Our approach
Most organisations can tell you what is wrong, and far fewer can tell you what is really going on. Those are different questions, and they need different work.
Where this comes from
Our approach comes from the systems-psychodynamic tradition in executive coaching, which is the tradition INSEAD is best known for. INSEAD describes it as giving a leader “a reflective space in order to uncover layers of meaning”, and in practice that means meeting people where they actually are rather than where the org chart says they should be.
Two ideas sit underneath it. The first is that an organisation is a system, a living arrangement of roles, relationships and unspoken rules that produces behaviour no single person intended. The second is that much of what drives that behaviour sits outside awareness, so people defend against anxiety without knowing they are doing it and teams repeat a pattern that nobody has named.
The work is to bring some of that into the room, carefully, and then to decide what to do differently. INSEAD puts it neatly when it says the “then and when” is included in the “here and now”, because the past shows up in how you behave in this meeting, with these people, today.
A reflective space in order to uncover layers of meaning.
The method
There is no shortcut past the first one, and most coaching starts at the third.
We begin with description rather than diagnosis. What actually happens in the meeting, who speaks, who looks at their phone, what gets decided and then quietly undone? We collect the evidence before we interpret it, which in practice means a structured observation of a real meeting, a set of one-to-one conversations and a written account of what we saw, without a survey.
Then we ask what the behaviour is protecting. Defences are not failures, they are sensible responses to anxiety that have outlived their usefulness, and the question is what would have to be true for a capable person to behave this way. We work with the layers of meaning in a role, a relationship or a repeated conflict, and we name what has been unsayable.
A group sees what one person cannot, and several observation points produce a fuller picture as well as a shared one. INSEAD builds its group work on this idea, that the more perspectives people get the stronger their appetite for change, and it asks for honest feedback and the discipline to hear it without defending.
Insight is cheap and change is a rehearsal. We agree small, specific experiments, try them in the real workplace and review what happened together before adjusting, with a written plan, a partner for accountability and a follow-up session four to six weeks later.
In the room
Four to six people, one day together and a one-to-one follow-up the next. This is the shape we use, adapted from the method INSEAD teaches.
Morning
Each person brings an object, an image or a drawing that represents their working life now. It sounds unusual, and it is simply a way past the polished answer, which changes the quality of everything that follows.
Midday
Each participant gets sixty to ninety minutes of the group’s full attention while the others offer observations, associations and direct feedback. The coach facilitates rather than performs, and this is where the work happens, uncomfortable in the way that useful things often are.
Afternoon
Each person writes down what they are going to do differently and with whom, and the group pairs up so that nobody leaves with a private resolution and no witness.
Next day
A one-to-one session tests the plan against reality. What actually happened when you tried it, what did you avoid, and what does that tell us?
Below the surface
Select what you are seeing, because the useful question is underneath it.
Above the waterline: what you see
Select one
Below: what is driving it
Fear of being wrong
When the cost of speaking up feels higher than the cost of staying quiet, the room goes quiet. The work does not stop. The thinking does.
What it asks
The method only works if the people in the room are willing to do four things.
The most useful data in the room is often your own irritation, boredom or urge to rescue someone, because those reactions are information about the system, including you.
Senior people are paid to solve things, and here the urge to solve is usually the problem. Sitting with a question long enough for someone else to answer it is a skill, and it takes practice.
Group coaching only works if people stop performing, which requires a level of honesty that most leadership teams say they value and rarely practise.
Sometimes the answer is not a better mindset. It is a role that cannot be done, a team that is too small or a leader whose behaviour is tolerated, and we will say so.
What we are not
Not therapy, though it can be therapeutic. Not diagnosis, and we do not use personality labels. Not a wellbeing calendar, a resilience webinar or a colour wheel. We have one method, practised properly, and the discipline to stay with the uncomfortable question until it gives something up.
Further reading
We are not affiliated with INSEAD, and we point to its published work because it is the clearest description of the tradition we practise in.
If you are a senior leader or an HR director and you are worried about the pressure on your people, tell us what you are seeing. We will tell you honestly whether we can help, and what a sensible first step would look like.