The 7 Key Traits of High-Performing Teams (with Lucy Widdowson & Paul Barbour)

In this week’s Product Agility Podcast, we explore the true foundations of high-performing teams with Lucy Widdowson and Paul Barbour, executive team coaches, authors, and lead tutors at Henley Business School. With decades of experience coaching leadership teams, Lucy and Paul share their insights on what separates functional teams from truly exceptional ones—and how organisations can foster collaboration that drives real results.

Key Takeaways:

• What makes a ‘real’ team? Why many groups never reach their full potential.
• The 7 Key Traits of High-Performing Teams—and how to cultivate them.
• Breaking silos: The critical role of inter-team collaboration.
• Psychological courage over safety: Why real progress requires brave conversations.
• From scepticism to buy-in: How to engage teams resistant to change.

Practical Insights:

• Team Coaching vs. Facilitation: Understanding the difference and when to use each.
• Shifting ownership to the team so performance improvements last.
• Leading global teams effectively: Overcoming the challenges of remote collaboration.
• Cross-team interventions: How getting teams in the same room accelerates progress.

Quotable Moment:

"You don’t create high-performing teams—you create the conditions for them to emerge."

Links & Resources:

📖 Read Lucy & Paul’s book: "Building Top-Performing Teams"
👉 Amazon Link

🌐 Learn more about Lucy & Paul’s work at Performance Edge
👉 Performance-Edge.co.uk

