Where Does the Work Belong?

A team says:

“The organization won’t let us make decisions.”

Where does the work belong?

It is tempting to look immediately towards the organization.

Perhaps decision rights really are unclear. Perhaps senior leaders interfere. Perhaps the organizational culture genuinely does make autonomy difficult.

All of that might be true.

But if we are contracted to coach this team, one of the disciplines of team coaching is resisting the temptation to leave the team too quickly.

We might ask:

“What happens here, in this team, when a decision needs to be made?”

And suddenly something else becomes visible.

Everyone looks at the leader.

People offer ideas, but nobody wants to make the call.

The leader becomes frustrated and decides.

The team then complains that the leader makes all the decisions.

Now we have something we can work with.

Start where you are contracted

One of the disciplines of team coaching is staying with the level of the system we have been contracted to coach.

If everyone says:

“Our leader micromanages us.”

We could begin analysing the leader.

Or we could ask:

“How does this team participate in the pattern around control?”

If everyone says:

“Sarah is impossible to work with.”

We could focus on Sarah.

Or we might become curious:

“What happens in this team around Sarah?”

“What role might Sarah be occupying for this team?”

Or perhaps two functions are repeatedly in conflict. Sales wants speed and growth. Operations is accountable for quality and delivery. It may look like a problem between difficult colleagues, but the wider organization may be rewarding each group for different things.

The team still has work it can do together. But it may not have the authority to change all the conditions creating the tension.

This isn’t about denying individual behaviour or pretending organizational constraints aren’t real.

The leader may genuinely micromanage.

Sarah may genuinely be behaving in ways that are difficult for others.

The organization may genuinely constrain decision-making.

Systemic thinking asks us to hold another possibility at the same time:

What if the pattern also lives here?

Systemic curiosity does not mean distributing responsibility equally. Power, authority, harm and accountability still matter. Where there is harassment, discrimination, coercion or other harm, asking how the team participates can become blaming rather than systemic.

Work before you relocate

We think this matters particularly for newer team coaches.

When we first begin working systemically, there can be a temptation to see systems everywhere and quickly locate the issue somewhere else.

But noticing that something could live at several levels doesn’t mean immediately moving the work there.

First, work with what is present in the team.

Bring the pattern back.

Explore it.

Let the team encounter its own participation.

And then notice what happens.

Does something move?

Does responsibility become more distributed?

Does the team see something new?

Does the leader respond differently?

Does a new possibility appear?

Or does the pattern remain remarkably stuck?

Stuckness is information

We have become increasingly interested in what doesn’t move.

Not as evidence that the team is resistant or that the coaching isn’t working.

As information.

Stuckness can also tell us something about the coaching itself: the contract may be unclear, trust may not yet be sufficient, the team may need a different intervention or skill, or the work may simply need more time. “Nothing moved” is not, on its own, evidence that the work belongs elsewhere.

Perhaps the team has genuinely reached the edge of what can be worked at this level.

Maybe something also needs to happen in the leader’s individual development.

Perhaps a relationship needs attention.

Perhaps the sponsor needs to become involved.

Perhaps organizational structures genuinely prevent the change the team is trying to make.

Several things can be true simultaneously.

The organization can genuinely constrain the team and the team may also attribute more of its lack of agency to the organization than the current constraints fully account for.

A leader can genuinely be controlling and the team can participate in creating dependency on that control.

An individual can genuinely have a difficult impact and be carrying something for the wider team.

Systemic work rarely gives us the simplicity of either/or.

Don’t become the person who knows

There is another trap here.

The coach sees the pattern and decides:

“Ah. This isn’t really a team issue. This is the leader’s developmental work.”

That may be a hypothesis worth holding.

But we don’t think our job is to privately diagnose where the work “really” belongs and then route people accordingly.

The discernment itself can become part of the team’s work, rather than something the coach does privately on their behalf.

We might ask:

“We’ve worked with this here and something still seems stuck. What are you noticing?”

“Where else might this pattern live?”

“Who else might need to be part of this work?”

“What might need to return to your sponsor?”

The team becomes better at seeing its own system rather than becoming dependent on the coach to interpret it.

So perhaps the practice is something like:

RETURN → WORK → NOTICE → DISCERN TOGETHER → INVITE

Return the issue to the level we are coaching.

Work with it there.

Notice what moves and what doesn’t.

Discern where else the pattern may live.

Invite the team to consider what attention may be needed elsewhere.

Not as a rigid model.

More as a discipline of not moving the work too quickly.

Because before asking:

“Where else should this go?”

we need to ask:

“What can be worked with here?”

This is Part Two of Where Does the Work Live?, our six-part series exploring individual coaching, team coaching and the developmental ecosystem around teams, by Sherry Matheson and Kerry Woodcock.

Read Part One, Why Individual Coaching Isn’t Team Coaching — and Why We Need Both.

or

Read Part Three, The Leader Is a Team Member. And They Aren’t.

Master the Art of Team Coaching develops the capacity to stay with the team as a system — noticing patterns, working with what emerges and discerning where the work can be responsibly influenced.

Team Coaching Supervision offers a space to explore what you see, hold and miss in your work with teams — deepening your practice through reflection and dialogue.