than the coachee frees an instructor from needing to share his knowledge; this “knowing” can get in the way of asking good questions.

Coaches who want to improve their skills can solicit feedback as part

THE GROW MODEL

The GROW Model illustrates the process of helping others clarify what they want, what they have now, options for achieving results, and a plan for action.

of every learning session by asking learners:

• What about the session worked well?
• What didn’t work as well?
• What might I do differently next time to support you more effectively?

Coaches can also guide themselves during a coaching conversation and gain additional learning afterwards by asking:

• What’s happening right now?
• Where is my coachee’s focus?
• How much interference is she experiencing? Where is it coming from?
• When I made that statement, what happened with her body language?

• What cues does she give me to sit quietly and let her think?
• What judgments appeared in my thinking?
• On a scale of one to ten, how would I rate our level of partnership?
• What worked and didn’t work for us in that coaching session?

These questions give managers the opportunity to make adjustments, test assumptions, and experiment with new possibilities.

Leveraging Partnership Coaching

At its most effective, partnership coaching is simply a generative conversation in which the coach asks nonjudgmental, open-ended questions that sharpen the coachee’s focus and increase her awareness of goals, current reality, and possible options for action. In a natural and easy way, it reduces interference and structures feedback for intrinsically motivated learning. This coaching model can leverage learning for individuals, teams, and organizations by helping them improve performance more quickly than in traditional forms of coaching.

As partnership coaching becomes part of an organization’s culture, every leader becomes a steward of learning and a facilitator of performance. Learners come to trust that managers are truly on their side, supporting their learning and development as a partner and not as a disciplinarian. Partnership coaching can be a powerful tool for implementing the principles of organizational learning by facilitating personal mastery, team learning, and shared vision.

Diane Cory is a facilitator, coach, and consultant whose areas of expertise include organizational learning, servant leadership, storytelling, creativity, and coaching.

Rebecca Bradley (Rebecca@ partnershipcoaching.com), president of Atlanta-based Partnership Coaching, Inc., is an executive coach and consultant whose focus is helping individuals and teams improve performance.

The post Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

• There is one team member who always seems to be “the problem.”
• You find yourself thinking, “Why are we having this argument again?
• You have a sense of déjà vu when team members say they will do something that you know will never happen.
• You find yourself becoming increasingly passive in the face of the group’s growing inertia.
• No one seems to have the courage or energy to initiate a discussion about obvious process problems.

These are just a few of the symptoms displayed by teams that are trapped in a predictable dynamic of rising interpersonal turmoil and falling productivity.

The vast majority of us have experienced one or more of these, “Team Traps”; that is, vicious cycles of unproductive behavior that undermines group performance. The affected team can be a family system, a small work group, or any kind of business team from an executive-level task force to a product development group. In such situations, team members often feel frustrated and helpless. These feelings can lead people to take drastic actions, such as giving up on the project or even sabotaging it, which further escalates the group’s level of tension and inability to take effective action.

There is no shortage of books on teams or team problems. Yet most of the descriptions of, and proposed solutions to, dysfunctional team behavior focus on the task or event level of team performance. These resources offer little insight into the underlying structure of relationships that is driving the complex human interactions. For instance, much of the literature stresses the need for teams to agree on a charter and to clarify roles that the members will play. However, the same books offer little analysis of the dynamics that may prevent groups from reaching these kinds of agreements. Even books on conflict resolution tend to focus on the “how tos of negotiation” rather than on the emotional dynamics that can undermine the negotiation process.

Because teams are complex systems, any attempt to “fix” them without understanding the structural causes of their problems runs the risk of becoming a “Fix That Fails.” In such a case, the intervention may be unsuccessful or may create unintended consequences that are even more challenging than the original dilemma. This article describes how the application of systems thinking and human systems concepts can yield a robust “picture” of a team’s underlying structure and pattern of interpersonal dynamics. This perspective can help us to effectively predict and correct or better yet, avoid common Team Traps.

Structure in Social Systems

The structure of any complex system is made up of the relationships among its various components. In the case of a business, which is a kind of social system, these elements include flows of people, money, information, and material, as well as employees’ goals, performance, and emotions.

The only effective way to change a team’s behavior is to identify and modify this web of relationships and interconnections. To do so, we can approach surfacing the root causes of a team’s dysfunction the way a physician diagnoses a patient’s illness by analyzing symptoms and drawing conclusions about the underlying disease or condition causing those symptoms. Ina person an individual “human system” the doctor might intervene by prescribing medication to help the body overcome the ailment, recommend dietary changes to eliminate nutritional elements that have negative effects, or recommend new habitssuch as regular exercise to set into motion reinforcing loops for health.

