Team Coaching Insights with Nathalie McAree

Nathalie McAree

It's not for me to decide if something has been valuable or not. The client decides. The client is the team, and they will decide on the value of something. And just because it hasn't met my expectation of being able to be finished off with a bow doesn't mean that it isn't valuable or hasn't been hugely valuable. So that was really helpful learning for me to have. One of my fantastic colleagues often helps me by telling me, "Nathalie, it's not all about you." And I think sometimes we can make it about ourselves, with our insecurities and whatever else we're carrying around. And so much of the time, it's not about us. We can make it about us, but it's not about us.

Tobi

My guest today has been a member of a team that she called the Cozy Club. Everybody was friendly with each other, there was little disagreement in meetings, and yet through a team coaching experience, she realized that all of them were living in different realities somehow. This experience was so powerful that now, 10 years later, Nathalie McAree is an executive and team coach based in London. For five years, she's been co-facilitating the community of practice for team coaching of the ICF UK, and after these team coaching engagements, her clients often tell her, "We should have gotten into this room together sooner." So in this episode, we unpack why that is. We talk about why close, friendly teams like Nathalie's 10 years ago may still avoid their most important conversations, how our and our clients' identity plays an even bigger role in team coaching, how Nathalie uses 360 and one-on-one interviews before the team even meets, and how, using a fishbowl technique, she then enables teams to have the conversations they have been avoiding. So if you've ever considered getting into team coaching, this one is for you. Let's go.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that teams haven't prioritized being in a room together before because they feel like the value they need to create is elsewhere, maybe not by being in a room together. And once they do prioritize coming together, actually being in a room together and thinking about how they need to work together in order to create more value for the system around them, they realize that it's not just really useful to do that, but can be very rewarding and nourishing to build those relationships and start to have more open and honest conversations. Then they think, "Oh my goodness, we've been so busy prioritizing other things where we thought we were doing the work that we needed to do. Actually, working on ourselves as a team is so much of the work that we need to do to create value around us." And it's not until people get into the room together that they often notice that.

Tobi

Mhm. So it's also prioritizing the relationship over what people maybe consider outputs that need to be produced right now, ASAP. Yeah.

Nathalie McAree

Absolutely. And I think that's a theme that comes through time and time again in team coaching: where is the value? People often come thinking, "I want a team intervention, and I want specific deliverables from that intervention." What they get is something quite different from that, and it's probably more valuable, but not something they knew they needed.

Tobi

Yeah, that makes me curious. I'm actually about to start a team coaching journey with Todd, together with my co-founder Max.

Nathalie McAree

Oh, fantastic.

Tobi

And Max and I were also very clear: okay, we have these two issues that we believe we should be resolving together with you. So I'm also curious if that will actually happen.

Nathalie McAree

Yes. Well, who knows?

Tobi

Yeah.

Nathalie McAree

I'm sure you will learn a lot about yourselves and one another and how you work together through the process.

Tobi

Yeah. And you apparently also went through that process as a team coaching client 10 years ago, and the story of that also resonated with me quite a bit. One thing that stuck was that you said your team was the Cozy Club.

Nathalie McAree

Yes.

Tobi

What did team coaching show about your team back then, and what were the surprises that you faced?

Nathalie McAree

So much rich learning from that, for ourselves as a team then, but also that I've been able to take into my practice as a team coach since then. The Cozy Club reference is about the amount of stretch, the amount of support and challenge that we were offering ourselves as a team. We were a close-knit team who enjoyed spending time together. We'd go for our meals at work. We would pair up for pieces of work. We were close. So we had quite a high amount of support for one another, but what we weren't so good at was opening up differences of opinion, open and honest conversations, really trying to look at how we could be more effective together, have more impact, be more commercial maybe. And I hadn't really noticed any of that, that we were really strong on support, but not strong on challenging one another. For me, up until that point, the whole notion of challenging one another felt, well, literally just too challenging. So the experience of going through team coaching and starting to up the level of openness and honesty and challenge that we were offering one another really opened my eyes to what's possible when you start to actually build psychological safety and trade that psychological safety that you've built, in order to have more of those conversations that matter, crucial conversations.

Tobi

Mhm.

