Accepting All The Parts – How it Applies to Team Development

The concept of accepting all of our emotional states, thought and physical feelings in order to move towards High Performance is discussed in the article ‘Accepting All The Parts’. This article discusses how this same concept can be applied to Team Development.

Team Coaching has more complexity than one to one coaching as there are the relationships between team members and the overall group dynamic to consider. For High Performing Teams there is also a need for the other parts of the organisation that interact with the Team to be High Performing. In this way, improving the performance of a team will have positive knock on effects spreading throughout the organisation from the source of High Performance, like ripples on a lake when you drop in a pebble.

Because of this powerful impact, organisations spend millions on team building exercises and away days. However, unless all the energy in the team including anger, resentment, jealousies etc… are discussed in a ‘safe’ way, the team will not fundamentally change and will not grow in wisdom.

One of the most common problems in a team is that there is history that has created perceived ‘negative’ emotions in the team. This history may be a restructure where old team members were made redundant, or a change of manager, or a change in the purpose of the team.

These shifts in the wider organisation will have emotional effects on the staff whether we like it or not and whether we deny it or not. So often teams, or specific members of a team are holding in an emotional response which is a perfectly normal response to have, but they (or other team members, or the manager), judge it as ‘bad’ in some way and so that person knows instinctively not to express it. The energy from these emotional responses is held within the team and can build up in an unhealthy way if not allowed out in a safe environment through Team Coaching.

Managers of Teams often know that the team are feeling a particular way – angry, sad fearful, blaming others etc… however they don’t feel equipped to handle having the open discussions required. The Manager themselves may feel anxious about having to deal with possible conflict. So over time, the Manager and the Team reach a stalemate of unexpressed emotions and thoughts, that start to sabotage the ability for the team to be High Performing.

As part of our Team Coaching programme the initial stage is to build enough trust within the team, for individuals to express how they really feel and allow for all that history to come out. The skill of the Coach is to make the individuals in the team feel ‘safe’ enough to say what they feel, and to know that it will remain confidential, and that most importantly, the Coach will not judge them in any way. In fact, the Coach’s role is more likely to be total acceptance of whatever comes up and the ability to hold strong emotions within the room.

There is huge worth for teams being able to express long held emotions and have another person, say ‘that’s absolutely understandable, you have a right to feel this way, and I still think you are a good employee of this company. I have faith that you can be a valuable member of this team as we move towards High Performance’ – or something along these lines!!

It is not normally the response that the team are used to. They have been conditioned to think that they should always feel ‘happy’ and ‘positive’ about things at work, they should ‘embrace change’ and if they have anything ‘negative’ to say, its best to keep it to themselves as this is not acceptable in a team meeting. This is why just after at team meeting when everyone goes to the kitchen to wash up their mugs, the real discussions start!!

So being able to Accept All The Parts is a vital first step for a Team Coach running a High Performance Team Coaching Programme.