At beginning of this year, the Danescroft land team took part in several days of team coaching with Sycamore Coaching. The time spent with Andy and Tracy from sycamore was one of great reward, with the land team being able to spend time reflecting on both the positives and negatives of their working styles within the team. The sessions have proved to be incredibly successful with the results and changes being implement into the everyday working life at Danescroft, which in turn has led to a more productive and efficient working environment.
Our chief executive Dominic Fryer has written a testimonial on the experience, which you can read below:
Team Coaching – Danescroft Land Limited (Land Team)
Winter 2020 – Spring 2021
To start with I think it is incredibly important to say that when the land team and I embarked on the Team Coaching programme with Andy and Tracy none of us fully knew what to expect. The preliminary work was useful and straightforward and not particularly testing. We then commenced the first of two intensive sessions, right from the start the distinct Team Coaching approach was clear and initially unsettling. This was a great thing.
The training format itself worked incredibly well via Teams. Whilst it was disconcerting at first having Andy and Tracy ‘switch off’ their cameras, the value of figuring it out in the moment and not having someone at the front telling the team (or me) what to do means that the approach, by its nature, is more sustainable within the workplace. I personally found the approach much more useful than simply sitting in a room listening to more formulaic management training, interspersed with the odd break out for an activity, which is something I have previously done a lot. It was more practical and enabled us to immediately shift away from the existing culture that was, it became apparent during the first session, stifling the team. The whole team embraced this and have continued to do since. You do not need to refer to textbooks or notes from the Team Coaching sessions to do this. Give yourself, and your team time to reflect, assess and move on in work (we do this through monthly meetings focused on process rather than projects). Through the reduced amount of direct participation from Andy and Tracy the result was that they gave me (particularly) but also the team significantly more. The check ins with Andy, Tracy and I during breaks provided an opportunity to reflect and choose. This relatively light touch to the actual ‘training’ was, from my experience, pitched to perfection.
Overall, I did find Team Coaching an incredibly tiring, evocative, and thought-provoking approach to training. It was an ideal format that engineered the training time to enable me to have space to step back, think and listen to all the members of the team. This space also gave me time to reflect on my role within the team (allowing me to look in the mirror). Watching the team operate without heavy intervention, being there on the periphery to support them when required was refreshing and reassuring. This in turn enabled me to break away from the detail of the teams’ projects and get back to a more strategic level of thinking and operation.
To sum up, the time the team and I spent on the Team Training programme was one of the most effective training formats I have ever embarked on, the results and change achieved from the sessions we had have set the team up to move forward to our combined objective of being best in class.