Nathalie McAree

The second thing that it opened my eyes to was that where I did feel like we had these close-knit relationships, and we were pretty aligned in how we were experiencing being part of the team, that wasn't true. There were real differences of opinion about how it felt to be a member of that team. And prior to starting that process, I had no idea. It really opened my eyes to how differently even people who seem on a surface level to be getting on really well are actually experiencing that journey that you're on as a team together, and how effective you are.

Tobi

Yeah, and I can imagine that this is quite typical, that people would say, "Ah, we are a really good team," because they feel close, they feel like friends with each other, and they have this very support-focused relationship. But then what you say is missing is this psychological safety, to introduce that term into the conversation, where it's allowed to also bring up uncomfortable, not so cozy conversations and themes, I guess?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, definitely. My key learning around psychological safety was my own shifting understanding about that. And I don't think we were even using that terminology back then. But psychological safety isn't the Cozy Club. It's then: what do you do with that Cozy Club once you've established that support? How do you then stretch into challenge in a way that people can tolerate and bounce back from in those relationships? One of my colleagues uses this expression about psychological safety: trade it, don't bank it. Once you've built it, then use it to have those important conversations that stretch you into new terrain as a team.

Tobi

Ah, trade it, don't bank it. So how would you say psychological safety is different from being comfortable and supportive with each other?

Nathalie McAree

I think the main difference that I experienced and that we see in teams is that they then do express differences of opinion without fear that it's gonna be career-limiting in some way, or that you might be suddenly rejected or shamed for having a different opinion. So psychological safety, by definition, is being able to have those kinds of candid conversations where you don't agree on things, but you know there are no negative repercussions from having that robust conversation or exchange of views.

Tobi

So what are we doing if we are trading it, not banking it?

Nathalie McAree

We're doing that because of the outcome. We want to get the difference, the different opinions, the different perspectives, because we know we'll end up with a richer outcome. If it's just safer to agree, we're not gonna get as good an outcome as if we hear a robust exchange of different ideas or suggestions.

Tobi

Mhm. Yeah. And maybe in a few sentences: from that Cozy Club team coaching experience that you had as a client, how did you get to Nathalie, the team coach that is sitting in front of me today?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. I was really lucky to have my journey into team coaching start with experiencing it. Because after that, I went on courses where we were learning team coaching, different approaches to team coaching, the psychology that sits behind it, the psychology of teams, and all of those good things. And the participants on the courses that I was on couldn't get their heads around it, because they hadn't experienced it. They were like, "But what is it? What are we actually talking about? What does it feel like or look like when you're taking a team through this journey, or walking alongside them on this journey?" And I felt so privileged, because I knew exactly the difference between team coaching and other forms of team development. I'd had all of those, and I knew how team coaching was different.

Tobi

And so today you're not only a team coach yourself, but you also run the ICF community of practice for team coaching. You had shared many learnings, and I would love to unpack some of those.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah.

Tobi

And one theme that really stuck with me was this idea of getting triggered in team coaching. I think that can happen on both sides, both to me as a coach, but also to the clients among each other, because we have this system, we have this dynamic going on. So can you share a bit what came up there? What does it tell a coach when this sort of trigger moment happens?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, so they are data, either about yourself or the team. But I'd like to go a step back and just talk a little bit about this community. We have been, on behalf of the UK chapter of the ICF, setting up this community of practice for team coaches. So that's anybody that has an interest in team coaching, whether they're just taking their first steps into it, or whether they're very experienced team coaches with decades of experience. We have had a total cross-section join our community over the last five years. And what I have observed, being one of the people that helps to bring this community together, is that this is a very generous community of people who are very self-aware, either as coaches, which they're then bringing into their team coaching work, or from other disciplines, whether it's counseling, therapy, et cetera. And what I learn from trying to help host this community, along with my colleagues who host an arc or a theme that we work to, is that there are so many different ways to be effective with a team. All of these people who come into our community are doing different things that work, that they have picked up along the way. But there are so many things that we have in common, which is this idea of triggers, and all being deeply human and flawed, because we're all perfectly imperfect humans. And it's so reassuring. Some of the comments that we get are that, though our triggers might be different from one another, it's so reassuring to know that we're not alone in that we do get triggered when we do this work with teams. You're putting yourself in a situation where the whole team is looking at you. You're the one that's trying to do something with this team, and actually often trying to get them to go into a place that they haven't been to before as a team, and that is quite uncomfortable to stretch into, particularly if we're gonna invite people to have a conversation that they have been managing not to have for a very long time, but that they acknowledge they need to have. So suddenly you can become a focus point for people's discomfort with that. It can feel quite exposing. But there are all sorts of different reasons why we might get triggered, and they're unique to each of us. It happens to all of us, so there's great comfort in knowing that.