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Ben Maynard

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Product Agility Podcast

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Transcript

0:00

And he said be more courageous. Since that moment I've been using that just be more courageous and being more courageous from this team of teams type thing. He's actually saying can we get 2 teams in the room together? Can we get three teams in the room together? And actually instead of making it a paper type exercise, actually getting people in the room together. And I have one example where by and two teams in a room together and one was external to the organization, one was internal and they said they made more progress in three hours and three years. Welcome to the product agility podcast, the missing link between agile and product. The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips, strategies and stories from world class thought leaders and practitioners. Why I hear you ask? Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to experiment so that together we can create ever more successful products. My name is Ben Maynard and I'm your host. What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap between agility and product is a deep rooted belief that people and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence. Hello and welcome back to the to the podcast, The 4th episode of 2025, I believe. And now actually purpose information is out of the way. I am once again over the moon to be joined by some excellent, excellent guests. Guess who I have known now for a deceptively long amount of time? I think now that I actually think about it, because we're joined by Lucy Willison and Paul Barber, authors of a fantastic team coaching book, which we will be showing more information about as we go through and the people that took me through my professional team coaching journey at Henley Business School. So it's, you know, this is definitely me feeling like a student again. They have two people who are far, far more intelligent and have a much deeper and richer experience in team coaching than I will ever have. And you can shake your heads, but it's true. It's true. I am. I am the student and you offer teachers. And it's great to have you on the podcast. Lucy and Paul, thank you for being here. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Ben. Great to be here. So we're going to start this conversation by looking at teams and then ask me to focus on most of the conversation. But before we really go into, I suppose, some of the problems with teams, some of the opportunities around teams and some of our feelings around teams, would you mind giving our listeners a brief introduction to yourselves? Cool, You can go first. OK, OK, yeah, my name is Paul Barber. I am from Northern Ireland. So I'll try and speak slowly so you can understand me, all of your listeners. And I'm really passionate about human beings collaborating. I come from a background whereby we didn't collaborate during the Troubles and when I had a peace process. I'm just really passionate at individual level, within family and within teams and on a societal level. How can we collaborate better? And that's my passion in life. So I'm really delighted to be here, Ben, and I'm great to reunite in this platform. So and Lizzie, thank you, Paul. So I live in Horsham in West Sussex, come from London and personally, so three big kids, two of whom have flown the nest and then one still at uni. And probably what's driven me to love this work is actually there's some conflict in my home life, in my family life when I was younger. And I think that's sort of drawn me to want to get people to connect and collaborate better. And so that's why I absolutely love doing this work. And so like Paul, a coach, A-Team coach, been doing it for all such a long time, 25 years or so, and also really love developing people to be team coaches as well. So I think we get really excited about seeing other people grow and be successful team coaches. That really inspires us. So and obviously Ben said he was on one of the programs we cheated. So it was, it was brilliant to have you been. Thank you. But how many years ago was that now? A few, Yeah, I remember. I don't know. I think I think it might be 4 years. I think years just seem to. It all seems to, yeah. Yeah, it's yeah. It's just do I kind of miss going to Henley Business School? I like the whole, yeah, just going there for the the weekend, you know, to learn, but then to kind of hang out of really like minded people to be an amazing, an amazing environment. So beautiful round there. Yeah. It's not too far away from my house. It takes a couple of hours to get there. So I enjoyed the train journey. Yeah, I just enjoyed the whole experience. So I would love to go back there one day. There's other, there's other courses, you know, there's always absolutely, absolutely. I've gone back both as obviously we as tutors, but I've also gone back as a student as well. And it was fantastic. I remember I got I got a certificate and I got invited to a graduation ceremony, not realizing that I was entitled to do such a thing because I did the executive coaching course and your course I was in, I achieved some level of something or another. I was like, oh, this is a surprise to me. Maybe I will continue and I'll do the I'll get to the masters one day, but that'll be for maybe maybe I don't next week. But what you were saying now, if I can say no, you did kind of what led you to this this environment. I think it's fantastic and it has given me some really some ideas and some of the questions that we could ask as we go through. But let's stick to the script because I think that the term team for many, I think without realizing, has become jargon. I think it's probably one of the most overused words, particularly in the corporate environment. And I think that any collection of humans trying to do something poorly or doing it well or however they've been working, they are, however they're interacting, seems to have been classed A-Team, even though they'd never get the real benefit. They never deliver upon that that promise of value that teams has been set up to achieve. So what I'm really intrigued by porn. From your perspectives, what is a team? Yeah, good. Good question. Important question. One that probably still people grapple with as well. So A-Team is more than two people. Paul and I were a team, and we've been writing as well. And if you look at some of the literature, it's all about that, you know, they've got a collective purpose that, you know, they exist together and that there are some interdependencies as well within the team. So there's some connection across the team as well. But in essence, it's really about what's the work that they can do together more effectively that they can't do a part. And that's often what we say to teams, isn't it, Paul? We just say, you know, So what is that? Why? You know, what is that work? You can do together. You can't do a part. Why do you exist together? And the conversation, we'll probably be even having a game tomorrow with a team that we're working with because they've been exploring that. Paul, you might have something to add. Yeah, a lot of teams. As you say, Ben, the word is used. And the question is it a real team? Is it a real team? And that's we have that conversation a lot with teams. To what extent is this a team? And based on what Lucy saying, they're interdependency, joint work product, you know how you're rewarded. A lot of organizations, they