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The Art of Coaching Teams: Free Tools and Resources

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The Art of Coaching Teams: Free Tools and Resources

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The Art of Coaching Teams | Bright Morning

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Explore your playbook for creating and leading thriving, resilient, learning teams that get stuff done.

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The SCARF model, introduced by Dr. David Rock in 2008, offers a straightforward psychological theory of motivation that's easy to remember, inspired by neuroscience. Put simply, Rock argues we have strong drives to seek out five key things: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.

When there's an opportunity to increase these, we often leap at the chance, finding them highly rewarding. But conversely, challenges to these five dimensions cause us to feel fundamentally threatened, withdraw, or take action to counteract the threat.

In the workplace, this explains why things like giving & receiving feedback and managing change can sometimes generate strong adverse reactions. By keeping this model in mind, we can anticipate how our actions and communications might provoke emotional responses in others, and take steps to mitigate these.

SCARF model diagram

Autonomy

Sinatra did it his way, and we want to do it in ours.

Feeling micromanaged, overruled, or controlled gets most people's backs up.

So if you need to take control or impose changes, try to leave some room to protect the autonomy of others. (This also crops up in Daniel Pink's theory of motivation.)

Give people some freedom to choose how things will be implemented, ask for genuine feedback, and spend extra time explaining your rationale so that they're more likely to feel aligned with the decision.

The SCARF model, introduced by Dr. David Rock in 2008, offers a straightforward psychological theory of motivation that's easy to remember, inspired by neuroscience. Put simply, Rock argues we have strong drives to seek out five key things: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.

When there's an opportunity to increase these, we often leap at the chance, finding them highly rewarding. But conversely, challenges to these five dimensions cause us to feel fundamentally threatened, withdraw, or take action to counteract the threat.

In the workplace, this explains why things like giving & receiving feedback and managing change can sometimes generate strong adverse reactions. By keeping this model in mind, we can anticipate how our actions and communications might provoke emotional responses in others, and take steps to mitigate these.

SCARF model diagram

Autonomy

Sinatra did it his way, and we want to do it in ours.

Feeling micromanaged, overruled, or controlled gets most people's backs up.

So if you need to take control or impose changes, try to leave some room to protect the autonomy of others. (This also crops up in Daniel Pink's theory of motivation.)

Give people some freedom to choose how things will be implemented, ask for genuine feedback, and spend extra time explaining your rationale so that they're more likely to feel aligned with the decision.

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The SCARF Model by David Rock, explained | A framework for leading others + change management - BiteSize Learning

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Our brain's need for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness drives much of our behaviour, according to the SCARF model theory by David Rock. Understand how this framework can improve your leadership and manage change at work.

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Email:

April Stout

apriljstout@gmail.com

EKC Strategist

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April-The Wellness of Collaborative Teams

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Check out this Presentation designed by EKC.

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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About the Community | Erin Kent Consulting (EKC)

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A few special gifts for signing up now: a strategy call with Erin Kent or an EKC Senior Strategist to get started using the EKC Community to support your current literacy initiatives; and 5 free spots in our live, virtual winter courses ($1495 value!)

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Daniel Goleman: The 4 domains of emotional intelligence | Daniel Goleman for Big Think+

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The Purpose and Benefit of Emotional Education

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How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

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Advancing Social and Emotional Learning - CASEL

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CASEL is helping make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education, preschool through high school.

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Learn about RULER, the emotional intelligence framework developed with guidance from Dr. Marc Brackett. RULER focuses on enhancing skills in Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions to improve well-being and effectiveness in various settings.

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Primal Leadership Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee 

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Primal Leadership Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee 

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Emotional Intelligence 3.0: The Next Phase of EI Thought and Development

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This article is designed to help introduce some of this cutting-edge research and why it dramatically changes how we think about emotional intelligence and how to go about improving our or others’ emotional intelligence.

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Guy Kawasaki-Creating Enchantment [Entire Talk]

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Our coaching, leadership and facilitation trainings will teach you how.

Bright Morning provides world class professional development to educators across the globe. We exist to bring new practices to schools and organizations that aspire to interrupt inequities, build resilient communities, and transform the world. Through a focus on equity and emotional resilience, we train leaders, coaches, professional development providers, and teachers in communication skills that facilitate sustained learning, growth, and connection.

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Elena Aguilar has worked in education since 1994. Her years of teaching, coaching, and leading teams in the Oakland, CA public schools deeply inform the eight books she's written and the trainings she designs and facilitates.

Elena is committed to creating equitable schools and organizations where everyone thrives. She founded Bright Morning in 2017 to advance this vision.