Tobi

Yeah, and you said these kinds of triggers, when they happen, are not necessarily a catastrophe or something to be afraid of. Those triggers are data.

Nathalie McAree

Absolutely.

Tobi

What can I do with this data?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, we're always inviting people to try and be curious with themselves. Be compassionate with yourself, and try and be non-judgmental with yourself, because if you can't be non-judgmental and compassionate with yourself, how can you offer it to others? But being really curious: if you can lean into curiosity when you're triggered, rather than staying with the trigger. So to notice the trigger and be curious: "Oh, that's interesting. I notice I'm feeling triggered about something. I wonder what that is about," and whether it's mine or whether it's some information about the team. Just turning to curiosity is often the antidote to what might prevent our connection and presence with the team. But we're human. We're all human at the end of the day. It's just slightly more exposing in front of a team than if you get triggered in a one-on-one coaching situation.

Tobi

Yeah. And you're saying self-compassion is the antidote, the medicine that I can give myself, and maybe also that I can mirror to the clients in these trigger moments.

Nathalie McAree

Yes.

Tobi

How do you build that competency, that capability of having this safe self-compassion very deep within you?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, I think we have to work at it. We have to notice. And I have learnt so much from actually preparing to share case studies at this community of practice series over the years. When I've dug in to think what was going on underneath the surface, maybe what value had been crossed, or what led to me being triggered in a particular way, it offers me so much self-insight and so much learning. And obviously this is really critical for coaches and team coaches, to understand themselves really well. But you just have to be willing to do the work, and to do the work over and over and over again, because none of us is the finished article. We're all in a state of becoming who we can be. So to keep coming back to times when we have been triggered, that reflective practice is so critical. And then just keep coming back to: if I can't be compassionate with myself... can I offer myself the same compassion that I would offer to a client?

Tobi

Yeah.

Nathalie McAree

Can I take the same mindset to myself that I would offer, with my coaching hat on, to a client, that non-judgmental, unconditional positive regard? So much of the work that I have to do on myself comes back to that, time and time again. How do I have more of that mindset, offer more of that to myself, that I would naturally offer to a client?

Tobi

Yeah. Being one's own good friend, in a way.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, absolutely.

Tobi

And you mentioned knowing your values, being aware of what is important to you, and then maybe also having that curiosity underneath that: okay, so I have this value here. Apparently this person doesn't have that value, or has it in a different way. Oh, that's interesting. And then reacting with this sort of curious, nurturing attitude rather than with an analytical one that's like, "Oh, what's going on now?" I imagine.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, and the judgmental one. And trying to let go of... There's that beautiful, is it a poem, Rumi? "Out beyond ideas of right and wrong, there's a field. I'll meet you there." It's about trying to let go of judgment, which is so hard. We spend a lifetime trying to let go of being judgmental of ourselves or others or situations. But it is so much of the work that we need to do, always.