say they have a team and then they reward all these individuals. So actually what they're doing, they're rewarding as what's the word on collaboration? That's a very bad word. But they say we want you to work together, but we reward you separately for your functions. And we always ask that question, how is this team rewarded together as well? That doesn't mean you can't reward separately, but how is a team rewarded together as well? It's really interesting. It's a massive topic that we have with every single team we work with. We asked a question, to what extent is this a real team? I think there's a, there's a few things to unpick there. I mean the rewards, I think that's something that I'd like to come back to as well because that's such a, such a problem. And I was always just flabbergasted in new organisations where I worked as a parent member of staff, everyone spoke a great game when it came to teams. But I never ever saw a single team rewarded for being a team by the official corporate mechanisms. You know, when it came that I have experienced it, and I've experienced it when we've moved from individual functional reward to complete collective reward. And actually that was a bit discombobulating as well for people, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd love to try and unpick that. But then one thing I wanted to kind of loop around on and it was the idea of a collective work product. Now, I've definitely been in situations where the team had something that they were working together to achieve, but they weren't performing. If you asked them, do you need each other in order to achieve your purpose, they would probably say, well it's really nice working with each other and I like the banter. But in your minds, does that make a team? If the team aren't delivering but do rely upon those social connections to get the work done, does that make sense? Yeah. If if you're being very academic about it, you could argue you know something there. But I have an experience of a team that was like that and they actually end up agreeing that you know what? For us, it's about our well-being, supporting each other and our well-being. It is having fun together. It is about learning together. So their work product wasn't probably what I'd have liked. Maybe from terms of, you know, what can you really do together that's going to help? But those are big things too. Those are big things as well. So being less academic about it, there was benefits in them working together as a team in those aspects, but the work part was actually quite separate. But the key thing is your worst thing is you have to have the conversation about it and be aware of it and discuss that out. But if there is genuine work product, you're going to get into the real dynamics type stuff because other stuff you don't really get into the dynamics type stuff. If it's just about well-being and just about learning together, it's not as it's not as hard hardcore when you have to really work together and compromise and collaborate. And you know, so yes, it can still be a team. You can argue, but I wouldn't the word real team, but you're getting very academic there. Really. I remember saying real team here. Are we referring to anybody's work in particular? Because I know there is a there is a term real team. Was it Richard Hackman? Yes. They used that in their six conditions work. They talked about one of them. Is it a real team and the stuff that we're talking about that Lucy talked about interdependencies, you know, joint work. That's the stuff they talked about, you know. Yeah, yeah. So from a from a literature point of view, that's what the literature is saying. It's the, you know, purpose, it's interdependencies. It's, you know, how they work together. But there's lots of different variations of that. And as Paul says, I think it's about the team then having the dialogue to work out what does it mean for them and what does a team mean for them. And I have had one team where, you know, we went through a team coaching programs, they had a number of interventions. And at the end they said, OK, so we are together as a collective because we want to do some sort leadership. They're in a a pharma company. And so we want to be there. We want to be leading edge in terms of the thinking we're bringing. But we just don't want to call ourselves A-Team. So OK, that's fine. So they were almost really working as a team, but they just said we don't like, you know, we don't like the word team. So we don't want to be called a team. So whatever. But they've had the dialogue and they've agreed. Then you know where they do come together as a collective so. That's the thing that does it really matter if some of they really get a team or not, if you're getting those positive effects from it? I mean, just to build a bit of context here for our listeners, what are the types of teams that you would both generally work with? Yeah, I mean, lots of sort of exec teams, senior teams. And then also, I mean, we might come onto it all, but also sometimes what is being called in the literature team of teams, but that's basically, you know, a very various teams, all that are connected. So we might then work with a number of teams that are sort of connected with each other as well within an organization or sometimes an organization and then an outside organization, but they're still teams that are connected. So it could be any of those sort of configurations really that can range been from an organization of a couple 100,000 people time. It's a very small organization. We do, we do all of that next time. And some organisations, one of our currents is 130,000 people we've been working with, you know, a number of teams in that organization. So just yeah, it's always varied. So just to what it was a reflection just was, I have one team I'm working with with a colleague currently, and it's only 250 people. I use it as a little sort of a test case nearly. And we're working with the senior directors management team, the two management teams below that and research on a conference with every single employee. But how can get every single person to collaborate better? So it's kind of like that. That's where the edge is of how do you how do you really change culture and should be the mechanism of team and collaborating better is probably with the learning edges in this whole area. And this is what I find really interesting then. So. And Lucy, you mentioned the word interventions just so that our listeners are kind of aware of what we mean by interventions. Could you just give a quick short definition of that? Yes, Sorry, sounds a bit scary, you know, sorry, that was a bit jargon. Sorry, that just popped in there. Basically, you know, a session with a team. So, yeah, yeah. And that session could be, so it could be a planned thing or it could be an unplanned thing. What you're saying here is that you as an external entity, as as a coach, are choosing to intervene in the mechanics, the ongoing kind of work of that team. Yeah. So then if you're in this situation where there are multiple teams and they're all interconnected and they have to, yeah, they're working together in some way and you want to get that cross team collaboration happening or whatever it is. I mean, this is a real interesting thread to put on because I know a lot of the people that are listening, our product coaches, our agile coaches or our senior leaders and organizations where this is always a problem. And I think that for a long time, when I think of kind of agile coaching without, I wouldn't bore you too much of it. I think that there was a lot of promise and not a lot of actual value delivered. And I wondered like a lot of the time was because of that inability of teams to, to embrace the dependencies they'd have and do something collectively to to kind of overcome that. Practically speaking for our listeners, I've already tips or particular advice you can provide and how do you get multiple teams kind of working together in a meaningful, valuable way? I'll let you yeah, OK, yeah, there's a couple of things. 