Weeknotes #61: Beyond Alignment
1/5: Insights from Team Coaching - Alignment May not Always be Necessary
You are reading Coaching Weeknotes by Roxana Bacian: explorations at the intersection of coaching, personal and organisational development. These week notes are multiply authored - arrived at in conversation with many:
This summer I launched a new team coaching offer to support teams and organisations to navigate organisational challenges with care and integrity. Teams and leaders are now facing a world of new challenges.
They need to:
* Deliver organisational targets with limited timeframes and a hybrid/remote team;
* Continue to innovate and respond creatively to challenges;
* Make space for pause, regeneration and experimentation;
* Retain financial sustainability whilst delivering high quality of outputs;
* Build cultures of accessibility and belonging where all team members can thrive.
All on the backdrop of complex political and technological events.
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As part of this launch I’m sharing 5x insights from the last couple of years working as an Associate Coach on New Economy Organisers Network (NEON)’s OrgBuilders programme. OrgBuilders was NEON’s year-long programme of coaching, practical support and guidance for social justice organisations looking to make changes to their strategy, culture and operations through an anti-oppressive lens.
These insights are drawn from on the ground work with teams and colleagues dedicated to their work of shifting societal systems towards true care and equity:
Team Coaching Insight #01 - Alignment May not Always be Necessary:
When everyone contributes and is looking to create something that is truly collaborative, alignment may no longer be necessary because we know the best result is not only when we feel on the same page but when we’ve delivered the results we were seeking to create.
I remember my first team coaching session. I asked each team member to share what their ideal outcome would be from the session. The resounding theme was ‘alignment’. It was palpable there was a need for having a better shared understanding of what needed to be achieved and where the team focus needed to be.
Later on in the coaching programme, I saw a noticeable increase in the team’s comfort with different opinions, letting them come together and even contradict. What initially looked like a search for agreement became a search for allowing difference to exist and enrich the team’s work.
All organisational endeavours will be filled with unknowns. That can either lead a team to operate from a state panic or take this as an opportunity to set up the conditions that will help them thrive in uncertainty. Team coaching is a tool that can contribute to a team’s ability to tolerate, and with time, come to experience both difference and uncertainty as generative and creative devices.
Stay tuned for more insights on what helps teams reach organisational outcomes with care and intergrity. Some of the themes I will be writing about will be: relational effort, emotional safety, structural scaffolds and live feedback.
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Working together:
“Roxi has been a fantastic organisational coach for our team as well as coaching individual team members. She has helped us navigate a time of significant organisational change and we have come out of the other side a more cohesive team with stronger shared sense of - and processes for - working together.”
- Co-Founder & Director in UK-based CIC
Are you a senior leader, HR director, learning and development lead, a team manager or a self-led team?
Have you been looking to put in new support in place for your team so they have the best chance at meeting targets whilst maintaing integrity, care and innovation?
This new team coaching offer will support your team and organisation to navigate the traditional challenges of teaming on the backdrop of complex political, post-pandemic and technological developments.
Book a free introduction call on Calendly to explore working together. If you know a team or a leader in your network who would benefit from this work, please share it with them.
#TeamCoaching #Difference #Creativity #Alignment #OrganisationalDevelopment
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Roxana Bacian
Organisational and Leadership Coach
Associate Certified Coach with ICF
Calendly
roxanabacian.com / Executive Coach CV / LinkedIn / Instagram
Team Coaching Intro Deck
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