Tobi

Cool. Another term that I had noted when we spoke last time was this term of identity, and how that also apparently plays a big role when we come together in team coaching, both on the team side, but also for me as a coach. Can you talk a bit about that?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. I think, in the community I've talked about and in myself, I've noticed that a lot of the feeling exposed, or when a trigger does come up, feels connected to our identity, because we pour so much of ourselves into the work that we're doing. And as discussed before, we might be doing it maybe with a co-coach, but it could be just you on your own, facing a team. That's why it can feel quite exposing: you're trying to help a group of people to do something that they haven't done before, or that feels uncomfortable. And because our identity is so closely tied to our work as team coaches, if the team resists that, it can feel like an attack on us and our identity. And then maybe similarly, when a team is invited to look at itself in the mirror, it can build more awareness of its identity and how it is coming across now, but also shape how they want to be known. So it can be quite confronting, and then also really empowering, to think about: how do we want people to be talking about us in the future versus how they talk about us now? So I think our discomfort, in a way, is always a mirror. Our discomfort of being there in front of the team, and possibly judged, or possibly a figure for the team to take out their discomfort with what's going on, with being invited to do things in a different way, that can come out on us. But equally, the space that we're inviting the team to stretch into feels uncomfortable for them and quite confronting too. So there's this discomfort on both sides, and it's not really that surprising in a way that this work can feel very challenging personally, which is why I love it, actually.

Tobi

Mhm. Yeah. The question of how others see me is obviously less there when we are in a one-on-one coaching setting, where we can really go into the psychological safety: okay, I have this trusting relationship with my coach. While when there's a team, and possibly, as you just said, a coach and a co-coach, then you have this whole dynamic of: okay, how am I perceived now within the group? And that layer is also going on in clients' minds.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. So much of the work that I have focused on when I've been working with teams is helping with awareness. And that's what we do one-on-one when we can. We might suggest to a one-on-one client to gather feedback, or to explore some 360 feedback on themselves. We can do that at a team level, and we often do do that at a team level: invite them to feed back on how they experience being part of the team themselves, what's going well, and what are the things that are getting in the way of them being able to perform as effectively as they'd like to. But then also we can invite a stakeholder perspective as well, or maybe the teams that sit beneath this team that we're working with, so that they can start to really get a sense of how they perceive themselves versus how their stakeholders or their direct reports or indirect reports are experiencing them and their effectiveness as a team. So suddenly you go from not really having much of an idea about the impact that you're having as a team, to noticing that people are having a very different experience, within the team and beyond the team, of your effectiveness too. So it can be quite a lot of data and information coming at you as a team, for you to sort and prioritize and decide: so what do we wanna do with all this information, and how do we want to prioritize how we can have more of the impact that we want to have on the things that we think are important?

Tobi

And now maybe you're giving me a nice transition to slowly removing the ICF community of practice hat and putting on the "Nathalie and what is it that you are doing as a team coach" hat. Because you're going into this direction of 360 feedback and using that as data in a process. Can you talk to me about that? How do you use 360 as a tool in your practice?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. So often it is helpful at the beginning of a team coaching engagement to help the team get a quick sense of how they perceive themselves and their effectiveness as a team, strengths and areas for development. But then to invite a few stakeholders, direct reports, and whoever the team commissioner is: the person that has formed the team in the first place, who is not in the team, so not the team leader, but who is responsible for forming that team in the system in which they operate. So there are four different areas of feedback, or categories of people who have a view on how this team is operating. And often this can be a very helpful starting point for the team to start to get this insight, and then for them to choose from that insight and the data that's generated what they want to prioritize working on as a team together. I would say that a 360 tool is a very helpful tool, and it can be quite quick to use and give you a snapshot of data. My preference would be to always use one-to-one interviews as well alongside that, so you get a richer... You can go into slightly more depth in the one-to-one interviews, where people can open up a little bit more. I'm sure there are lots of different 360 tools out there. The particular one that I use has some free-text comment options as well, so you can get a little bit more richness. But of course, a one-to-one interview is always gonna allow you to probe a little bit more where you think there would be benefit in doing that as the team coach.

Tobi

Mhm. And this 360 process sits between the contracting, where you basically get your mission, maybe from that stakeholder that you mentioned earlier, the team commissioner, I think you called it, and then before you meet the team. The 360 sits between that, right?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. In my experience, the commissions either come from the team commissioner, the person who is responsible overall for the team but not the team leader, or might come from the team, or might come from HR, somebody who's looking after the team from an HR perspective. After some initial contracting, if whoever is commissioning the work decides that a 360 might be beneficial in this case, then we can go ahead and set that up. Crucially, as the team coach, that might help us with some things that might be useful for the team to explore. But actually, for it to be effective, what to target should be owned by the team, not by the team coach. So we help them to gather some information about themselves so they can look in the mirror. But from there, they need to decide, "Okay, of all of the things that we've learnt through this process, which are the things that seem most important for us to target first?"