11 is metaphorical way. So you're working with a team and you say how do you bring the other, the rest of the teams into the room? And that can be through, you know, representations of those teams. And that's probably where we started off type thing doing a lot of that. And then I remember asking Peter Hawkins a question. He's written a lot about team coaching. You know, he got, he had a 70th birthday a few years ago. We were on a call in the same day and I asked him, what would you, what would your 50 year old self say to you now? And he said be more courageous. Since that moment, I've been using that just be more courageous. And being more courageous from this team of teams type thing is actually saying, can we get 2 teams in the room together? Can we get three teams in the room together? And actually instead of making it a paper type exercise, actually getting people in the room together. And I have one example whereby 2 teams in a room together and one was external to the organization, one was internal and they said they made more progress in three hours and three years. And that just really, really struck me that, you know, what are we leaving behind by not just getting people, even teams or external to organization in the room together and say, OK, how can we collaborate better? And when you do that, just things happen. Things happen. I think we're just being too safe. We're just being far too safe. And I think being more courageous than that leads to things because humans have an innate need to collaborate better if you give them the right opportunity to just talk about it. I mean, knowing you 2 right. And if I read between the lines and the courageous thing, and then maybe this is me putting my own kind of lens on it and my own veneer on it a little bit. But I think that the the thing I take away from what you said there, Paul, was that you're asking for team. How would they like to collaborate better? You're not coming up with a particular mechanism or format, you know, and I think that's really quite important. And I think something that a lot of people have missed, particularly in the agile. Well, and I think as well in the I'm going to I'm making a agile and product. I apologise, Paul and Lucy, I know you're not too a favour of it, but just because I want to talk to the listeners directly on this. I think there's a lot of stuff that people have got wrong because they feel like they are the they're they're they're the convincers, not the coaches. They're there to convince people that they should work together and they should convince people that did this particular tool is the way that this one will help them kind of overcome all these problems. And I think there's such a stark difference between, I think how you have taught me and other people how to approach team coaching versus that more kind of authoritative style of intervention. Yeah. And it's it's definitely something that coaches, team coaches, as you know, Ben will often have supervisors and they'll go for supervision and we may will talk more about it. But it's definitely a pattern that I see in supervision is people are bringing with them this feeling of they've got, they've got to ensure the team's successful, they've got to help the team to achieve their objectives. And actually in supervision you explore, well actually whose ownership is it and how do you help the team to take that ownership for it? So I think you're absolutely right. I think it's one of the key differences probably in a team coaching approach is that the ownership will lie with the team. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I remember doing, I was doing the coaching course of you both and somebody gave me some feedback, which was I was, I used somebody's name to kind of bring them into the conversation rather than just kind of asking the team. And the point was that I was more facilitative than coaching. And that's always really stuck with me. And I think back to a workshop I was running last week actually. And the one thing I've really stopped doing more and more is anyway thinking that I can help guide people in how they should be talking to each other, how they should work. And if the frame for the conversation is there, if you leave people to it, if they actually want to work together and they see value in it, they'll find a way. And I think that's something I definitely, you know, have been a long journey to not feel like I'm the one that has to kind of make the magic happen when actually the team's probably capable of making that magic happen. I think on on that, Ben. I have this example whereby I remember sitting on the grass, get eaten by ants and a corporate premises outside London and the team are all sitting around in a circle on the grass having this conversation. And I was encouraging them and that, you know, I want you to own the conversation, to ask each other questions. And this French gentleman started asking these amazing questions at the team and he turned around to me and he apologized. Oh, I'm doing your job. No, no, no, this is this is perfect, you know, and it's nearly a little bit of getting out of creating the conditions. The team have a conversation that they would never normally have, you know, normally. And for the team coach to get out of the way and to nearly be sitting there going and watching and observing it and the odd time you might come in and, you know, what are you noticing what's happening? But the more we can get out of the way of the team and let them self coach is really what the essence of what we're trying to get to. Yeah. And then it's so much more likely to be sustainable, you know, then, you know, then they won't need us there all the time, you know, because they're doing it themselves. Brilliant, you know, So. Yeah, no. And I think that's what we would love. But then I think, you know, part of the issue that I've found in my professional career and I think this is. I was very fortunate because I was able to pick and choose and it was generally very much a pull rather than me being pushed into situations. And a lot of people that are listening don't operate their business in the same way, but we do. And what they find is that they're often pushed into teams rather than it being a pull from the team saying we identify, we know there's a problem, can someone help come and fix it? For the people that find themselves in that situations where they are pushed on the team, IE they are born into organization, they are there on a short term contract or as a perm member of staff or some kind of internal coach. And they're so there's three teams over there go and coach them. What advice would you give the people that find themselves in that that push base team coaching model rather than a pool based 1 Lucy have any thoughts on that? Well, we, I mean, it links with the whole idea of sort of resistance as well, which was sort of one of the challenges sometimes you have in teams of, you know, people feeling like I don't, I don't want to be be in there or I don't, I don't want to do