Coaching Teams
An emergent approach
Most team coaching follows a predetermined structure — a diagnostic phase, a series of interventions, a set of measurable outcomes. My approach is different.
I work emergently, meaning the work follows what is actually present in the team rather than an agenda imposed from outside. What needs to be addressed surfaces through the work itself — through honest conversation, careful attention to what is and isn't being said, and a willingness to stay with what is difficult rather than moving past it too quickly.
This is not a less structured approach. It is a differently structured one — responsive to the team as a living system rather than a problem to be solved.
The underpinning principles
The work draws on two complementary bodies of thought.
Gestalt brings attention to what is happening in the present moment — in the room, between people, beneath the surface of the conversation. It works with awareness, contact and the dynamics that emerge when people engage honestly with one another.
Systems psychodynamics brings attention to the team as a system — the roles people unconsciously occupy, the forces that shape collective behaviour, and the way anxiety and pressure move through a group. It asks not just what individuals are doing, but what the system is doing through them.
Together these create a framework that is both relationally sensitive and systemically rigorous.
What the work involves
Every team engagement is different. In practice the work tends to involve some or all of the following:
Creating the conditions for honest conversation — surfacing what is present but unspoken, and building the psychological safety for it to be worked with directly.
Working with collective strengths and limitations — not as a diagnostic exercise, but as a living enquiry into how the team actually functions under real conditions.
Attending to the dynamics between people — power, trust, conflict, belonging — and the way these shape what the team is and isn't capable of together.
Exploring the team as a system embedded within larger systems — organisational, cultural, environmental — and how those forces constrain or enable what is possible.
Supporting the integration of new awareness into how the team works together — through iterative cycles of reflection, experimentation and adjustment.
The working alliance
As with all my work, the foundation is the relationship. Before anything else can happen, the team needs to experience the coaching space as genuinely safe — not comfortable necessarily, but trustworthy. A space where difficulty can be named, where honesty is valued over harmony, and where what emerges is allowed to be what it is.
Building that container takes time and care. It is also, in my experience, where the most significant work happens.
On collective potential
There is something that becomes possible in a team that cannot be accessed individually. When the conditions are right — when trust is present, when honesty is the norm, when people are genuinely present to one another — something emerges that is more than the sum of what each person brings.
That is what this work is ultimately in service of.