Systems Entry: Creating a Super Setup
Let me guess - you're in a coaching engagement right now with no clear agenda or timeline. You hang out at the back of team meetings and try to add value by interrupting with powerful questions. There's no rhyme or reason to when you intervene, and the team is making little visible progress. The sponsor is frustrated in your weekly check-in because she doesn't see progress. You try and convince the team to work in the way that the sponsor wants by winning each person over one-by-one. Eventually, you're kind of just...there; no one really knows why and everyone, including yourself, wonders when you'll leave.
Don't worry! This unfortunate pattern is common for both new and experienced coaches. Keep reading to learn how to enter systems in a way that sets them (and you) up for success while avoiding the many ethical pitfalls we can find ourselves in along the way.
Systems entry is a crucial skill for any coach that works with groups of people together. It provides a strong foundation for the remainder of the work and can nip many problems in the bud, particularly those mentioned above. It doesn't matter how skilled you are as a coach. If you don't take time to set your engagement up for success properly, the system will struggle. The degree to which you are intentional about systems entry has a direct relationship with how well the coaching goes. A little bit of work upfront can make difficult systems coaching work light and easy. Here's a seven-step approach to solid systems entry:
1. Get clear as to which system you’re coaching
Getting clear about which system you’re coaching means understanding who’s part of that system, and who’s not.
Avoid conflict of interest by choosing not to coach a system if you’re a part of it or if you’re already coaching people who are a part of that system. Coaching parallel systems (two different groups with no overlapping members) is fine, but coaching embedded systems (sub-groups that exist within a group that you’re already coaching) is a conflict of interest because you’ll be representing two conflicting agendas. If the system is a team, then remember that your client is the team, not the individuals.
If the system you’re coaching is big, you might choose to work with the entire system at once. This involves bringing the full group together for large format coaching sessions. If that’s not possible, another option is to coach a smaller group of highly influential people from that system who will act as leaders for whatever change your client is seeking. A pattern that works well here is forming those leaders into a team to “Scrum” the change effort. The sponsor of this change effort would make for a great “Product Owner” while a group of highly-influential cross-department representatives would make for great “Development Team” members.
At this point, it’s important to run a quick ethics check by asking yourself, “am I the right coach for this system, and is their agenda within the boundaries of my competence?”
2. Clarify roles and responsibilities
Make it clear to everyone in the system who is in which role. Your “Sponsor” is the person paying for, arranging or defining the coaching services to be provided. Your “Client” is the system being coached and is responsible for their own results and co-creating the coaching relationship and process with you. Remember that you are representing your client’s agenda - not the sponsor’s.
It’s your job to explain roles and responsibilities and make sure that everyone involved understands what coaching is and what coaching is not. The ICF definition of coaching serves well for teaching the responsibilities of a coach. When this isn’t made clear at the start of the engagement, the client will invariably subvert the process and their growth by looking to you for the answers.
3. Align the sponsor and the client system
Sponsors will always have an agenda that is distinct from their client, even if that person is a member of the client system. So don’t get caught playing messenger between sponsor and client as this is a sure-fire way to lose the trust of the client system. Instead, spend some time with the sponsor and client together and help them find common ground based on the work to be done. In the event that the two parties are misaligned, go back to step one of this process and propose that the system which needs coaching is the sponsor and the client system together. Once the sponsor and client system are aligned, ask the client how they would like to report progress back to the sponsor. It’s not the job of the coach to report progress. In doing so, you'd be breaking client confidentiality. Instead, the types of things that you might report back to the sponsor are the number of sessions run, client attendance, and an aggregate score (such as with the Likert scale) on how the client feels the engagement went.
Ethics check before continuing onto step 4: ask yourself, “who’s agenda am I serving: the sponsor’s, a leader’s, my own or the client’s?” If the answer is anything other than “the client’s,” then head back up to step one and start again.
4. Ask for permission
Explain to the client system how coaching works and then explicitly ask them for permission to work with them. If they say no or not now - great! There are plenty of other people out there that need your help. Go and focus on one of them in the meantime. Fail fast and prioritize your time by the impact you can have.
5. Create a coaching agreement
The next step in systems entry is creating a formal written agreement with the team. Include key logistical items like goals for the engagement, start and end dates, confidentiality, and how client information will be stored and shared. Include details such as how clients want to show up with each other throughout the coaching engagement, how they want to engage with each other when things get difficult, what they need from you and what you need from them for the client to get the most out of the engagement. Make sure everyone in the client system is present for this step, or it doesn’t count, even if the client system is very large. Co-create accountability by asking the client system what each person will be responsible for. Store this agreement somewhere that both you and the client can access.
Ethics check: Beware of engaging with individual members of a system that you're coaching. This creates a conflict of interest because we have a natural tendency to represent the individual agenda over that of the client system that we're coaching. We call this being "co-opted" by the individual. To avoid this, be sure to include a "no secrets" clause in your coaching agreement with the client system, stating that all information brought to you by individuals belongs to the system and will be shared back openly with the full system.
6. Self-Assessment
Gather data you can mirror back to the system by facilitating a self-assessment. You may include a period of observation, surveys, full system interviews and one-on-one interviews. Remember to let the system self-assess. A therapist assesses and diagnoses, while a coach creates awareness.
7. Coaching Plan
Based on the information gathered in the self-assessment, create a coaching plan and present it back to the team. Include the number of sessions, timeframe and topics that you’re likely to cover. Increase buy-in for the plan by co-creating it together with the client system.
Have you included all seven steps at the start of your systems coaching engagements? It’s not too late to start. Which ones will you experiment with next?