Tobi

So it needs to come from the team in order to be really taken up by the team as well.

Nathalie McAree

Ownership needs to sit with the team.

Tobi

Yeah. I would be curious to ask you which of the 360 questions that you use there you find most useful, or usually give the most insights. Can you name a few examples?

Nathalie McAree

I like the questions that really explore how easy it is to have an open and honest conversation, and how conflict is used in the team. I think those are really interesting. I mean, lots of interesting questions. There are 42 in the particular one that I'm thinking about. Those ones, it's about difficult... So much of the work often ends up about how do we get better at not avoiding the conversations that we really can't avoid anymore? How do we create the conditions where we can have those well? But what I find most interesting is the range of scores. I suppose that mirrors my experience of being part of a team and being quite shocked at how different my experience and my view of how something was going, or how we were operating as a team, was from my teammates' view. So that's the thing on any of those questions that interests me: the difference, the range, and then how that's different from how our stakeholders perceive us, how our direct reports perceive us, et cetera. So rather than any particular topic area, it's how diverse the viewpoints are that gets me excited.

Tobi

Mhm. So what you said now is, firstly, getting an idea of how the team perceives the level of psychological safety, how comfortable do I feel to bring up inconvenient conversations. And secondly, the range of differences: just by looking at different answers to the same questions, you get an idea of, okay, do we live in the same reality, or do we have to do an alignment here first?

Nathalie McAree

Yes. And the answer is usually: no, we're not in the same reality, and yes, we do need to do quite a lot of alignment. But of course, what we're trying to encourage is that it's okay to have a different view. If you have a different view, please bring it. Have the conversation in the room rather than outside of the room if you have a different opinion. What we hear quite a lot in team coaching, and when we do those one-to-one interviews, is that when it feels too difficult for a team to make a decision as a team, then sidebar conversations, or conversations outside of team meetings, happen, where people try and pick off... to arrive at a decision, because they just couldn't make it in the room all together, because it was too difficult. So what we'd always be inviting people to do is: it's okay to have a different view, but just bring it. Please have a different view, and please bring it in. One of the quotes that came out in the community of practice, just to go back, was, "Nobody's here to eat you." Whether that's the team coach or a team member, nobody's here to eat you. I think that's one of the key things about building psychological safety: bring your difference so that we can hear it and have that piece of data in our decision-making or in our problem-solving.

Tobi

Mhm. You mentioned a few times the one-on-one interview that you do basically next to the 360. I hear you're not directly meeting the team afterwards, but you actually meet individuals from the team one-on-one. How do you approach these interviews? What does that look like?

Nathalie McAree

They're so useful because we can start to build a relationship with individual team members before we've gotten into the room to look at all of this data together. So that's really critical from that perspective. In terms of setting up, or helping people to know what to expect from the conversation, we always say, and it's always true in my case, that none of the comments are going to be attributable to an individual. We'll interview everybody, we'll ask the same questions of everybody for consistency, and then we'll theme the responses. None of the responses will be directly attributable to anybody in the team, so they should feel free to be as open and honest as possible. The purpose of the one-to-one interview is to try and help the team to see itself more clearly, in terms of where its strengths are and where the possible areas for development are. Which are the conversations that the team know they need to have? What do they think they really need to do? What's really important for the team to achieve? Is there alignment on that? Is there alignment on what the team think they're there to do in terms of purpose, and all these things? So the questions might be different for each team. And the one-to-one interviews might be happening at the same time that the 360 is out for people to respond to, or they might happen at a different point in the sequence. So each team is quite different. But the ideal from our perspective is to be able to do both of those things, to gather as much insight as possible to share back with the team, for them to decide what they want to do with it.

Tobi

Yeah. But what I hear is that it's really an interview. This is not a one-on-one coaching conversation, but just another qualitative layer of data next to the 360, which then enables you to have a more effective team coaching conversation.

