Who’s coaching who?
(Photo credits Brendan Moran & Ramsey Cardy Sportsfile)
Many of us know what it feels like to be part of a high-performing team. It feels good, we enjoy our time there and we feel like we’re in the zone together.
We got a sense of that as we watched the Irish Rugby team in the Autumn Internationals. The pundits commented on the wide smiles on the faces of the players after the Argentina match. We got a real sense that they were enjoying their success. Captain Peter O’Mahony confirmed as much and then went on to say “I think the most pleasing thing, the reason why it was so pleasing, was that we grew as a group.
Man of the match, Joey Carberry, post match was delighted with his award but in the same moment recognised there was still room for improvement for the team.
Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman of Harvard defined high effectiveness in teams as exceeding expectations, continuing to learn and improve, and deriving immense joy from their performance. I can’t easily think of a better example of this definition.
In the same way, kudos also to the Ireland Women’s team whose team strengths and discernable joy overcame Japan over the weekend.
Andy Farrell, or Faz for those in the know, seems to have the conditions in the team just right for now because the team is ticking all of those boxes. Farrell and his coaching team perform a critical coaching role and it seems clear that they go so far beyond coaching the rugby task.
When we coach leadership and executive teams, our focus is often on identifying how the conditions in the team can be improved. One key question is to identify “Who's coaching who?”. Far from expecting that every team might have an Andy Farrell in situ, we love to witness that coaching, one of Wageman’s enabling conditions, is happening one way or another for the team.
So what do we mean by coaching in this context. Coaching in this sense is the requirement that somebody involved with the team, quite apart from contributing to the task, is paying attention to how well the team is performing together. Somebody is noticing what’s going on, what’s stuck, what’s not working and what needs drawing attention to. Coaching is also about noticing what is going right, catching the team at its best and understanding how to amplify and grow those experiences.
Of course, “who’s going to do that?”, I hear you ask? Well you’ll be surprised to hear us suggesting that it really doesn’t matter who. The most important factor is that somebody is paying attention to it.
The best teams that achieve that high-performing status do it themselves. They are the teams who recognise the value in a culture of continuous improvement in how they work together. They are the teams who have established the norms of high-performing behaviour, and practice them rigorously. Whether it is the team leader that takes on that role, or the team members themselves who hold one another to account, making commentary and feedback a strength, or if you choose to bring a professional team coach to that task, the high performing culture that they have built ensures that everybody on that team is collectively responsible for paying attention to their team performance.
Who takes on the role of Andy Farrell in your team? Who's coaching who?
Have a chat with our Team Coach Partners about your team development at www.smurfitteamcoaches.ie.
