Coaching Team Performance, a Case Study
A Team Coach's First Masterful Experience

The experience related below occurred around 1995 with a client in the hospitality industry.  It is not a modus operandi for team coaching.  It relates what occurs within a network or project team in an organization which has developed its managerial culture over years. It also relates what may occur when coaching individuals and team clients with truly masterful attentive coaching presence.

The event took place with a roomful of motivated regional managers, all members of a large European corporation, all intensely working on their common operational issues. The focus of their work was to develop performing transversal support systems to better achieve their individual and collective goals.  A coach was asked to accompany this fifteen-member network team in the course of two-day off-site operational meeting.

First a few words concerning the larger organizational context.  The executive team and top management teams of this company had already been through several team development, team coaching and organizational coaching processes over the preceding years.  The excellent work and commitment on the executive level had been followed-up and replicated within the other echelons of the organization, all the way to lower management levels, Europe-wide.  Over several years, the whole organization had thus  successfully implemented a major management culture shift to increase initiative-based delegation and facilitate goal-oriented responsability and empowerment on all levels.  One could safely state that this corporation was quite mature, and its bottom line results were there to prove it.

The meeting organized by the network-team of regional managers was totally in keeping with the organizational management culture and operational strategy.

If the winds of change were blowing strong, however, some old habits die hard.  The day after the coach had been contacted by one of the regional managers to come and coach the above team meeting, the company Human Resource manager called the coach and spilled out his doubts and fears:

 _“I’ve just been informed about this regional managers meeting. What is going on?  What is the real object of this meeting? What do they mean deciding to meet without their country managers? This meeting configuration is not respectful of the company’s structure.  How can we be sure they will focus on organizational goals?  We can’t afford this waste of time and money.  What if they agree to implement actions that are in total contradiction with corporate vision and country objectives?” Etc.

The coach took time to explain that the proposed process seemed to be totally in keeping with the corporate vision to encourage initiative and empowerment at all levels, that there were no indicators that the regional managers planned to conspire to question defined corporate vision or country goals, that the meeting’s explicitly stated objective was to focus on developing better transversal collaboration between the regional managers and not on vertical interfaces with the executive team.  There were indeed no indications of any resistance towards country managers, the executive team, policies or structures.

The coach had apparently successfully reassured the HR. The network of regional managers met with him for two days in an appropriate off-site location.

In situ, the operational maturity of the organization was immediately observable in the network team’s collective processes and behavior.  The meeting started on time with all the regional managers present. A precise timed agenda for the full two days had already been defined by all the meeting members through a collective preparation process.  Each of the agenda items had been prepared and pertinent pre-reads had been distributed three days prior to the meeting.  A number of team members were ready to assume rotating roles that had been assigned to keep the group on time and focused on the subjects at hand.  Each participant's energy seemed to run high.

After letting the network team roll on for the first twenty-minute meeting sequence, the coach asked if he could intervene and the group concurred.  The well-trained coach focused on eliciting clear client-agreement then asked for clarification as to what was  the expected outcome of his coaching presence in the course of the two day team work.
 
_“Well, just do your job” answered one team member half jokingly.

The coach clarified his question by proposing some options:

_“Well, I can be more precise. 

• Do you want me to ask questions focused only on your process, or also on content? 
• Do you want me to do this during your meeting sequences, so you could adjust right away, or do you want me to wait until you’re done with a sequence so as to avoid being interrupted while you work? 
• Do you want me to announce when I’m putting a question to reconsider your process and when these are focused on your content before I do it, or does it matter?”

Another group member responded:

_“Well, whatever you think is best.  You're the coach.  And I think we should now proceed with our work and focus on our issues.”

So the coach let go of his coaching agreement (or protection and control) issue and got out of the way to let the network team proceed with its intensive agenda.

Over rest of the next two days, the coach occasionally offered a number of  perceptions and put a few questions to the group. Some of these were pertinent enough to open reflections, provoke some meeting process adjustments, change perspectives, result in some operational process improvement and open avenues for future team development. 

The task was not so easy for the coach.  The group’s maturity, capacity to focus on desired outcomes, think creatively, formulate decisions, design action plans, commit to deadlines, stay focused on their own issues, confront unproductive attitudes and behavior, keep a dynamic pace, etc. was very clearly out of the ordinary.

When the two-day meeting came to a close and before leaving, the coach approached a small group of regional managers and voiced his personal problem:

_“Congratulations.  You were all very performing.  I am truly impressed with your collective performance and productive results.   I must admit, however, that I have some difficulty evaluating the added value I have brought to your meeting:  for most of the two days, I have not felt very useful.”