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Bright Morning | We coach leaders today for a brighter tomorrow.

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Learn to lead coaching conversations, professional development, and teams that transform schools into joyful, resilient, and equitable places of learning. You're committed to building a more just and equitable organization and world, but you need support navigating the path forward. We'll help you turn your aspiration into a reality.

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Team effectiveness is enhanced by a team's commitment to reflection and on-going evaluation. In addition to evaluating accomplishments in terms of meeting specific goals, for teams to be high-performing it is essential for them to understand their development as a team. Most of us are familiar with the concept of "the terrible twos" in early childhood; understanding that developmental stage makes it easier to accept the constant stream of "No No No No No" that we might hear from a two-year old.

Teams go through stages of development. The most commonly used framework for a team's stages of development was developed in the mid-1960s by Bruce W. Tuckman. Although many authors have written variations and enhancements to Tuckman's work, his descriptions of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing provide a useful framework for looking at your own team.

Each stage of team development has its own recognizable feelings and behaviors; understanding why things are happening in certain ways on your team can be an important part of the self-evaluation process.

The four stages are a helpful framework for recognizing a team's behavioral patterns; they are most useful as a basis for team conversation, rather than boxing the team into a "diagnosis." And just as human development is not always linear (think of the five-year old child who reverts to thumb-sucking when a new sibling is born), team development is not always a linear process. Having a way to identify and understand causes for changes in the team behaviors can help the team maximize its process and its productivity.

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Team effectiveness is enhanced by a team's commitment to reflection and on-going evaluation. In addition to evaluating accomplishments in terms of meeting specific goals, for teams to be high-performing it is essential for them to understand their development as a team.

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Courageous Leadership Decoded | Key Lessons from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead

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Living into our values is one of the four skill sets that make up Daring Leadership.

It means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk-we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.

The findings from the research are clear: We can't live into values that we can't name, AND living into values requires moving from lofty aspirations to specific, observable behaviors.

In Dare to Lead, Brené writes,

"One reason we roll our eyes when people start talking about values is that everyone talks a big values game but very few people actually practice one. It can be infuriating, and it's not just individuals who fall short of the talk. In our experience, only about 10 percent of organizations have operationalized their values into teachable and observable behaviors that are used to train their employees and hold people accountable.
Ten percent.
If you're not going to take the time to translate values from ideals to behaviors-if you're not going to teach people the skills they need to show up in a way that's aligned with those values and then create a culture in which you hold one another accountable for staying aligned with the values-it's better not to profess any values at all. They become a joke. A cat poster. Total BS."

A courageous culture connects its values to specific behaviors so people know what is expected, encouraged, and rewarded within their team and organization. In addition to setting clear expectations, the process gives organizations shared language and a well-defined culture. It helps us determine cultural fit during hiring, and offers us very straightforward standards of behavior when there are non-performance-related issues.

Operationalized values also drive productive decision making. When values aren't clear, we can easily become paralyzed-or, just as dangerous, we become too impulsive. Operationalized values drive what I think of as the sweet spot of decision making: thoughtful and decisive.

Ready to put your organization's values into practice? Here are downloadable tools and resources to help teams operationalize organization values into behaviors.

Need an example?

Check out the below example of values we have operationalized at our organization.

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Living into our values is one of the four skill sets that make up Daring Leadership. It means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk-we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.

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Podcast episode:  How to be a more trustworthy person

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Podcast episode:  How to be a more trustworthy person

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How To Be A More Trustworthy Person - A Slight Change of Plans

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Trust is the glue that holds human connection together – but how do we earn it? Rachel Botsman, an expert on trust and human behavior, explores the subtle and powerful signals we send in relationships. Her new audiobook, How To Trust and Be Trusted, is full of insightful lessons, and today, we’re sharing one of our favorites: “How To Be a More Trustworthy Person.” Whether in work, friendships, or love, trust is everything – and Rachel’s wisdom will help you strengthen it. You can find Rachel’s book at Pushkin.fm, Audible, or wherever you get your audiobooks.

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Stress Management for Educators | Greater Good In Education

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We all tend to oversimplify complex things into two competing ideologies: generalist or specialist, objective or subjective, individual or team. This can be useful, but it can also make us think we should pick a side. It also becomes an issue when we try and solve them-calling these things 'problems' implies there is a correct answer somewhere. But there often isn't, and it takes us too long to realise. What if we had a tool that facilitated good conversations about these complex topics upfront? Where the goal isn't a decision, but recognition? The answer to a question like 'Should we focus on delivery or quality?' could simply be 'yes'. Stephen explains how, using Polarity Mapping.