In a social system, the dimension of the human mind adds another layer of complexity. Individuals’ perceptions, assumptions, beliefs, and emotions all play a role in team dynamics by affecting the actions that people take and the results that they achieve. For this reason, no diagnosis of the “disease” plaguing a human system is complete without an understanding of the emotional drivers at work. But in business organizations especially, we often disregard these important factors. Exploring feelings in a work setting can be threatening and frightening to those of us steeped in a work ethic that calls on us to “suck it up” when things go wrong. When a team fails to fulfill its mission, we focus on refining the task or adjusting the team’s make-up, not on surfacing the interpersonal dynamics that disabled the group’s performance. Nevertheless, it is precisely those situations where emotions remain unexplored that devolve into intractable and disheartening team experiences what we call “Team Traps.”

Team Traps: “Archetypes” of Social Systems

In our study of team performance, we have identified 12 common structural dynamics that teams easily fall into and that interfere with a group’s ability to achieve their purpose. Each of these Team Traps tends to stop groups from doing productive work (see, “Team Traps” on p. 1). These dynamics occur often enough to be considered “archetypal”; in some cases, they are variations of the classic systems thinking archetypes. Most dysfunctional teams tend to get mired in two or three of these Team Traps at any given moment.

Individuals’ perceptions, assumptions, beliefs, and emotions all play a role in team dynamics by affecting the actions that people take and the results that they achieve.

The Team Traps were identified and tested based on empirical research over a 30-year period. They have been cross-referenced with other human system models, such as stages of group development and Kantor’s system types, which are explained below. Teams generally fall into these traps while deciding on a common purpose, managing internal and external boundaries, resolving conflicts, making decisions, assigning accountability, and other important process steps. The Team Traps concept highlights how these process issues affect task issues, and vice versa. For example, a team stuck in escalating conflict between two key members either grinds to a halt on its deliverables or develops an elaborate “work-around” that limits the amount of interaction the combatants have, also slowing down the task at hand.

At a moderate level, the symptoms of the Team Trap dynamics include frustration by group members, or frantic but unproductive efforts to achieve the stated goal. At a severe level, teams caught in these traps become disabled; that is, they are no longer able to work together as a group to fulfill their common mission. The long-term effects of these dysfunctional patterns of behavior can prove even more destructive than merely undermining the current project they can corrode or even destroy team members’ confidence and level of trust well into the future.

So, how can we escape from or, even better, avoid, these quagmires? Because each Team Trap involves both task and relationship issues, we have found that using a combination of tools from the fields of systems thinking and human systems can be a potent force for altering these common structures.

Integrating System Dynamics and Human Systems

Although they share a common ancestry, the fields of human systems and system dynamics have remained relatively separate since the 1950s. The major work in human systems has been carried out in anthropology, psychology, and family therapy. System dynamics has its origins in the “hard” sciences of physics, mathematics, biology, and later computer science. The systems thinking movement has begun the process of integrating the two fields through the five-disciplines model introduced by Peter Senge. By analyzing team behavior on a structural level with causal loop diagrams and using human systems tools and concepts to frame and explain those loops, we hope to carry that integration one step further.

Using causal loop diagrams, we can map the interplay of task and emotional processes. For example, in the Inability to Reach Closure Team Trap, as the amount of work the team completes (task) goes down, frustration (emotion) increases (see “Inability to Reach Closure Loop”). As frustration increases, the number of actions that individuals take outside of the team framework (task) grows, which interferes with focused team action (task), and further decreases the amount of work being accomplished. Causal loop diagrams provide a richer understanding of human systems than an event level analysis that focuses only on tasks, and can help us uncover the role that emotional factors play in perpetuating the system.

Causal loop diagrams also provide a testing ground for potential solutions. Using an agreed-upon representation of the dynamics, managers, team-leaders, and facilitators can explore why intuitive solutions don’t work, and test exactly what approaches might be successful and why. For instance, a common reaction to the Unresolved Overt Conflict Team Trap is for one team member to plead with the two adversaries to “be reasonable,” to notice how their behavior is destroying the team’s ability to accomplish anything, and to compromise. Although this intervention may seem appropriate, it seldom works, because it does not address the emotions underpinning the harmful behavior.

Causal loop diagrams let us identify the high-leverage areas for successful intervention. For instance, in our example of Unresolved Overt Conflict, the first step might be to acknowledge the disagreeing parties’ underlying fears which are usually that they are not being heard and try reversing the process that evolved to make them feel disrespected to begin with. Only after each team member feels that the others hear and value his or her perspective and experience can the group resume its original work.