Three quick and creative responses were offered by different meeting participants:
“We don’t pay you for what you do, but for what you don’t do”
“If you hadn’t been here to witness our work, we would not have been so good.  Without your presence, I’m not sure we would have reached this same level of performance”.
“If you had done any more than just be present, we wouldn’t have  had the opportunity to give our best and realize we were this good”.

In a nutshell, the three comments spontaneously offered by the participants gave the coach some essential information about the true nature of his job.

• “We don’t pay you for what you do, but for what you don’t do”.

This comment must not be confused with the idea that a coach offers nothing.

Coaches often cannot help wanting to be useful, to propose brilliant options, to share experiences, to distribute knowledge, to participate in client success, to show empathy if not sympathy or just to justify their presence and fees.  This need may explain the  extraordinarily high number of so-called coaching tools, processes and gimmicks which regularly appear on the market in the form questionnaires, exercises, models, procedures and games. Numerous are the coaches who routinely propose these to their clients to appear to be providing something for their money.  This reveals how many coaches try to fill the void with their presence, when they should be actually be providing a truly empty space for client developement.

The above client says that coaches are paid for what they don’t do.  They are consequently paid for the help they don't provide, for what they don’t propose, for what they don’t sell and for what they don’t try.  Coaches are paid to stay off the tennis court, keep their hands off the racket, avoid handling the ball, and just keeping quiet.  They are paid to be attentively  present, in the bleachers, without any intention of influencing the client's game.  Coaches are paid to forget everything they think they know.  They are paid to provide clients with a learning environment free of tools, gimmicks, games, communication theories, Powerpoint slides, theoretical models and all the rest. 

A coach needs to be aware that offering clean, open and uncluttered time and space within which clients can grow is the utmost luxury.  Coaching time is like a blank screen, an empty billboard, and a turned-off computer, all in one.  Coaches offer clients the rare luxury of having space and time with and for themselves.  This is so uncommon and priceless that at first, some clients don’t know what to do with it.  They need time to learn to hear and recognize their own voice, to tune in to their own inner music, to elaborate, design and follow their own personal projects.

• “If you hadn’t been here to witness our work, We would not have been so good.  Without your presence, I’m not sure we would have reached this level of performance”.

This comment illustrates the importance of coaching presence.  It immediately dismisses the idea that if coaches do nothing, they might as well be absent.

A coach is fully present and attentive to all the client’s difficulties and successes.  Deep listening to the meaning and motivation between client words and emotions, profound respect of client singularity, full acceptance of all client trials and errors, successes and shortcomings, intense concentration to each and every client moment, complete presence to the client and client environment are a few of the non-actions a coach provides.  Intense coach focus on client action doubles or triples their own focus on themselves and on their goal-focused work.  Real coaching presence accompanies real client performance.  This coaching presence could be described as a profound, silent, intense witnessing role.

Notice that witnesses are necessary at key moments of our lives.  During weddings and trials, as children and on our deathbeds, witnesses accompany growth, passages, key moments and departures.  Very few of us know how to be a witness to ourselves, so we need coaches.  Without witnesses, our actions could loose their depth of meaning. 

Consequently, coaches witness clients as these develop, unfold and grow.  Coaching presence simply multiplies the meaning of client work to help them develop width, breadth and depth.  Profound coaching presence serves to amplify client intentions and accompany their transformation into actions.

• “If you had done any more than just be present, we wouldn’t have rhad the opportunity to give our best and realize we were this good”.

A witness cannot be responsible for the witnessed wedding, the jury’s decisions, nor the client’s achievements.  A coach is not an involved business partner, a good Samaritan, helping hand, a knowledgeable expert, a technical instructor.  A team coach does not moderate a team meeting, cheer lead, push decisions, motivate, offer operational solutions, nor step on the basketball field to compensate for a team member’s temporary shortcomings.

A coach lets individual and team clients own their responsibility for their actions, need for adjustment, capacity for growth and results without ever influencing the score, creating dependency nor stealing client total responsibility for success. Coaching presence and attention simply adds to and multiplies the individual or collecive client's own presence and attention to what they are and what they are achieving. 

Consequently, to be a master coach one must unlearn some deeply ingrained reflexes, seize every opportunity to shed layers of useful experience, know nothing and just completely be there, with and for the client.

Copyright 2008.  www.metasysteme.eu  Alain Cardon