Intervention of Joan Palomeras in the 1st Conference of Psychology and Coaching in l´Empresa del Col • Legi Oficial de Psicòlegs de Catalunya (COPC) in Barcelona 10-10-2008.
What do we understand by a systemic perspective of coaching
The systemic perspective lies in a change of focus:
See wholes and interrelationships between parts rather than linear cause-effect sequences. Change processes instead of snapshots.
It is also a set of patterns and tools that have been distilled over the past century from the physical and social sciences, engineering and organizations. It is increasingly applied to systems as diverse as business, political, economic, urban, meteorological, ecological, physiological, obviously to learning and, therefore, to coaching.
The systemic perspective is also a special sensitivity to the subtle interconnections that gives people their uniqueness.
When a person or an organization has problems, a coach with a systemic perspective sees them originated by underlying structures and not only by individual mistakes or ill will.
Coaching for teamwork
- Which is the main reason that so many people in the business world feel more in a hurry than supported by new management techniques and processes of great improvement in today's companies
Forgetting what is genuinely human.
- You agree that in order for a team to compete in new realities, it is necessary to take advantage of the learning potential and enthusiasm of all its components.
I speak with managers from all over the world…..and everyone, too, agrees.
- On the other hand, why their teams, some formed with a person of great experience, excellent training, a lot of talent and great knowledge …… of great potential, they do not succeed.
Because they learn poorly.
- So, how can we face valid and sustainable learning for a team to learn….
The first thing to do is to emerge the routines that limit it.
I have experienced in my workshops and real team coaching that the application of the Load Shifting Archetype - you can see its structure and study this archetype at www.coachinglab.org/tool tools Systemic Archetypes helps a lot to understand how to face the learning gap that produce the routines.
Every change, SYMPTOM, produces the need for learning. At first it can be a threat that generates defensive routines. These lead us to the SYMPTOMATIC SOLUTION, reduce the perceived need for learning. They eliminate the gap, but they cannot learn.
The FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION is achieved with the side effect of Reflective Coaching.
Load displacement archetype diagram
Reflection and inquiry lead to a new understanding and also a new behavior. In this process there are almost always delays that determine the duration of the Coaching.
This reduces the learning gap, dissolves routines and resolves conflicts to transform them, almost always, into creatives. This is the true brand of our system.
- What is the purpose of team coaching.
It is creating your spirit.
- Very well… but, what is the fundamental process of Team Coaching.
The fundamental process of team coaching is its alignment with the shared vision: All together.
As Peter M. Senge very well says: “The fundamental characteristic of a relatively unaligned team is the waste of energy. On the contrary, when a team achieves greater alignment, a common direction arises and the individual energies are harmonized. ”
How can we create the shared vision.
To build the shared vision we have to encourage it based on personal visions. Team coaching is well suited to identify personal vision and build shared vision.
The shared vision is not born spontaneously, it is a process of feedback, it comes alive with the interactions of individual visions. It must be addressed with a daily work of the leaders. A great openness is required to admit a great diversity of visions without sacrificing your own.
The coexistence of multiple visions transcends and unifies all the individual ones.
How to anchor it.
Values are what allow us to anchor the purposes that determine how the team wants everyday life to be while achieving the vision.
If the vision is not consistent with the values that people live on a daily basis, not only will it not achieve enthusiasm, but it can also foster cynicism.
Building and sustaining a shared vision is therefore only part of an activity that drives and develops the guiding ideas that constitute the core values of the team.
How to hold it.
To sustain the vision, the feedback processes and especially the archetype of growth limits that we will experience with a multitude of nano-experiences are very effective.
I consider its application one of the most valid contributions to team coaching and organizational learning. I very synthetically reproduce one of them:
In a nonoexperience we managed to create a shared vision.
But were we sure of its roots and spread?
We experience whether it spreads, in addition to its intrinsic merits, due to a process that reinforces clarity, enthusiasm and authentic commitment.
As people spoke, the visions became sharper. As they grew sharper, the excitement grew. And as the enthusiasm grew, the commitment became more authentic.
A reinforcing feedback process occurred. This reinforcement increased with initial results. When that happened continuously, the commitment was greater and it spread to more people.
But many factors can interrupt this virtuous process. This is what happened to Barça 2005/2006 the following two seasons.
When this vision affects new people:
Does your personal vision immediately match the shared vision?
Do they start from the same perspectives?
Can you think that your personal visions do not fit?
We can enter a classic growth limit structure, the diagram of which we also reproduce. The first circle, of the balls, is the reinforcing process.
Growth Limits Archetype Diagram
The leverage point lies in understanding the limiting condition that the compensatory process implies.
The general condition in this case consists in the investigation and reflection about the future that we want to create in this new situation. If it becomes a process of persuasion, the result can be compliance or enlistment, never compromise.
The action, the second circle with the lever, by means of a balancing or compensating process should be aimed at preventing new people from renouncing their own visions, on the contrary, they can defend them vigorously. Investigating a broader vision opens up more possibilities for evolution to the individual ones.
What else can drive team coaching
Reflective Opening: indispensable for the resolution of routines, conflicts and valid learning.
Learning of dialogue and discussion with the contributions of Bhom for better interpersonal communication
Distributed control.
Leadership roles for a team to learn.
Strategic planning.
Use of systemic tools.
Multiple strategy in time management.
Identification of what the client needs and wants.
Work / life balance
Training of managerial skills, work skills and much more ……
Fundamental Bibliography
Coaching with a Systemic Perspective. Joan Palomeras. Edit. Athens 2007
In Internet. All recent articles by the same author related to this topic are found in Google with the corresponding title and the different publications that reproduce them:
The Metanoia of Organizational Coaching
The essential process of Team Coaching
The Rediscovery of Dialogue as a Field of Coaching and Learning
Team coaching with a systemic perspective
Coaching for the construction of intelligent organization
Contributions from the systemic perspective to coaching
TEAM COACHING
COACHING TEAMS WITH REFLECTIVE OPENING TEAM
COACHING TO ENCOURAGE THE SHARED VISION
MENTAL COACHING WITH COMPLEX PROCESSES
Team coaching with distributed control
Conflict resolution and defensive routines in team work
Selfcoaching to deal with life creatively
Leading coach: In coaching of
Tools: In the menu of http /: www.coachinglab.org
With the set of this bibliography several doctoral theses have been started and the preparation of Masters of Corporate, Organizational and Team Coaching at an international level and in different languages.
