The Team Coaching Zone Podcast: Coaching | Teams | Leadership

How can you make team coaching as simple, sticky and fun as possible?  And why is that critically important? Tune in to this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast with Rob Bier--Founder of 6:30 Partners and Executive and Team Coach--to find out.  Rob Bier has coached full-time for seven years. His background makes him equally comfortable working with the soft and the hard sides of business and people challenges. Prior to becoming a coach Rob served as founder and CEO of two private equity-backed companies in financial services, and previous to that he was a partner in Monitor Group, the strategy consulting firm. Rob studied coaching with Professor Chris Argyris of the Harvard Business School, at the Coaches Training Institute, and with Nancy Kline of Time to Think. He has an engineering degree from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. In this podcast episode, Rob shares his journey from graduate school in the United States, to working with the Monitor Group in the UK, to building his own leadership team in a financial services company that he started in the Netherlands, to moving to Singapore and establishing 6:30 Partners.  Themes explored in the podcast include: connecting team coaching to business performance; team coaching in Asia; three guiding principles for team coaching: simplicity, stickiness and fun; the positivity-productivity framework by Team Coaching International; the white-water rafting metaphor of team coaching; and using “The Thinking Environment” from Nancy Kline to create psychological safety and surface hidden conflict. Rob shares two stories from his team coaching practice: a success story with the leadership team of a tech startup; and a semi-failure that surfaced conflict too quickly.  He also discusses his thoughts on the future of team coaching and shares a number of tips and resources including: "Time to Think" by Nancy Kline; use of the VoxVote app; Patrick Lencioni's books The 5 Dysfunctions and The Advantage, and more.  He also telegraphs his own book, "The Big Ride," which will be coming out in 2017. This is a rich episode that all new as well as experienced team coaches will not want to miss!  Tune in today to begin taking your team coaching practice to the next level!

How can leaders, teams and organizations bring human spirit and engagement back to the world of work? Tune in to this week's special Halloween episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast where host Dr. Krister Lowe interviews DJ Mitsch the Founder and Chief Coaching Officer of the Pyramid Resource Group and the Author of "Zombies to Zealots: Reawaken the Human Spirit at Work." DJ Mitsch was featured back in Episode #009 of the TCZ podcast where she introduced listeners to the Team Advantage team coaching approach and to some stories that illustrate the transformative potential of team coaching in organizations. In this episode DJ takes us into the journey of how we can move from being "zombies" at work into become "zealots." Themes explored in show include: the impetus for the book; the cause of low engagement in organizations; paying attention to the language we use at work and in particular to how we refer to people; a new consciousness trying to emerge in today's organizations; reclaiming the mind, heart, body and soul in our work; 4 pathways back to the light: 1. Reawaken 2. Remember 3. Reconnect 4. Rehumanize DJ also shares linkages of the book to team leadership and to team coaching. This is an inspiring episode that all team coaches will surely not want to miss! Tune in today and get ready to come back to life!

Alexander Caillet, Founder of Corentus, shares insights on coaching teams in real time for real results. Topics include the impact of team coaching, limits of traditional approaches, team coaching engagements, self-coaching within teams, achieving sustainable change, and critical considerations for coaching team leaders.

Join host Dr. Krister Lowe and today's featured guest Karin Zastrow--an innovator in the field of leadership and management development--for this week's episode of the Team Coaching Zone Podcast! Karin is the Founder and CEO of the Zastrow company based in Copenhagen Denmark. She is the author of the book and training program "Direct Leadership: The New Narrative of Every Day Leadership." In this episode of the podcast, Karin shares her personal journey from conducting staff satisfaction surveys to delivering leadership training programs to creating the Direct Leadership program. Themes explored in the podcast include: the gap that Karin perceived in the leadership development field that led to creating Direct Leadership; 7 essential roles for leader-managers (Strategy Developer, Organization Developer, Knowledge Manager, Team Builder, Decision Enabler, Career Developer, Performance Generator); 4 behaviors that help enact the roles (Catcher, Initiator, Coach, Referee); the leader-manager as team coach; how many leadership development programs focus on the human dimension yet fail to equip leaders with the every day practical skills that actually lead to results; the problem of promoting leader-managers who have not been equipped properly and more. Karin shares some stories of team leaders and organizations that have applied the Direct Leadership approach. She also discusses some of the resources and training programs she offers that team coaches may find useful to explore. Leadership and team coaches looking for practical tools and frameworks that can help team leaders succeed will find this episode right up their alley! This is yet another episode that you will surely not want to miss!