Nathalie McAree

Absolutely. But I also think that the genius thing of the one-to-one interviews is that, whilst they're not specifically coaching conversations, they do generate awareness. Because effectively, I think the intervention has already started at the point you start to ask questions and direct people to think about how effective they think the team are. And sometimes the questions might stray into, "And how do you personally contribute to that, to both the things that are effective and the things hindering the team from being effective? What's your part to play in that?" So I think they start to generate awareness for the individual, and at a team level as well. And then sometimes the questions might involve what they hear stakeholders saying about them, or what they imagine stakeholders might say about them. So again, starting to build that awareness as well. How are we perceived as a team beyond the team? What would people say about us? And how do I feel about that? So that's why I think they're so useful. Not technically coaching, but building so much awareness already.

Tobi

Yeah. So you cannot measure the system without also having an impact on the system, because the awareness that is created in the clients will already start a process within them.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah, yeah.

Tobi

Nice. Okay. Now, we looked quite deeply at the contracting, the 360, the one-on-one interview, all this preparation phase, and I think that is also the focus of today's conversation. But now that we've arrived at this point, I'm naturally wondering what happens once we all gather together in the room. I'm fully aware this might look very different for different teams, but is there a classic intervention or exercise that you often do that works?

Nathalie McAree

Yes, there is. Sometimes we might just share the data back to the team so they have a pack each to read, which is the theming from the one-to-one interviews, so anonymized theming, and a copy of the 360 outputs. Sometimes we'll get those blown up and printed around the walls so that people can go in groups and walk around and actually absorb the data once they're in the room. And sometimes we think it makes more sense, particularly if they're people speaking different languages or with all sorts of different preferences, to share the data in advance with a few questions for individual reflection before people arrive in the room. So it can go those different ways. But we ask people to think about what in that data are the highlights for them, that they can feel really proud of, that the team are already doing really well. Then to start to pick out what they think, individually and then collectively, are some of the areas that the team needs to work on. What are some of the things that are gonna be quite easy for them to implement quickly? And what are some of the bigger things that they need to work on, that probably necessitate some important conversations, not difficult ones, and what are those? Some people might call that naming the elephants in the room. There are all sorts of different ways that's called. So in that first time when they all come together, they're starting to build a shared understanding of the picture of the team as it is, the strengths, the areas of opportunity, and starting to prioritize: within those areas of opportunity, what do we want to go after that's a quick fix, and what's a longer-term thing, and how might we do that as part of this program of team coaching and outside of it? Because so much of it happens in between. So the team are already changed by the one-to-one interviews, by reading the insight, and once they've talked about their insight, they're already on this journey where they're not gonna be the same.

Tobi

Mhm. Yeah, interesting. So in that way, the 360 and also the interviews are not only for you to gather data and come up with a grand methodology for your team coaching, but also for the team itself. We put the dirty underwear on the table, and now we say, "Okay, what do we think about that? How does that look to us, and what do we want to do about it, actually?"

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. And being invited to look at yourselves as a team in that way... In my experience of team development, prior to when I experienced team coaching myself, I had never been through anything like that, the holding the mirror up to the team in that way. I hadn't experienced any other team development that did that. So I think that could feel quite challenging. And actually, sometimes when I do the one-to-one interviews, I wonder about how the report is going to be received, whether people are gonna think, "Oh, there's some really contentious stuff in here," and whether they'll be able to hear their own voice in it. Will they be able to recognize the themes, the things that they brought up? But on the whole, people seem to find it incredibly useful to see this data and to have this greater awareness of what's going on. It also helps people to develop a bit more compassion, because you're hearing different perspectives in the theming that comes out. You go, "Oh yeah, I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective before." You hear these different perspectives that are coming out in the data, and I think people build a little bit more understanding and compassion for one another and for different perspectives.

Tobi

Mhm. Cool. What would be another classic intervention, if you still have another one?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. I think one of the themes that comes up often is accountability for making any changes. So this is a thing that we spend quite a long time thinking about. How do we help the team to be accountable on the things that it wants to hold itself accountable to? So we might always begin with some sort of a check-in and a review: at the end of the last session you said you wanted to do this, that, and the other, so let's just check in. How's that been? What's gone well, what hasn't gone well, and why didn't it go well? I'm always surprised at how few teams are in the discipline of actually doing a retrospective, learning from a project or, in this instance, the things they said they would do, which they may or may not have done. And one of the key things, as you'll know from trying to do a retrospective, is to go in with non-judgment and no blame. To go, "Okay, let's look at what happened, what can we learn from that, and how do we apply that learning going forwards?" But very few teams have that discipline, because they're just always pedaling to go faster, but not really doing anything differently. So I think it's helping teams to be accountable to the things they've said and then learning from that, whether they chose to do it or not, and what that tells them about the things that they committed to and what's really important. So that's one. There are some things that we would often use in a program, like ways of doing important conversations in a way that feels safe. So one example might be to hold a fishbowl.

Tobi

Mhm.

Nathalie McAree

Have you heard of a fishbowl? Yeah. So some people are in the middle of the circle and others are on the outside, and only the people on the inside have the conversation, and people tap in and tap out. That tends to be very helpful for a team to find a way of having an important conversation, and on listening really well if you're on the outside, and contributing really well if you're on the inside of the goldfish bowl. And finding mechanisms to help people offer each other feedback, positive and advice as well. So those are sort of typical things that would often feature in a program, but of course then it's just gonna be bespoke.

Tobi

Yeah, I find that fishbowl super interesting. What would be a standard issue or theme where you would say, "Okay, now let's do that fishbowl exercise"?

Nathalie McAree

It could be any topic that the team really need to try and get under the skin of. So it could be, okay, how are we going to engage our teams differently next year? Let's just start with some ideas. Or, ideally, it would be a difficult conversation the team need to have. Are we really purpose-led, or are we just commercially led? Or who's right, is it the merchandisers or the buyers? Whatever it is, like the camps that are opposite. So it's on a real topic that the team need to discuss.

Tobi

And in that example of, okay, are we purpose-driven or commercially driven, who sits in the middle of the bowl and who is watching?

Nathalie McAree

So the roles will rotate anyway. In the end, everybody will have a chance to sit on the inside. But I would always try and choose the quieter people to go in the beginning and to sit in the middle, because it gives them the explicit permission that they're going to be talking. They don't have to fight their way into the conversation. They're already there.

Tobi

Mhm. And then would it be you as a coach and maybe two team members that sit in the middle, or...?

Nathalie McAree

No. The coach is not in the conversation. We're just outside the whole fishbowl. And then the intervention might be, once the conversation's been flowing for some time and people are tapping in and out of the center of that conversation, that we might do a learning pause, a learning check-in. What are you noticing is going well as part of this conversation? How could it be even better? Let's have another run. Keep going. What do you want to do differently in the next run? So that they're learning in the moment, in the fishbowl.

Tobi

Very interesting. Okay. And now, as I heard you speak, you were saying "often we", so I take that to mean you also often work with a co-coach.

Nathalie McAree

Yes. And I much prefer to work with a co-coach. I think because often we'll be different, we'll notice different things. First of all, I love collaborating anyway, and I love teamwork. It's one of the reasons that I love working with teams, because I love teamwork myself. So we'll offer different perspectives, we'll pick up on different things. And I genuinely think that difference produces something better. But also we mirror some of the difference that's in the team as well. If we're one team coach working individually with a team that are all quite different, then we'll be missing loads. And it's quite intense as well, working with an intact team, for all the stuff that you're holding as the team coach. So to have somebody else there that is picking up on it... We might be leading at different points, but then: right, what do you think, it seems to have gone in this direction, so how shall we use our time? Where will we engage with the team on co-creating our next steps, and things like that? It's really so awesome to have a sounding board.

Tobi

Yeah, I can see that. So there's two of you, and then how big is a typical team that you'd work with?

Nathalie McAree

Anything from five or six people up to 20 people. And if you go beyond that, then you're probably looking at a team of teams, a team that is made up of different teams within it. Then we might bring in more team coaches as well. But in my experience, it's somewhere between five and 20.

Tobi

Interesting. Okay. Thanks for letting us in so deeply into your team coaching room. I can really picture it very vividly. And that also brings me back to one thing that you shared in our last conversation. You talked about a first session that you had with a new team, and you said you had to leave without a clean ending, and it really turned out to be a disaster from your perspective. But then apparently for that team it didn't, and you ended up working with them for several years.