this work. And that's where obviously if we're working with a team, you know, we'll do 1 to one interviews beforehand to find out what's going on and you'll get a feel of that. But in the moment, you still might get some of that. And I don't know, Ben, if you came across Allison Hardingham at at Henley, but she, she talked about, don't know if a tutor at Henley, but she she talked about almost meeting people in their resistance. So, you know, it just talking about the resistance as well and and exploring what's going on, you know, without making it a big deal for them. But people are a choice, aren't they? They can choose when they decide that they want to play a part of it or not. And I can think of one team where actually I had a team member who decided that they weren't going to come and they were a choice, you know. And so the team then did talk about well and ask them, well, how do you want us to try to communicate with you about the work we've done on the journey we've done? And so they had that conversation and contracted around that. It's it's one of the challenges we face. Yeah. Just building on that. I love that reading those words. But Allison Hardingham wrote about meeting the resistance, honoring the resistance. I, I, I and I've talked about now recently about joining the resistance. So we're I had a team who, you know, we had a loosely a couple of teams. I was really, really skeptical going on. I don't think it's going to work. And we're saying I agree. I could be, you know, we, you know, a lot of this thing can be wasted. And it's only going to work if you folk in this room commit to make it work and do the hard work of what is what is to collaborate. And actually that settled one of those individuals to settle them right down because, yeah, what happened, it wasn't being done to them. They were part of it. And they, you know, I think it's right to be skeptical. You know, it's right to be skeptical. And then let's talk about the skepticism rather than ignoring it. Yeah. Saying whatever doesn't get said. One of my favorite sayings is from copied it from John Whittington and added words to it. Whatever it doesn't get stated knowledge to appreciate it we'll find the way out of unhelpfully. Yeah, absolutely. And it was it was amazing actually at that last session when the individual you'll talk about Paul then came to us at the end of that and said, yeah, I was really skeptical before. And, you know, and actually they they were sort of quite critical of the, you know, the whole approach and then said, I get it today. And it shifted and it's, you know, brilliant to say. They've been, they've been in business 30-40 years probably type of thing. You know, there's been a lot of, they've probably seen a lot of iterations of people trying to get people together. And yeah. What would would you not be skeptical? You know, I would, I would be, yeah. But the impact of that clicking for them on the rest of the team, you could see was had a huge influence as well because the team were were probably much more bought in. But then when it clicked for that person that had been much more resistant and suddenly they shifted on threefold. Just a build a building that then is a thing. Not sometimes you would get somebody who does not. He still stays in the periphery and actually discussing that with the team and saying OK, you know, so and so here respectfully doesn't that can be OK as well. But again, the key thing is discussing it, being open about it getting it out on the table. I will say yes, actually think of this history getting it out on the table. We don't like tables. We always remove all furniture. I just have a circle of chairs or semi circle of chairs. But when you say the table, we made a metaphorical table. So, yeah, I, it does take a lot of courage to kind of lean into some of those harder conversations. I mean, I've, I've always been a huge fan of when someone is resisting to say, no, you're, you're right. Because in what they're saying is probably true, when it's their truth, maybe, maybe not a shared truth. And I think one of the things I always find interesting to observe in a room. And for me, this really kind of draws a difference between kind of the more kind of traditional style leadership and management and go and more coaching type of approach is that when the resistance is articulated, it's met with an answer or someone trying to convince them of a different way of it or that it'll be OK. Rather than kind of honouring that as you were saying and being courageous and really getting out of the table and see exactly where where they're coming from. Because there's maybe some useful, probably with some useful information in there. But it's that overwhelming desire to fix it or gloss over it or move on and pretend like it's not a thing. I think it does take a lot of courage. I think for me that's, you know, some of the big lessons around what it is to be a professional team coach is to is to be able to really do that and you know, and remove, you know, remove yourself from the equation in some respects. And rather than trying to solve the problem and understand it a bit more. So I'd love to hear in your own words because we've spoken about, we've taken around this now we've got a good idea maybe what teams are. But how would you describe that professional team coaching in comparison to say individual coaching or even in comparison to say something like facilitation? Yeah, I'll say about individual coaching. Anybody who's experienced individual coaching normally they had alas and. Was that a one off coaching session or was it a journey of a number of sessions? And they'll say, Oh, it wasn't. I met the person, the coach number of times. So the first thing I will say, it's basically it is a bit of journey at work can be overused too, but it's about a number of sessions with a team over time. And the reason that back to the accountability piece of what's happening in between, like what happens before the first session, what happens in between the sessions is more important than what happens in the sessions a lot of times. And then the other thing I had always say, but I love this. Just keep it really simple for people like helping you have a dialogue with each other that you would never normally have. You know, what are the things being talked about outside of the room? What are the things being talked about in the corridors or on calls with each other that are not getting talked about, that everybody knows needs talked about, but people are too scared to talk about. And that can be about the leadership that can be about each other. Really difficult stuff. And we, we believe that team coaching is a is a place. If you take 1 to one coaching, everything's on the table and you know the conversation, there's always a bit, you know, worse across over with therapy versus coaching when it comes to the team coaching. You can argue words across everything, group therapy and and you know, and coaching, but it's really getting things on the table and a safe and even as actually at hand. I don't know the court you're on. I think it might have been actually, we talked about, you know, creating psychological safety for a team and somebody said, I don't like that term. I like the term psychological courage. We've been using a lot recently. How do you create the psychological courage where people can actually just have dialogue about how this team can perform better, if you want to put it really simply? And I suppose if they need to know what performance is, yeah, that's different probably, though, for