I recently discovered polarity mapping, a brilliant tool to facilitate good conversations about complex topics.

See if any of these tensions sound familiar:

Should we do more Learning or start Building?

Should we focus on Innovation or Efficiency?

Should we prioritize Deadlines or Quality?

Growth vs. Consolidation?

Short-term Gains vs. Long-term Organic Growth?

Centralization vs. Decentralization

New Features vs. a Stable Codebase?

Generalist or Specialist?

We could go on, listing more of these tensions. And if we're like most organizations, we'd rush to analysis to determine the best or right answer. I'd argue we should first stop and ask a more fundamental question: Is this A Problem... Or a Polarity?

Too often, we treat conflicts - like those listed above - as problems to be solved, when in reality they're "polarities".

Problems vs. Polarities

A problem is something that can have a right - or best - answer. A solution exists. If we're deciding between two incompatible tech stacks, this is a problem to be solved. We do our analysis. Weigh the pros and cons, determine which is the best choice, all things considered, then commit. Problem, solved.

This is approach is fine, if there truly is a decision to be made.

Which tech stack do we commit to?

Which department should I move to?

Where should we shift our funding?

But, when we level this same problem-solving mindset at things that needn't or can't really be solved, frustration follows. "Should we focus on delivery or quality?" Yes. Yes we should focus on these things. That is the honest answer. But this doesn't sit right; it doesn't feel resolved. That's because these aren't resolvable. These are polarities, " dilemmas that are ongoing, unsolvable and contains seemingly opposing ideas ".

Problems give us two ideas that are directly opposed and in conflict.
Polarities give us two ideas that are complementary and interdependent.

Problems push an either/or mindset.
Polarities push a both/and mindset.

Problems need decisions, and resolution.
Polarities do not.

Here's the rub: Polarities are not a problem to be solved, but rather a paradox to be balanced. Here's an elegant analogy:
"Think of it like breathing. Breathing isn't a choice between inhaling or exhaling. If you inhale to the exclusion of exhaling, the negative results show up quickly. And the reverse is also true. The polarity approach says, we must both inhale and exhale."
On the surface, it looks like a simple "pros/cons" matrix. But, as with most things, the devil is in the details.

First, this little loop is vital. It says we are constantly moving between these four quadrants.

Second, the language: You have two poles, yes. But you're not evaluating the 'pros' and 'cons'. Rather, it's the Benefits and Unintended Consequences. Language matters.

The Tool in Action:

When we treat a polarity like a problem, looping back and forth is what inevitably happens over time (often over a very long, agonizing, period of time!). For our explanation, let's use the tension of "planning" vs "building" a new software app.

Suppose we decide to double down on "learning". We have good reasons for this:

We'll be able to make faster decisions, when we do move into building

We'll generate deep context / insights that are more useful to ops.

This is all well and good until months later, our zealous focus on "learning" has led to some unintended consequences:

Teams are stuck in analysis paralysis

And hey, competitors beat you to market. Bummer.

So what do we do? We swing to the other extreme! We double down on jumping into building. Insert some lean-slash-agile-slash-design sprint Kool-aid here.

At first, things go great.

We've got something built and released into the market that we can iterate upon.

We're delivering real customer value

But then...

That new feature you want, it'll take a ridiculous amount of time, because we didn't plan for anything like that.

Oh, and we were so busy building things that we forget to do any real customer research. Turns out no one wants this thing we built.

And who knows what better ideas we missed out on, as we sped along with our first idea.

We didn't intend for any of these things to happen. And so the pendulum swings back to the other extreme. Most of the folks that would remember the previous extreme have moved on, so few people recall the follies of the other extreme.

And on it goes.

Polarity Mapping let's us explore all these issues and concerns in an afternoon, setting teams up to work together, with a shared sensitivity to all these issues. You get the benefit of discussing all of these tensions upfront, before living through them. The goal isn't a decision, but rather recognition of all these simultaneous Benefits and Unintended Consequences - on both sides. And reconciliation, as a team. And the valuing of competing perspectives. And... we could go on listing the goals. The conversations I've seen as a result of this activity have been quite remarkable. Aside from bringing Product Managers and Designers together, it's also broken down stereotypes about what '"the other side" values.

"Are there any actionable outcomes from this?"

