How little did I know what would happen when I saw the Henley Business School’s flyer about the first ever Team and Systemic Coaching education in Finland. However, I knew that I just had to do this programme. I had finished the Executive MBA Global programme some years earlier and continued to the Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching a little later. The world of change and collaboration in a complex world were unfolding to me in a completely new way.
I work with sustainability in business, and I had felt for a long time that something critical was missing from the equation. We try to solve complex systemic issues with machine thinking – we think that by increasing the amount of action we can reach our targets of a sustainable world. That does not work very well, but we seldom know how to do it instead.
When I was introduced to living systems thinking I started to see how it could tackle our major global challenges more effectively. I educated myself in this super interesting topic of regenerative leadership, and the more I learned the more important the “people aspect” became. New thinking patterns are key for us to work for the good of the whole rather than just trying to be less bad by reducing harm. We cannot clean the park by throwing less garbage there and otherwise continuing business-as-usual. This insight moved my focus from siloed technical actions to people.
I realised that I had to change my theory of change to be able to succeed in my work. The team and systemic coaching programme was a perfect fit in my endeavour, and it gave answers to many of the questions I had been asking myself.
Rather than mobilising more action and trying to persuade businesses, teams and people to act more sustainably, I needed to start working with people and, specifically with the connections between people. The root causes of global challenges lie in societal norms, systems and structures – the core logic of how we operate. A mindset change on the individual, team and organisational level is critical for impactful sustainability. This type of change cannot be forced, but we need better conditions for thinking and understanding. Also, collaboration for systems change looks very different than what we are used to when we hear the word collaboration. Team and systemic coaching helps us think better and build collaboration in new ways.
During Henley’s team and systemic coaching programme, my theory of change evolved significantly. I now work from the premise that I enable change by helping others build the capabilities they need to do their work with more impact. Instead of becoming even better at technical skills and running even faster, improved self-, team- and systemic awareness helps us find more effective ways for solving global problems and build value at the same time.
In addition to the rational mind that we mostly use, finding other ways of knowing and unlearning are key too for us to see the underlying forces, the interlinks and nestedness of systems. Henley’s programme demonstrated how this can be done, and what value it brings to see what often is left unnoticed.
Maybe the best parts of the education were the many exercises in team coaching and systemic constellations we did with our cohort under the compassionate guidance of our wonderful tutors Paul Barbour and Lucy Widdowson. These exercises showed how we all impact each other and that a team is more than the sum of its parts. This also highlighted the importance of psychological safety in the complex environment of systems change for sustainability with all its conflicting interests and societal norms. Much of the needed change is hindered because we do not dare open our mouths and we do not listen properly.
I have now coached teams working with challenging systemic change for sustainability and it has shown how critical it is that the team works well. The harder the work, the more teams need to know each other and be aligned in their purpose and targets. It’s not about working faster but working better together. Indeed, our guest speaker Peter Hawkins challenged us to think about teams as “high value creating teams” rather than high performance teams. He claims that this is the path to future-fit organisations.
This education really helped me understand a chaotic world better and navigate complexities. It has changed my methods of communication, how I work and who I work with. How I show up in teams shifted and it has been intriguing to see the outcomes of this shift. I now see my role in the world differently and feel more balanced in my work at the crossroads of planet, business, public policy and people.
Last but not least, I learned a lot about myself that has helped me both professionally and privately. For example, I realised that I can bring value to others by being quiet and just observing and sensing into what is happening in the room. Previously, I had never thought that I could do a lot by just being.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible, in particular to our group of curios learners that I had the opportunity to share this exiting journey with.
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