Systemic team coaching has two aspects. One is to help teams understand the multiple systems they are part of or occur within the team. The other is to help the team develop practical ways to manage, monitor and review those systems.

Systems can be internal, external or boundary-crossing. Here are some examples of each.

Internal systems

  • Sub-groups or aliances within the team. These can be based on shared experiences, shared interests or priorities, personality type and so on
  • Communication systems – who keeps whom informed about what
  • How the team inducts newcomers
  • The leader-folower system between the team leader and the team

External systems

  • Any other team this team interfaces with
  • The priorities of the leader’s boss and other influencers in the corporate hierarchy
  • Fixed systems of financial reporting, hiring and firing, compliance with legal requirements

Boundary-crossing systems

  • Negotiating for resources
  • Project teams, in which members of this team take part
  • How the team gathers information about customer requirements and perceptions

Identifying Systems

Identifying systems can be difficult, because they are not obvious. To make them evident, we can focus on three coaching questions:

  1. What has to happen for us to succeed in our task?
  2. How does that happen?
  3. What influences whether it happens wel or less wel?

These questions typicaly identify two kinds of system. Task systems are about what the team does and how it uses its resources. Relational systems are about how people work together – how supportive they are, how they combine and recombine in subgroups to achieve individual and colective agendas.

Systems Mapping

Systems mapping provides a visual representation of the system. For task systems, you can use different shapes (circles, squares, triangles etc) to represent different categories of event, such as an action, a decision, and consultation. By working through several accounts of what happens in a system, we can rapidly recognise where things are not working as wel as they should. For example, key people may left out of the information loop, or there may be insufficient clarity about responsibilities. Redesigning the system may require a few tweaks or a complete overhaul.

For relational systems, socio-mapping measures how everyone relates to everyone else. For example, a map might represent the perceived quality and frequency of the communication between team members and the quality and frequency they need from each other.

The bottom line is that you don’t know there is a system, or don’t know how it works, you can’t improve it!

© David Clutterbuck, 2015