Seeing each other again

Team Coaching

In short

For teams that are stuck, in conflict, or doing well and wanting more. We make it safe enough to talk about what is going on, so that people can work well together again.

Teams of 4 to 40
One to four team days
In person, worldwide
Clients include KPMG, BBVA and Oxfam

Get in Touch

What goes on in teams

Meetings where everyone agrees and nothing changes. Two colleagues who only communicate by email, preferably with half the company in cc. A talented person who has gone quiet. The conflict everyone knows about and nobody names.

Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from isolation to intimacy.John O'Donohue

Ask a room who loves teamwork and few hands go up. Then the stories come, about slackers and dominant voices, frustration and misunderstanding. In twenty years we have rarely seen this turn out to be a skills problem. Usually it is a tragic expression of unmet needs: to be seen, to feel safe, to matter. As long as those needs are ignored, no communication technique will stick. So we start with what is true for the people in the team, and only later with tools.

In the room

A team in the middle of the work

A team celebrating together at the end of a team coaching day — The end of a team day.

A team seated in a circle during a team coaching session — Chairs in a circle, phones away.

The trajectory

What a trajectory looks like

We draw on Deep Democracy, Nonviolent Communication and the research on psychological safety by Amy Edmondson and Google. The sessions themselves are the practice.

01Listening firstWe start with a conversation with the leader, and often short interviews with team members, to understand what is going on.
02The sessionsUsually one to four team days, spread over weeks or months. Conversations about how the team really works, and a few practical agreements the team keeps afterwards.
03EmbeddingFollow-up sessions, coaching for the leader, or both, so that the openness becomes part of daily work.

9.3average rating /10

5,000+people trained worldwide

20years experience

How we work

We make the room safe enough for whatever comes up, and then we ask for what is real. Hidden frustration gets a voice and conflict gets faced, without anyone losing face.

What makes it work is compassion. When colleagues see each other as people again, with needs, fears and good intentions, judgement softens and curiosity comes back. We have seen problems that dragged on for years start to move in one afternoon.

The themes follow the team dynamics. Often it is decision-making, the meetings where everyone agrees and nothing changes. Or conflict, and the style each person falls back on under pressure. Or the differences in the team, in character, working style and culture, which are the reason the team exists and the reason it gets stuck. A good team is a balancing act between opposites: thinking and doing, detail and big picture, decisive and inclusive.

Some of our favourite trajectories start with a team that is doing well and wants more: to use each other's strengths and to enjoy working together.

Psychological safety training, when safety has to come first.
Compassionate leadership training, for the leader of the team.
Frequently asked questions, about formats and costs.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What participants say

Imre is a great observer and listener.

★★★★★

Being a compassionate leader works. I have been given tools that I can repeatedly apply to my life which will allow me to continue to grow. There was not a single wasted moment.