While I've focused on the core of Polarity Mapping, mapping the Benefits and Unintended Consequences of two polarities, there is more to this tool. Once you've identified this core information, you can move out into the margins to address:

1. What are the Action Steps to gain or maintain these Benefits?

2. What are the Early Warnings of unintended consequences?

Done as a group, and pinned to a wall, this should set up teams to successfully navigate many difficult conversations. Hopefully, you'll find this tool as useful as I have.
The Polarity Map in action! Downloadable Files: Further information:
You can also get more detailed information and consulting services directly from Polarity Partnerships, co-founded by Barry Johnson Ph.D., the creator of The Polarity Map ® and Principles

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We all tend to oversimplify complex things into two competing ideologies: generalist or specialist, objective or subjective, individual or team. This can be useful, but it can also make us think we should pick a side. It also becomes an issue when we try and solve them-calling these things 'problems' implies there is a correct answer somewhere.

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If you are a team leader -- a department head, grade-level lead, coach, or an administrator -- chances are high that conflict makes you nervous. It makes most of us nervous, and when we're in a position of leadership, there's an implicit understanding that we're supposed to do something about conflict. We may even worry that we contributed or caused the conflict.

I want to make something clear: It is your role to address unhealthy conflict in a team you lead or facilitate. Your primary role as a leader is to attend to your team member's dynamics with each other and to build a constructive team culture.

Without a healthy team culture, you probably won't get into the kinds of conversations that make a big difference for students because those conversations are challenging ones in which conflict will most likely surface. That said, let me offer you some ways to manage unhealthy conflict in teams that you lead.

Name the Conflict

Because many of us are afraid of conflict, we can hide in denial of its existence. The first step is to acknowledge that there's conflict in a team you lead, and to name it. It helps if you name the conflict as a communication dynamic rather than blame conflict on individuals. There's a difference between thinking, James is so resistant to new ideas, and James makes declarative statements that put an end to discussions. Identify the behaviors that generate unhealthy conflict and separate them from people as human beings.

Once you've identified the conflict in the team, then you'll need to name it with the group. Sometimes you may need to name it for them, and sometimes you'll see more investment from your team if you facilitate a discussion in which they identify the conflict. A team may experience conflict because the personalities of individuals are very different from each other or because they disagree on goals or action steps. Identifying the sources of conflict can help to depersonalize it. Sources can also include a shortage of resources or time, organizational politics, and organizational dysfunction.

Consider Addressing the Conflict Now or Later

When you notice unhealthy conflict in your team, you'll need to make an assessment about whether it needs to be addressed in the moment, with the team, or whether it's a conflict between two team members that needs to be addressed later. Most likely, you'll know if the situation is the latter; you'll have seen these team members engage in unhealthy conflict with each other before, or you'll be able to see the clearly interpersonal conflict between two people. There's a whole set of tools you'll need in order to address the interpersonal conflict later (that's the content for a future blog post).

Anchor Team Members in Their Norms

Hopefully, your team has some norms or community agreements for how members will behave with each other. Ideally, these help to prevent unhealthy conflict. When a norm is broken, you can remind the team of their norms and share the impact on the team when a norm isn't adhered to. You might say something like, "I want to remind everyone that one of our agreements is to assume positive intent," and that might be enough to subtly shift how a group is behaving.

Sometimes it's useful to name how the unproductive behavior is affecting the group by saying, for example, "When we interrupt, we don't get to hear someone's full idea. We need everyone to contribute and share their thoughts so that we can be sure we're making the best decision. If we don't make good decisions, we're less likely to get full commitment from each other. Let's be mindful of giving everyone the full time they need to express their thoughts."

If unhealthy conflict continuously surfaces, then you may need to go back to norms, and team members will need to recommit to how they want to work together.

Conflict Can Be Healthy

There's healthy and unhealthy conflict. Most of us are familiar with the unhealthy kind, but what does healthy conflict look and sound like? One leadership team I worked with identified the following as indicators that their team was engaging in healthy conflict:

We wrestle with ideas.

We ask questions to probe for deeper understanding.

We change our minds.

We demonstrate curiosity.

We hold student needs at the center of our work.

This kind of conflict can lead to deep discussions that positively impact students. Having a discussion with a team about the role that healthy conflict can play, and what healthy conflict looks and sounds like, can help mediate unhealthy conflict and set the team on a powerful path.

As team leaders, rather than just stopping certain behaviors, our role is to shift unhealthy team dynamics into becoming healthy ones. Such an intention has transformational potential.

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Managing Conflict in School Leadership Teams

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If you are a team leader -- a department head, grade-level lead, coach, or an administrator -- chances are high that conflict makes you nervous. It makes most of us nervous, and when we're in a position of leadership, there's an implicit understanding that we're supposed to do something about conflict.

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Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience