A Conversation with Georgina Woudstra on the Game of Teams Podcast Series

Introduction: Georgina Woudstra is an ICF Master Certified Coach (only 1% of coaches are qualified to this level) and she specialises in chief executives and senior leadership. Georgina has more than 20 years’ experience and a proven track record coaching CEOs, executive boards and other senior individuals and top teams.Georgina has been described by clients as having “strong presence and credibility”, as being “experienced and wise” and a coach who “has extraordinary empathy” allowing her to be “challenging but gentle” This show and conversation reveals Georgina as she is found by clients. 

 

Podcast episode summary: In this episode Georgina Woudstra MCC, shares her thoughts on the world of teams, the challenges they face given our VUCA reality. She opines that leaders need to develop a more sophisticated model of Leadership whereby they can step back and pause & have the courage and presence to help their teams step back as well. Georgina goes onto expand on the role of Team Coaches, clarifying the distinction between Team Coaching and Team Facilitation. Her story illuminates that distinction with alacrity. There is of course a role for team facilitation but there needs a wiser alignment between the outcomes a team is seeking and the intervention chosen. 

• Our VUCA world is real. It shows up in our being overstretched, reactive, under pressure where it is hard to pin down long term strategy and it contributes to our being filled with anxiety
• Leaders need to cultivate a stance where they have the confidence and presence to pause and reflect rather than persist with blind devotion to a plan or pace of current business activity-they need to have confidence to create intentional interruptions 
• Georgina would love for teams to be set up for success. This means the team being well designed 
• Coaching and Team Coaching is a journey over time- often times Team Coaches get a distress call from a sponsor to help a team get unstuck. Too often Team Coaches are tempted to start to fix rather than contract for a better way. 
• Georgina shared her approach to team coaching and the steps she takes in the initial engagement. This involves resisting urge to simply provide a half -day intervention but to influence for appropriate amount of time, to seek to influence Leadership and to understand the authority power dynamic on a team. 
• She often aims to work with the team leader first to understand style, decision making and how accountability is honoured
• Her quest is to determine who is responsible for the Coaching Journey
• She urges Coaches to slow down & invest more time upfront in contracting phase
• Team Coaching is about transitioning a team to take ownership for their outcomes and their process so that they absorb the team coaching over time. 
• Georgina shared a story where her team coaching style, presence and the competencies involved in team coaching were evidenced. 
• She emphasised the importance of a team coach cultivating their capacity to work in an emergent way, to work in the moment using team coaching competencies rather than in a pre-planned or pre-determined way. 
• Important to work with team in its own context –context affects behaviour and often team away days are more of an abstraction. Hard for team to mine learning’s back in the day job. 
• Georgina shared her 3 pieces of wisdom for Team Leaders and Team Coaches. She encouraged us to –

1. Move from doing to being- drop our attraction to tools and models and instead cultivate a capacity to be present to what is. 
2. Embody team- coaching competencies. Her studio has identified 15 different competencies that need to be fully integrated. 
3. Practice-Practice-Practice 

 

• Georgina ended our conversation sharing how she is enjoying the work of collaboration. She sees a world that is moving towards a greater degree of collaboration over competition, which she believes, is both powerful and graceful.

Resources: the following include the resources we alluded to over the course of our conversation

1. International Coaching Federation www.icf.com 
2. ITS www.itsnlp.com 
3. Executive Coach Studio www.executivecoachstudio.com 
4. Georgina Woudstra www.georginawoudstra.com