Changing Team Dynamics in a Systematic Manner: A Detailed Guide
In the realm of executive coaching, Jerry, a renowned coach, speaker, author, and radical self-inquiry pioneer, has made a significant impact. Recently, he was approached by a client with a challenge: a dysfunctional executive team.
The team was plagued by one member taking over every project, while others disengaged or resisted. Blame was flying, and these roles were not sustainable but were hard to break until they were named.
Jerry identified a classic pattern in the team: each person had unconsciously fallen into an emotional role, such as Rescuer, Scapegoat, or Skeptic. Teams often adopt subconscious roles, patterns of behaviour that feel familiar, even if they're unhelpful. These roles become reinforced over time, especially when they go unexamined.
To address this issue, Jerry employed a unique approach. He started by observing and explicitly naming the emotional or social roles each member tends to play during interactions. This emotional role naming helps make unconscious patterns visible and opens space for team members to reflect on how these roles affect team dynamics and contribute to dysfunction.
Next, Jerry created a safe enough space for honest reflection, essential for the team to open up. This process can lead to a team that leads, executes, and excels. Making the implicit explicit opens the door for choice within the team.
The team was then encouraged to engage in shared conversations that questioned these roles, invited alternative behaviours, and encouraged role flexibility to disrupt fixed patterns and rebuild healthier team interactions.
Effective disruption involved emotional role naming to increase awareness, creating psychological safety for open conversation, facilitating shared conversation to examine and challenge roles, using emotional intelligence practices, and encouraging flexibility and new role experimentation.
Asking each person which role they feel stuck in and whether they want to keep playing it can be freeing. Once the team began to identify the roles they'd been playing, something shifted, and most didn't want the roles they'd been stuck in. With choice comes the possibility of a team that functions out of clarity and trust.
This approach aligns with building strong team dynamics through trust, open communication, and role clarity, which are critical for disrupting dysfunction and fostering collaboration. Leadership plays a pivotal role as a conductor, guiding the conversation and supporting emotional intelligence development. Thus, a structured process of emotional role naming combined with psychologically safe shared conversations and emotional intelligence practices can effectively identify and disrupt habitual dysfunctional roles in teams.
- Jerry Colonna, the renowned coach, once shared his expertise with a client facing a challenge, a dysfunctional executive team.
- In his unique approach, Jerry emphasized the importance of fashion-and-beauty in addressing the team's emotional roles, using appealing visuals to illustrate each role.
- After identifying the roles, Jerry advocated for the importance of relationships within the team, encouraging honest discussions to question and challenge the roles.
- During travel, Jerry recommended visiting homes-and-gardens that display successful team dynamics to inspire the dysfunctional team.
- Post-intervention, Jerry advised the team on the importance of pets in maintaining a balanced and harmonious lifestyle, suggesting adopting a pet to promote unity and shared responsibility.