each. Yeah. Each team. It's like, you know, we come across lots of organizations that are performing really well. Like, you know, they're hitting their metrics or doing all that, but people are unhappy well-being issues and corners of conflict. So you can decade as well. Who's that? McGregor and Doshi talk about the intrinsic motivators of why humans work, and the number one reason is play. Work is meant to be joyful, meant to be fun. It's meant to be creative. We've created these workplaces where, quite simply, sometimes it can be quite depressing. That's the truth for most people, isn't it? I don't know many people. When I speak to them, they turn and say my job is fucking amazing. Like I had the best time, like I hang out the best people. Everyone pulls their weight. Never. No one ever says that. And maybe just because I live in a very sad part of Surrey, I don't know. But like people who don't say that, there's a question which I got from your book, which I, I believe I got it from your book. I hope I did because I've always been giving you credit for it. Well, thank you. Is that's OK. And now you'll tell me, oh, that wasn't our question. It's somebody else's. I'll be even my often emailing people saying sorry, which was, you know, I'm going to say for a second, oh, was it your book? And then what does the future need from this team or questions about that is one question we're asking. Yeah, yeah. And that's that question has always stuck with me because I thought it's such an excellent way to get an understanding of where the where the individuals and the team feel that they are, where the whole team feel that they are, where the stakeholders feel that team is. You know, I think that's such for me, what a powerful question and someone that I've probably become over reliant upon over the years just because it just makes people think, you know, about about so much more than just what they're what's in front of them. So yeah, your your book this kind of just over the midway point. Could you tell people a little bit about your book because it's a it's a fantastic book and people should go and buy it. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to just explain what it is all about. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So that I mean the the book is based on our model creating the teammate. So that was we developed back in 2015 and we've evolved it and challenged it and etcetera haven't we were in our writing pool. But it's it's based on that really and it looks at the seven characteristics of high performing teams. And we did loads of research, obviously wrote 5000 words in the first book of just really rewritten as well, probably extended to about 110,000. So we've been writing a lot and researching lows around it. But we came up with then the, the, the sort of seven characteristics of that we felt of top performing teams. But that that's just, you know, some measures. But actually one of the key things we write about in the book as well is if you want to do team coaching, your way of being is so critical. You know, how you are, how you help hold the room is so important. So the you know, the tools, the diagnostics are all very helpful, but they're they're not the work itself. You know, they support the work. So I think that's what's really important for us to get across because some people think, oh, you're just because you've got a diagnostic, you've got a model, you've got this, you know, tool that that means that's what you're wedded to. But we, we use it to support and we in the book, there are lots of different examples of sessions exercises you can use with teams. But again, they're, they're just to support the work. As I said, do you know how you are with the team is the most important thing really, because that helps build that psychological safety and courage and the feeling that the team can start to really have those conversations and explore. So that's. Very much in essence, but we talk about the latest thinking as well in teams and team coaching, don't we, Paul? Um, yeah, I'll pass to you. You can add anything else. Yeah. We literally just finished writing the second edition of the 23rd of December, so I'll come out. Congratulations. Thank you. Middle, middle of this year that'll hopefully come into the market. 2nd edition. And I guess I'm thinking what are some of the things that come across this really cool research and things that, you know, instinctively, but it's really nice when somebody goes away and does a PhD on it or something and proves it that, you know, can you from a technology point of view, if you're just virtual kind of team, can you build up the same sort of connection as a, you know, in person? And what they said is, yes, you can, but it takes more time and also that it takes you going vulnerable and going deeper with each other about sharing about the humanity with each other and making making each other human like. So we know that from our work, but it's really nice when things that got approved. So again, it's bringing that to life to people because we come across people who are skeptical of that. We love working in person. We do. But we know that you can create really powerful connections working virtually as well. And many teams are global and they don't get to meet each other. And it's very irregularly so. And it goes across culture as well as fascinating. Yeah, they're really. I mean, first of all, if I had a pound for every time I think you've said it's a really cool piece of research, Paul, I think I could probably retire by now. Yeah. I love the fact that you're so like academically minded in that respect. But also then and before we kind of talk about the the creative team manager model, perhaps in a bit more detail, because I mean, there's a number of different phases to it, which I'd love you to share of our listeners picking up on the remote thing here. In your experience and from what you've been reading, is it the same skills that a coach requires to kind of create that deeper connection in a remote environment? Or is it a new set of skills which needs to be built? I mean, you'll probably talk about the phases Paul would do, but it is in essence, it's the same skills. And obviously, you know that we now across the, the different professional bodies in coaching now have some competencies as well that have been written up around it. And so you look at if you compare across them as well. So obviously we're we're very involved in one of those bodies. But if you look across the different bodies actually. The commonality is, is you know very much there. So really similar skills in terms of, you know, that whole way of being your approach, how you hold the room. And that's so important, whether it's in person or virtually, the ability to connect, get people feeling safe that they can start to explore. You know that you you're clear in terms of the agreements of how you're going to work together, what's OK, what's not OK. And all of that piece is so, so important. And you know how you use questioning and that you're shifting that ownership. So all of those things are really important, whether it's virtual, in person, a bit of both. And we do a bit of both as well. Sometimes I've got to say, it's not the easiest, but we do do it. So, you know, and sometimes, as Paul says, you know, you're working with global teams that are literally across every different time zone, you know, and having to just think about that. So it's just about being human, being ourselves and remembering that someone might be in LA and it's, you know,