How can organizations leverage and scale the agile and nimble nature of small high performing teams at the enterprise level? Tune in to this week's featured Team Coaching Zone podcast with David Silverman--Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CrossLead--to discover some insights and answers to this fundamental question of our times. In this episode David shares his life-long journey being on and working with high performing teams beginning with an early interest in competitive swimming and water polo; to becoming a Navy SEAL officer where he served on numerous combat deployments over 12 years with distinction; to bringing back insights learned from transforming the US counter-terrorism effort against Al-Qaeda that could then be applied in the business world; to co-authoring the book "Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World" with General Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell, and Tantum Collins; and to founding the firm CrossLead in 2016 that provides an enterprise solution combining a proven framework, software and services to empower organizations to thrive in today's complex environment. Additional themes explored in the episode include: the shift from the industrial age to the knowledge age and now to the digital age; the disruptive forces and adaptive challenges faced by today's organizations and how they can be overcome through scaling nimble agile teams on an enterprise level; some of the elements of successful teaming gleaned from the 10,000+ hours in becoming a Navy SEAL and working on the SEAL teams; the CrossLead framework, software and services and how they are being applied in organizations; and more. David shares a number of stories and lessons learned throughout the podcast that apply to all organizations at this time of disruption that brings both great challenge as well as opportunity. This is an episode that all team coaches will surely not want to miss!

Join Host Dr. Krister Lowe and today's guest Keith McCandless--the Co-Founder of Liberating Structures--for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! In this episode Keith introduces listeners to "Liberating Structures." LS are powerful microstructures or simple rules that help groups unleash a culture of innovation. Keith is the Co-Founder of Liberating Structures (www.LiberatingStructures.com) along with his colleague Henri Lipmanowicz. They are both co-authors of the book "The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation." Keith works with a diverse array of public and private organizations to help people take on complex challenges and innovation efforts. He specializes in unleashing everyone to work at the top of their collective intelligence. He calls himself a structured improvisationalist. He holds a Master's in Management of Human Science from Brandeis University in Boston and a B.A. from Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington. Some themes explored in this podcast include: why planned change efforts tend to fail in organizations; the origins of liberating structures and why they help groups, teams and organizational systems develop new habits and culture; avoiding the extreme poles of top down change efforts on one end to the anarchy of open discussion and consensus-building and brainstorming on the other; reference to a number of the 33 structures; a compelling story of how Liberating Structures were used to transform a leadership team and whole subsidiary of a global company in Venezuela; how groups can very quickly in less than 20 minutes leverage their collective intelligence to innovate, make decisions, solve problems and more; the un-learning that is required to use Liberating Structures as a organizational consultant or pro facilitator and more. Keith also provides a brief overview of how listeners can quickly get up to speed on using Liberating Structures by visiting the website at www.LiberatingStructures.com, by reading the book and/or by attending an "immersion workshop" which are available in different places around the world. Liberating Structures provides all team coaches with a powerful shift in mindset as well as a set of tools that help teams unleash their collective intelligence and that can unleash innovation as well as organizational change and transformation. This is an episode that all team coaches will surely not want to miss!