Nathalie McAree

Yeah.

Tobi

Do you wanna tell us a bit more about that, and what it can also tell an aspiring coach who maybe leaves a session feeling that way?

Nathalie McAree

Yeah. Well, as ever, I always learn so much from the teams that I work with. With my personality preferences, I am someone who likes to be planned and structured and organized. And so I had an elegant ending planned for a session, and it just didn't shake out that way. It went in a different direction and we essentially ran out of time, and I would have loved to be able to put a clean bow on the end of the day, and that was not possible the way it ended up. And so I was beating myself up, which is a common theme that comes out in our community as well, about taking too much responsibility for the teams and what they decide is successful. And what I learned was that it had been hugely valuable for the team to have that, and it sort of catapulted them into this new productivity and being able to be open and honest and align on some of the difficult conversations they needed to have, in a way that was not visible to me, because I was not inside the organization, until we spoke again. So my key learning from that was: it's not for me to decide if something has been valuable or not. The client decides. The client is the team, and they will decide on the value of something. And just because it hasn't met my expectation of being able to be finished off with a bow doesn't mean that it isn't valuable or hasn't been hugely valuable. So that was really good. That was really helpful learning for me to have. One of my fantastic colleagues often helps me by telling me, "Nathalie, it's not all about you." And I think sometimes we can make it about ourselves, with our insecurities and whatever else we're carrying around. And so much of the time, it's not about us. We can make it about us, but it's not about us. So that's reassuring. That's really reassuring for me as well.

Tobi

Yeah. I really resonate with that, as someone who also loves to plan, and kind of taking away a bit of the importance that maybe you see in your contribution and your performance as a coach. And I think that's also in a way my takeaway from many things that you shared now. When I asked you, "Okay, do we have classic interventions?", what I mostly heard is that it's not about coming in with a perfect plan and getting them through this exercise, but it's really about working with what the team brings and what they share in the 360 and in the interviews, and then how they react to having all these themes on the table.

Nathalie McAree

Yes, absolutely. And as someone who is planned and organized and structured, it's incredibly difficult to keep reminding myself that it's not about, "Ooh, I think this would be lovely here, and that would be lovely there," and they'd have a great day if they did those things. Ultimately, we have to co-create with the team, and that's the right thing to do, for them to have the sense of ownership, because otherwise they're just being dragged through a process that they haven't chosen. So yeah, ownership has to be there, and so I am often having to work against my preferences for planning and structure and order.

Tobi

Thank you. I think that's an amazing closing. But my last question, as usual, is: where can people find you as a team coach, and also maybe if they wanna engage with ICF UK on that community of practice, or in any other capability?

Nathalie McAree

Yes. Oh, thank you for the question. So I do have a website. My company is called nem-coaching.com, but you'll probably most easily find me as Nathalie McAree on LinkedIn. And if you are somebody that has an interest in team coaching, we would love to welcome you into our community of practice. You can go onto the UK chapter of the ICF website, where the special interest groups are listed, and just click to join the team coaching one, and I will let you in. So I hope to see you at a future session.

Tobi

Awesome. Thanks so much, Nathalie.

Nathalie McAree

Thank you, Tobi. Thank you so much for having me.

Tobi

This was Nathalie McAree. You can find her on LinkedIn and at nem-coaching.com, that is N-E-M minus coaching.com, both in the show notes. And if you're interested to get in touch and get into the team coaching community of practice of the ICF UK, you can join through their special interest group section on the ICF UK website. We'll also put that in the show notes. And if you're looking for a gentler way to enable teams to have conversations and go deeper, I can also recommend all the tools we built at metaFox. For example, our picture cards for in-person coaching on metafox.eu, or also the visual virtual cards on metafox.online. There you can also find tools like the Strengths Discovery or the Values Discovery that enable teams to have a common language to talk about what's important to them. If this episode was useful, feel free to share it with a coach who works with teams, and of course, leave your feedback in the comments or drop me an email to tobias@metafox.eu. I'm Tobi, co-founder of metaFox, and I wish you all the best on your journey towards becoming a more impactful coach. See you back here in two weeks. Bye-bye.