7: 35:09

00 AM in the morning and someone else's, you know, in Hong Kong and it's, you know, the evening and you, you just try and remember that people have got different energy levels. So it's thinking about all those things in terms of the environment people are exploring in and working in and just helping them to start to feel more comfortable to have those conversations. Yeah, really simple stuff like Lucy's mentioned there about you coming to lunch break.

You don't say let's be back at 2: 35:34

00 PM because there's maybe five time zones. So let's be back in one hour's time on the R It's simple language. It's checking in with what the people have for breakfast and lunch and just making it very human because we've had people sounds awful, but we we had to go on time on from a totally different time zone on a training program and one individual was just food of life and just fry. But and the other person is really struggling to stay away because they're so tired because they're up all night. I'm actually doing a team coaching session in a few weeks time or staff and a colleague. We're working through the night because the team are in Japan. Yeah, yes, one of our clients isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Last year we were in Tokyo in person. This year we're we're, we're doing that. We're in person with them later on this year in London, so. And that that particular team has got interpreters. So we're using an interpreter interpreters to help with language barriers. So that's not my Northern, that's not my Northern Irish accent. Yeah. For the record. For the record. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, there's. Yeah, Yeah. Fascinating. I mean, what I mean, how does it work for interpreters? I mean, that must slow down the the speed of the communication or my, my admiration. They're using an application called Interpathi and it's not a technology whereby it's actually live interpreters in the background. OK. As you speak, as you speak in English, somebody is interpreting that in the Japanese. Yeah. And then as somebody in Japanese speaks that automatically, the interpreter and the interpreter every 20 minutes the change over. And I don't know, it's a superpower or super scale they have. How can they listen? Yeah, speak at the same. I don't know. I'm, I'm mystified. And we, I ran out a session for that that team within their whole functional global team. I ran a session at the end of last year. And so we had 150, you know, all with different languages. And we were running it in English. But then they had their interpreter going in the background and just, you know, just remembering that, you know, you're asking people to think about things, do things, and, you know, remembering that that thing got a bit translated. And how is the translation exact as well? So just remembering that one, it's going to take more time for them to be able to process it because of the translation. And the instructions got to be really simple. So even in team coaching, you just got to be so clear on helping people with instructions. And so they know, and we're trying to send stuff out in advance. They so yeah, just all juggling all those things. Yeah, guys, yes, Bananas. I can't. Yeah, that's really I'd, I'd love to, I'd love to be a family on the wall. And it sounds phenomenal. But I also know we are kind of rapidly running out of time. This is a time slipping for our fingers. I would love it if you wouldn't mind just by giving a bit of an overview of your, of your model of your approach, because I've used that number of times, always got a lot of value from doing it. Love it because I think it's, it's really useful for the coaches or aspiring characters who are listening to this to hear about it because it structures it, I think in a very, I think a very nice way. So would you mind just expect meaning the the five phases of the creating team edge models? Do you want to do the characteristics I mentioned the five sort of things. Well, I'll do the character. It's like super speedy. So we may have, yeah, you know, written 85,000 words on them and I'll do it in like. I don't know, you can time me a few seconds, but basically there, there's there are 7 characteristics then that we write about in the book of top performing teams. And they are and this is not linear, so it doesn't have to be in this order, but it's purpose that teams got some a purpose and that links to strategy objectives. The team explore their identity, so who they are, how they want to be known and described as a team, that they explore their values and beliefs as a team. So what do they need to value and believe in in order to achieve that purpose and their strategy and objectives. And what are some of the limiting beliefs obviously that sit within that as well. And then the four other areas are awareness. So it's a how aware are the team of how they interact with each other and their strengths and preferences, but also how aware are they of how they interface with other teams and within the wider organization. Relatedness is all about the team's ability to connect with each other, build relationships, build trust and really important, their ability to have open and honest conversations. So we're not working with one single team that's not trying to improve their ability to have open and honest conversations. And then ways of working is how you know how they make their meet meetings, how they make their decisions. And last but not least is transformation. So that's about where the team gets their energy from. So they're sort of resilience as a team and how they learn from their their behaviours and their patterns, but also how they innovate and grow for the future and not become complacent as a team. Yeah, that's one of my favorite ones actually. I just, it was, it took me a while to really get it embedded in my head about what that transformation aspect was about. I think it's really, really important. So often they've looked and it's, you know, yeah, I think it, it always reminded me what you said earlier. Yeah. By teaching the the team, almost teaching the team how to coach themselves and kind of giving them that ability to then transform was brilliant. So let me just do a quick recap, see if I break it down the correct order. Yeah, well, I kind of, you know, I've, I've looked at the model a lot. So this should all be, I shouldn't need to look at what I've just written down. But there was a purpose, identity, values and beliefs, awareness, relatedness, ways of working and transformation. Perfecto. Yeah. We're talking probably there's we talk like 5 phases type thing of like a team coaching sort of journey or session. So we also bid pre team coaching. So it is team coaching actually beneficial? Is it a real team? Does it want to be a real team and have not come and not not just assuming because somebody asks you to work