Join Dr. Krister Lowe and show guests--Dr. Vanessa Druskat and Dr. Steven Wolff--for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast. The title of this episode is: "Team Emotional Intelligence: Cracking the Code on High Performing Teams." Dr. Druskat is Associate Professor at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire, USA. She is an internationally recognized expert on team effectiveness, team leadership, and emotional intelligence. She works with top leadership teams around the world and is passionate about helping teams meet their collaborative potential. Together with Vanessa Druskat, Dr. Steven B. Wolff has developed a theory of group emotional intelligence that extends the theory of individual emotional intelligence to the group level. Dr. Wolff has over ten years experience as a professor teaching and researching team effectiveness and leadership. He worked as a research consultant at HayGroup where he helped Richard Boyatzis and Daniel Goleman develop their second generation EI instrument (the ESCI), and has 15 years experience in the high-tech industry as an engineer and manager. In this episode Dr. Druskat and Dr. Wolff take listeners on a journey from their early days in graduate school conducting research together on teams, to collaborating with Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis on scholarship in the area of team emotional intelligence, to publishing an article in the Harvard Business Review on "Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups," to creating the Team Emotional Intelligence Survey, through some great stories working with real teams using the Team Emotional Intelligence framework and survey, to training team practitioners in the Team Ei instrument. Specific themes covered in this episode include the 20 years of research behind team emotional intelligence; the team fundamentals, team emotional intelligence norms and social capital outputs that comprise team emotional intelligence and The Team Emotional intelligence Survey; lessons learned applying Team Ei with real world teams; the critical role of norms in facilitating team effectiveness; what differentiates good performing teams from high performing teams and more. This is a rich episode that listeners are sure to listen to over and over again. All team coaches should be familiar with this important body of knowledge that cracks the code on what drives high performing teams. This is definitely an episode that you won't want to miss!

Join Dr. Krister Lowe for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! In today's show, Dr. Lowe rounds out a 3-part series on Team Coaching Resources with a review of 5 team coach training programs. In the episode Krister puts training in the context of the 70-20-10 rule of learning as well as the 10,000 hour mastery perspective. The five team coaching training programs reviewed in the episode include: 1. The Team Advantage Team Coaching Certification Program offered by The Pyramid Resource Group. 2. The Systemic Team Coaching Certificate and Certification Program offered by the Academy of Executive Coaching. 3. The Certified Team Performance Coach Certification Program offered by Team Coaching International. 4. The Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching Certification Program (ORSC) offered by CRR Global. 5. The Advanced Group and Team Coaching Intensive and Practicum offered by Potentials Realized. Additional themes mentioned on the podcast are certification programs in the Team Diagnostic Survey and The Team Emotional Intelligence Assessment, the upcoming Columbia International Coaching Conference in October as well as special discounts on many of the training programs mentioned in today's episode for subscribers of The Team Coaching Zone newsletter. Sign up today at www.TeamCoachingZone.com!

Join Dr. Krister Lowe for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! In this podcast, Krister shares his recommendations for books on team coaching. This is the second in a 3-part series focusing on resources for team coaches. The first episode looked at assessments in team coaching and the third episode will look at team coach training programs.  This episode is divided into 2 Parts: 1. Top 5 Books on Team Coaching 2. Recommendations on 10 Additional Books on Teams, Teaming, and Team Effectiveness/Performance. Listeners will find this episode useful for reviewing some essential bodies of knowledge and resources relevant to the field of team coaching. Finally, listeners are encouraged to go to http://www.teamcoachingzone.com to subscribe to the Zone's weekly newsletter which has information and discounts for upcoming team coaching training and assessment certification programs along with other helpful information for team coaches. Links to all the books mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes page for this episode at www.teamcoachingzone.com as well as in the Resources section of the website. Have a great day and remember to Stay in the Zone!

Join Dr. Krister Lowe for this week's episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! In this episode, Krister shares his thinking around using assessments as part of team coaching engagements. This is the first in a 3-part series focusing on resources for team coaches. The second episode will look at leading team coaching books for team coaches. The third episode will look at some of the leading team coach training programs available. Specific themes explored in this episode include: 1. The Pros & Cons of Using Assessments 2. Overview of individual Level Assessments 3. Overview of 5 Team Level Assessments 4. Alternative Methods of Assessment: surveys, interviews, focus groups and observation Listeners will find this episode useful for understanding why to use assessments in the first place as well as what options are available for doing so. Krister also shares some of his experiences using assessments with clients. Finally, listeners are encouraged to go to http://www.teamcoachingzone.com to subscribe to the Zone's weekly newsletter which has information and discounts on upcoming team coaching training and assessment certification programs along with other helpful information for team coaches. Have a great day and remember to Stay in the Zone!