The difference in mental models is a characteristic of every human group.
The system thrives on diversity. This implies that each of its members contributes “knowledge”, intuitions, different forms that complement and enhance each other in their actions.
If this difference is welcomed and valued by the group, protean conversations take place that in their processes of inquiry and reflection, adopt sufficient flexibility to admit “the good ideas that the other contributes” and celebrate them in a mature and collaborative attitude.
A system becomes a learner when the other's saying is received with curiosity, expectation and enthusiasm, at this moment it is when it sees itself as powerful and does not sink in the waters of sterile competition.
Diversity taken as a value is an index of maturity and a guarantee of growth that makes a team achieve expected results and be seen with a defined and charismatic identity.
The coaching process can enhance the effect of diversity
In order to achieve this task, diversity as a value must be achieved in the group and an adequate coaching process is capable of establishing it.
There is a natural tendency among human beings to reject what is different. When someone thinks differently from what we think, we tend not to listen and much less to reflect on that foreign saying to our idiosyncrasy.
We receive with complacent ears everything that we usually think or ever coin in our practices.
When something is of the order of the different, out of courtesy "we make ourselves listen" but generally it is nothing more than "making time" while our interlocutor displays his views, and then go back on our convictions aloud or keeping them in the silence of seven o'clock Keys so that they do not have the power of removal. They must remain there because there is a risk of changing and experiencing it as a loss of identity and security.
With this behavior we may be missing a different look that brings us closer to the solution of a problem, or see from another landscape what concerns us.
A group coaching process can achieve the skill of reversing this practice, which among other things confines us to loneliness and pessimism even though we are together with others in a task, without realizing it we gradually isolate ourselves in a “mental cell”.
A coach can enable team members to begin to listen to each other and lift the barriers that made them islands.
This mutual listening, already developed as a practice, leads to a deep and liberating communication of energy that acts like a capacitor.
When someone is listened to in their saying, when they perceive that “it is taken into account” all their human potential unfolds in the intersubjective relationship that is proposed to them. Their intelligence then converges in ideas, innovations, fantasies, which otherwise would stagnate and the energy they carry would be sectorized in the organization of organizational defenses.
The subject would "defend" himself as he can from the denial of that place from where he can be and do as a subject in the world.
The defense of "not being listened to" would appear as a substitute for the intersubjective relationship, as a correlation we would have the shipwreck of its creative potential and the establishment of unhealthy practices that prevent a paid environment for the efficiency and growth of the system.
If the coaching process can ensure that defensive routines are not installed or that they dissolve, the system begins to give its best.
Getting the mutual listening of the members of a team at the beginning of the work is hard, it is about swimming against the current. Over time, if each one feels listened to and achieves “space” in the group, a certain curiosity begins to see what the other thinks, how they think about this problem or what idea appears to them.
If the capacity of the other is finally roundly welcomed, enjoyed and assimilated into one's own mental model, we are facing a truly powerful system, the so-called high-performance ones are those who enjoy walking the path together that will lead them to their goals. The organizational vision and mission will unite them in the challenge of bringing the ship “all together” to its destination.
When the idea of respect for the other's word came to stay, the practice of listening is clothed with value. From there to mutual admiration there is only one step and the sense of belonging to that group they have formed grows. It could be said that an experience of pride appears for being there, with the peers.
The task turns into enjoyment, the effort is minimized and the challenge that change inspires imposes their colorature, they are already comrades who make history.
A skilled coach can accomplish this. It implies working with the personal leadership of each one, with the authentic listening of the other, with the richness of the different.
But in this work the coach cannot position himself as a leader. His figure is that of a process facilitator who "activates the personal leadership of the people" and summons the leadership of the group. With the wisdom of having the “leverage point”, he runs from all protagonists, his mission being the propitious architecture for the system to unfold to its maximum potential.
His mission is that of fertilizer that nourishes the soil where the seeds grow, the gardener who removes weeds and prunes without damaging the shoots, the one who contemplates from afar the beauty of the landscape achieved.
There is no coach model that can achieve this. Each one has their own style, each one appeals to their personal background, their experiences, their training and their years.
It will depend on what you have been able to do with your own mental model, how much you have tried to explore it, how much you managed to feed on the diversity presented to you by the people you encountered in life, how much you learned from your experiences, what space you made for your favorite authors and how much he enjoys his task. It is not possible to convey what one did not previously experience.
