The model will work – but the story won’t!

🌳 I often use an apple tree to explain my adaptation of David Clutterbuck's PERILL model, with the addition of team wellbeing and resilience. The metaphor of leadership as the roots, relationships as the trunk, and team processes as the canopy etc, helps teams quickly grasp how the different elements of a High Performing Team interact and support one another.

I've been preparing to work with a team in the construction sector this week. I pulled out the apple tree ... and put it away again. I don't think it will land.

🏚️ So, the story’s been switched – to a house.

The foundations represent leadership. Relationships and internal processes sit within the house itself. The roof represents purpose, providing direction and shelter. Scaffolding represents learning and development – critical support for growth. A delivery truck represents value delivered to customers and stakeholders. Wellbeing and resilience help the house withstand storms that come along.

💡 While models and tools can be powerful, they're rarely one-size-fits-all. Sometimes the difference between engagement and indifference is finding a metaphor that feels familiar and relevant to the people in the room.

⁉️ Creative adaptation is what brings coaching to life.

If you’d like to hear more about apple trees, or buildings and delivery trucks, or High Performing Teamwork, get in touch. We’ll find a metaphor that works for your team.

⁉️ What on earth is a team of teams

I had someone edit my writing a few years ago (back before AI was a thing) and the term “team of teams” was highlighted as a typo.

It wasn’t a typo! I was talking about organisations being interconnected teams. McChrystal published a book about it arguing that traditional organisations are too slow and siloed to deal effectively with our VUCA world. He suggested interconnected smaller teams are more agile, responsive, innovative and hence more effective.

That was back in 2004. I would say that since then our world has become even more VUCA!

Teams of teams aligns perfectly with team coaching. Professor Peter Hawkins describes it as “An integrated approach for developing organisations into adaptive, networked systems. It builds upon the foundations of Systemic Team Coaching but expands the focus from a single team to the entire organisational ecosystem.”

And I’ve worked in this space myself. I coached several teams within the same organisation in parallel. The result – observable changes in culture, ways or working and ultimately performance. The impacts rippled through the organisation far and wide.

If you’d like to learn more about team coaching approach as the catalyst for organisational change, please get in touch. I’d love to have a chat.

Or, if you’re a member of the New Zealand Team Coaches Connect Group - we have a session this Friday at 9am on the topic – see you there!

🎩 De Bono’s Hats endure!

I met Edward de Bono, and his six thinking hats, at a seminar in Auckland more than 20 years ago. I was an accountant then — with absolutely no sign of my current career on the horizon.

Yesterday, I asked a team I was working with to wear the hats pictured below.

What I like about the approach is how it encourages more balanced, collaborative thinking. It reduces conflict, helps different perspectives be heard, and stops people becoming too personally attached to their own ideas. It can also unlock creativity and more systemic thinking — all things this team is actively working on.

We explored the hats yesterday using a mix of hypothetical and real workplace situations, and talked about ways the team could actively use the approach in BAU conversations and decision-making. I can’t wait to hear what happens next!

Because there were more than six people in the team, I added two extras:

🎩 The Invested Hat — wants to make it happen. Failure is not an option.

🎩 The Wild Hat — can be anything. Completely random..

I suspect there’s room for even more hats in some teams. Some ideas:

🎩 The Pretending Hat — “I’ve already decided but I’m pretending to collaborate.”

🎩 The Delay Hat — “Can we circle back to this later?”

🎩 The Reluctant Hat — “I’m only here because my manager told me to be.”

🎩 The Agnostic Hat — “I really don’t care what we do.”

Like any framework, the hats are not for every situation. But when a team needs to slow down, think differently, hear multiple perspectives, and loosen attachment to fixed positions… they endure!

If you’re curious about the hats - or other approaches that helps teams think, collaborate differently and build psychological safety - get in touch. I’d love to have a chat.