In system dynamics, possible structural interventions include adding a link, breaking a link, and changing a delay. An example of adding a link to a social system like a business would be to create a measurement system to track work completed. Another new link might be to develop a forum for talking about underlying fears that maybe fueling conflict. An example of changing a delay would be to establish periodic status meetings to decrease the gap between actual project progress and perceived project progress. Finally, instituting meeting rules that disallow overt challenges to ideas might constitute breaking a link. The knowledge generated by these kinds of systemic interventions can powerfully advance team learning.

Part of the challenge for intervening in social systems lies in identifying the kinds of structural changes that might be effective. It’s easier to simply react to the situation as an individual than to figure out what is causing the collective team behavior. It’s also much easier to talk about the work to be done than to honestly explore pivotal emotional issues that are holding up progress. As mentioned above, we have found that applying human system tools in tandem with systems thinking tools creates tremendous synergy. The human system approaches provide an additional framework for diagramming social systems and for identifying possible high-leverage actions. Two human system tools by the family systems therapist David Kantor are particularly valuable: The Four-Player Model and System Types.

Four Player Model: Intervening Systemically

In this context, we call Kantor’s Four-Player Model the Four Team Roles (for more detail on this model, see, “Dialogic Leadership” by William N. Isaacs in V10N1). According to this model, every sequence of interactions can be described as the interplay of people filling four roles: Mover, Opposer (or what we call Challenger), Follower (or Supporter), and Bystander (or Mirror). A meeting or conversation begins with an initial action by the Mover. Other people either support or challenge the action, or call attention to the process (Mirror).

This framework is useful for analyzing team behavior, identifying variables in causal loop diagrams, and designing solutions to the Team Traps. How does this work in practice? Let’s look at one particularly disabling Team Trap: False Consensus. False Consensus is characterized by the following list of symptoms:

• People silently nod their heads in support of an initiative even though they don’t really agree with what is happening.
• A lack of discussion results in faulty decisions.
• Controversy is discouraged out of fear of slowing down the process.
• People say one thing but think or do another.
• Team members undermine the decision after the meeting.
• Because participants don’t really “buy in,” they don’t follow through on assigned tasks

In a False Consensus scenario, someone, usually the team leader, wants something to be done to address a problem or exploit an opportunity (R2in “The Dynamics of False Consensus”). Fearing repercussions if they question (Challenge) this action, the rest of the group gives a “head nod” to the leader, resulting in false agreement and consequently poor follow-through.

Because no one actually takes action to implement the leader’s idea, the original problem intensifies, resulting in stronger “moving” by the leader. Notice how the causal loop diagram includes both task and process variables, and how emotion (fear of repercussions) drives the behavior (head-nodding) that ultimately worsens the situation.

The team members’ fear of repercussions and the strength of their conviction that the Mover’s actions are wrong-headed make them angry. These emotions quickly find expression in covert conversations around the water cooler and in the hallways, which legitimize the inaction and lack of productivity (R3). Not only does this behavior exacerbate the original problem, but it also isolates the team leader, again increasing his or her level of frustration and tendency to push for action (what Kantor refers to as a, “Stuck Mover”).

At this point, the entire team feels stressed. Certain individuals may try to solve the problem by approaching the Mover to discuss the situation. However, the longer the issue persists, the more defensive the team leader may feel. This defensiveness can stymie any attempts to initiate a dialogue (R4). Because the team members do not feel that they can overtly challenge the leader, they continue to resist the plan covertly (R5).

THE DYNAMICS OF FALSE CONSENSUS

The Mover wants something to be done. Team members’ fear of repercussions leads them to appear to accept the mandate, but they fail to take action (R2). These fears find expression in covert conversations, which legitimize the inaction and cause the leader to feel defensive (R3). This defensiveness stymies attempts to initiate a dialogue (R4). Because the team members do not feel that they can talk to the leader, they continue to resist the plan(R5). Leverage lies in supporting rather than challenging the Mover.

Supporting the Mover may seem counter intuitive, even for experienced facilitators. In addition, team members may have difficulty forgiving the Mover for his or her heavy handedness in pressing for action. Never the less, we have seen numerous breakthroughs achieved when a team member or an outside facilitator validates a Mover’s motives. After all, the Mover is at least trying to solve the perceived problem or capitalize on the opportunity. Validating his or her intentions makes the Mover feel understood, which lessens the need to push for action.

Validation also opens the door to the possibility of a new solution to the ongoing challenge. It makes the Mover more able to hear others’ perspectives and to consider alternative solutions to the problem. This openness in turn sets the stage for a dialogue about the emotions — such as fear of repercussions that have been fueling the process. In such cases, creating a causal loop diagram and using insights from human systems can lead to a new understanding of both the problem behavior and the structural solution.

