What did we do — and did it work? — The Pond-Deshpande Centre’s Systems Coaching Experience (3/5)
The Theory of Change for this work is as follows: if the inner work of the PDC team can “scale-deep” their leadership capacity then we can be more impactful in the world and in the work we do.
Of course, that means getting into the groan zone of uncomfortable conversations. Not fun, but necessary in order for us to build the trust, integration, and vulnerability for us to work as an effective team.
Creating Conditions
The first session in our Leadership Series was focused on setting our goals for the coaching series with Holon Leadership. Many answers came up around the theme of Creating the conditions for the team to unlock their potential as a top answer. The how to get there was through:
- Generative Dialogue for reimagined high hopes and deep fears of what is possible in this relationship
- Deep democracy experience to deepen alignment and empathy of the relationships in the team
- Reveal the system of this relationship to itself through a curated experience of outer and inner roles
- Produce a co-created alliance of how we work together going forward in this new reality
Our Alliance
In order to guide the experience we made agreements for how we want to be together when things get hard some of these words were:
Our Container
What are our key needs for our alliance going into the process? A few standouts were the need for facilitated bluntness, stepping into vulnerability, hosting ourselves, getting into groan zones, empathy, keeping a greater sense of purpose than self, and holding our individual strengths and perspectives.
The Impact
It was shortly after this that our team stepped outside of this Leadership Series and went into a strategic planning session to clarify our offering and build a purpose statement that encompasses the entire organization’s activities. During this session, there was a tangible shift in how all team members stepped into the conversation. The honesty, groan zones, openness to failure and listening were all much more apparent and contributed to the productive outcome of the meeting. Holding space to set up our agreement as a team allowed us to voice how we wanted to show up and it was fantastic to have the opportunity to practice what we had so recently talked about.
The results are right there. When we focus on the inner-work of our team, it pays off in spades when we do the structural work like a strategic plan.
Going forward, the sessions with Saralyn will continue to go deeper on team dynamics and how we operate as a unified collective. Look for the next blog to hear about the following sessions and how leadership is scaling through the organization.
