I was wrapping up a two-day team workshop, when one of the senior team members came up to me and said:
‘How did you do it? We never have those conversations. We really needed that. You made it possible for us to go there.’
This both surprised me and didn’t.
Why Even Healthy Teams Sometimes Get Stuck
I know that, as much as I teach leaders how to create those spaces themselves (where they can have the conversations), and how to create a shared language within a team, they can only get so far without external help.
So often, the common reasons for engaging a facilitator to work with a team are something like:
- We have some problems we need help addressing
- Things are so bad in the team we need help! Yesterday!
- The team is asking for some development, or
- We have a budget for team development, and we need to use it or lose it.
But before this particular workshop, as I was preparing, I realised that, on paper, this team was in pretty good shape: full of capable individuals, collaborating well, and a healthy work culture. I half wondered what they needed me for.
And yet, and yet. They engaged me to help them. Help them with what exactly?!
I was very curious as to what our time together would uncover, and where it would lead them.
My role is to surface what’s unspoken – which is often easier to spot as an outsider – to make space for the real conversations they haven’t quite managed to have on their own.
How Facilitation Changes Team Dynamics and Leadership Outcomes
And something happens, when everyone around the table – leaders and their teams – feels equally supported and invited to reflect and to transform how they work together. When they can do that in a safe space – because someone else is ‘controlling’ the temperature.
- There are questions that a leader wouldn’t think to ask their team. Or themselves, for that matter.
- There are answers that a leader wouldn’t listen for.
- There are answers the team wouldn’t give to the leader.
So many variables that a third party – a facilitator – makes possible just through their presence and attention. (Of course, it helps if that person is experienced in team dynamics).
But what I’m getting at is that all those variables – the ones made possible in a leader + team + facilitator space, they change the outcome.
Completely, often unrecognisably.
- People start saying the things they’ve been skirting around for months, sometimes years.
- Someone names a tension everyone has felt but no one has dared to articulate.
- Curiosity replaces defensiveness.
- The leader gets to see the team, and be seen by them, in a new light.
All because the team has the conditions to be honest, to listen, and to imagine something better together.
How might that look for your team?
All good things,
Juliet Robinson
Leadership and Change Specialist
PS: And if you’re done imagining and you’d like some external input, book a call with me and we can talk about what’s possible for your team.