System Types: Differing Vulnerabilities

David Kantor and later Larry Constantine have postulated that all human systems fall into four types: Closed, Random, Synchronous, and Open (see “System Types”). Each system type has its own characteristic set of mental models, behaviors, operating rules, and feedback systems. For instance, Closed systems are classically hierarchical, and Random ones are individualistic. Open systems stress collaboration, while Synchronous ones emphasize values and alignment.

Theory and practice indicate that there is no one “best” type of system. Each has its own strengths and vulnerabilities, and each may be especially prone to certain Team Traps. For example, Open systems may try too hard to build consensus and therefore can fall prey to the Inability to Reach Closure Team Trap. The high degree of flexibility and lack of emphasis on leadership shown by Random and Open systems also make them vulnerable to Overt Conflict. With their inherent rigidity, Synchronous and Closed systems may be overly hierarchical and experience a surplus of covert activity. Random and Synchronous systems, with their lack of cohesion, may forget to include customers and stakeholders in their decision-making, or may fail to ensure adequate communication and participation throughout the organization.

Moreover, because of their differences, each system type may require a unique solution to the same problem. For example, accountability issues can be resolved more easily in Closed systems, in which people are already familiar with policies and procedures, than in Random systems, in which members find the concept of evaluation alien. Similarly, Open systems, which value direct communication, can resolve Overt Conflict more quickly than can Synchronous systems, which tend more toward indirect communication.

Knowledge of the Four Team Roles can help facilitators track human interactions on the behavioral level. Causal loop diagrams can analyze the Team Traps on the structural level and provide a testing ground for proposed interventions. The System Types provide additional data on the potential vulnerabilities of the group to certain Team Traps, and the types of interventions that might succeed in that context.

Unspringing Team Traps

SYSTEM TYPES

Addressing the Team Traps concept at the structural level can provide real, lasting solutions to previously intractable problems. An awareness of the most common team disablers, guidance for a structural intervention, and an understanding of the Four Team Roles and the System Types provide a powerful toolbox for teams in trouble. This multifaceted approach to the Team Traps can also help groups learn to work on the system, not merely in it, which is generally the most effective way to improve group dynamics. Perhaps even more important, familiarity with these common traps can help participants and facilitators anticipate a team’s tendency toward one or more of the Team Traps and diffuse negative patterns of behavior before they become entrenched. The highest leverage actions may not always be the easiest to implement, but they are likely to be the most effective over the long run.

The post Taking the Teeth out of Team Traps appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Partnership coaching offers an alternative to managing and teaching. Its purpose is to facilitate learning, improve performance, and enable learners to create desired results. Using this model, managers help people achieve what they want rather than tell them what they need to accomplish or know. How? Managers (1) ask open-ended questions that focus the learner’s attention on relevant details, (2) create an environment that reduces interference, or negative self-talk by the learner, and (3) make feedback “edible”; easier for the learner to hear and use.

How to Give “Edible” Feedback

“Edible” feedback consists of nonjudgmental questions and suggestions that are easy for the learner to hear and to act on. The questions help raise the learner’s awareness of his or her goals and current reality, focus the learner’s attention, lead to deeper and more expansive thinking by the learner, and are open-ended (who, what, when, where, why, and how) rather than closed (yes/no). The suggestions add only what is necessary to complete the learner’s understanding “John/Jane, I observed your meeting/conversation/ presentation/etc. I have some feedback that you might find useful . . . is now a good time? Before I give you my thoughts, I’m interested in your perceptions, specifically:

1. What worked well for you during that presentation/meeting/conversation?
2. What didn’t work as well for you?
3. What might you want to consider doing differently next time?
4. Would you like me to offer suggestions that have occurred to me as we’ve been talking?”

The coach is now in a position to confirm the perceptions of the learner or add a different perspective. Clear, nonjudgmental observations about what worked, what didn’t work as well, and what the person might do differently next time will be welcomed and more likely used for improved performance next time.

Effective Questions

• Are nonjudgmental—this requires a neutral tone of voice and facial expression and curiosity rather than criticism— and are open-ended
• Raise awareness of the learner’s goals and current reality
• Reduce interference by focusing the learner’s attention
• Lead to deeper questions and more reflective and expansive thinking by the learner
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before
• Surface assumptions and mental models not seen before • Are not manipulative or asked in order to help the learner arrive at a “correct” solution or answer

TRADITIONAL VS. PARTNERSHIP COACHING

This material is drawn from “Partnership Coaching” by Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley, THE SYSTEMS THINKER,Vol. 9 No. 4 (May 1998). © 2000 Diane Cory and Rebecca Bradley. An expanded version of this “Toolbox” is available in a pocket-guide format; for information, go to www.pegasuscom.com.

The post Toolbox: Partnership Coaching appeared first on The Systems Thinker.