with the team that you're going to do that. Yeah. So having that conversation, the second part, once you decide, OK, we're going to do some work together is then what we call discovery. And that's about trying to find out what's really going on. And the different ways of doing that will be obviously information it's available about various things that the team have gathered before. But one the one interviews, we love little 30 minute one, the one interviews just over Zoom, our teams and we've got a range of questions we ask in around the seven characteristics and other questions. And one of our favorite questions asked at the end is like, you know, is there anything we need to know that you want to share with us and privately or more publicly about how you do your best work? Things like neurodiversity, things like that can be shared and other things might be shared or not, might not be shared. We also do a team 360 diagnostic whereby we get the team, the direct reports, the team, whoever other stakeholders and maybe a more senior personal organization to fit in a 360 type questionnaire. So we call that the discovery phase, really finding out what's really going on. And that's before we ever get to the next stage, which is basically then what we call Co design, the third stage where we go along well, if we're going to do work together, what, what does that look like based on the information that we've gathered? What does that look like? And that takes place with the team leader, but also with the team. So even if we design the first session, for example, with the team leader, once we get into the room with the team, then we're checking with the team is this, is this the work we want to do together? And something more important might emerge in that day that you go that direction. And then lastly, you get into the action interventions. And that can be, you know, a number of sessions with in person that can be via virtually, it can be a mixture of both and then it can be 1 to one coaching in the background supporting team members. So it's not just to think of interventions as just being with the team. It can be a number of things. An evaluation. You know, is it, is it working? What's happening? So those five phases, they're not, it's not enough, it's not sequential. You're always discovering, you're always asking, should we be doing this work? The pre bid, you're always Co designing, you're always interventions is always happening. You know the work taking place in between and you're always evaluating, you're always evaluating. So it's not sequential, but it is like 5 phases that are always moving about. And we've looked for another book we were writing for Becoming a Team Coach is another book we've been involved in coming out this year as well. And in that we looked at the clutter books work, looked at Peter Hawkins work, and they all broadly fit into those five type. They've got different names first, but you can put most people's down into those sort of five big buckets of you know, what's the work? Do we need to do work together or not? How do we discover what's going on? How do we Co create together? Co design, Let's do the work, let's evaluate. Yeah. And it's fascinating because I think that I think of so many people that I know and the first 3 phases are often just, they haven't got time or they don't feel like permitted to do that. The evaluation phase is, is their contracts reviewed or or set end of year review? Like, you know, it's it's really interesting. I think that the the pre team coaching, the making sure that they actually want to kind of go on this journey with you for discovery work and then moving into that Co design, that Co creation of a plan. But as a, as a, as a team, there's not something that's been forced upon people, but they're, they're part of by doing anything skin in the game. It's their plan as much as your plan. Then carrying out the various interventions and then the evaluation or even an ongoing evaluation as you go. You know, I think it's just a, it's just a lovely way to structure it. And this is nice to hear that other approaches kind of fit into that as well. And I kind of wish that I don't know, we had another 45 minutes 'cause I would like to no one. I mean, I'd love to hear your, how your thinking has evolved or not evolved and see a rewriting the second edition of the book and this ever book you've been contributing towards. But I also think my listeners would love to learn more about the, the phases and, and actually the model itself and understanding about purpose. So, but won't do it today, but I would love to get you back on at some point in the next couple of months to to do to do a deep dive on some of it because it's just I think it's really, really valuable. Maybe we could time it for when the new version of your book comes out. Love to would be a pleasure. Pleasure. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. And well, honestly, it's been, it's been great. I could listen to you both all day. It's just been such an honour to have you in this kind of podcasty type context because you know, you are, you're OK, you're OK. It's such a pleasure to have a conversation. No, it's it's lovely. I wish. Yeah. Maybe maybe we could even find a way to do the next conversation face to face. Yeah. Perhaps. Let's see. Yeah, yeah. We could have to bring this conversation to an end for this episode, but we'll get back for another. If people want to find out more information about you, obviously there is LinkedIn and we'll put your LinkedIn links into the show notes. What other websites should listeners be going to check out to learn more about you and the work that you do, your book, etcetera? Yeah, so definitely us obviously, but also Performance Edge dot co.uk and obviously we're tutors at Henley, as you know as well. So any of those websites anywhere else, Paul? Yeah, well, I I always, always love just LinkedIn to send people send, send a message. Hello, you know, and send to say Matthew and Ben's podcast. Nice. Like to ask you a question. Well, everyone take take that as an invitation. Yeah, no, we, yeah, we're really happy. Yeah. We love hearing people. We were genuinely, we do brilliant. But I'll, I'll put a link to Performance Edge. I'll put a link to Henley, some of the courses here at Henley as well, so you can check that out. And we'll put your LinkedIn links into the show notes. And that this is, again, thank you so much. It was. Yeah. It's seriously fantastic to have you on here. And I, I don't think I'll ever stop learning from you both as long as you keep doing what you're doing. So, yeah, thank you for making this time. It was just a pleasure. Thank you. And, and everyone, thank you for listening. Yeah, your continued listenership is what keeps this podcast going. We've been going now for probably maybe three years, I think over 250 episodes. Still endeavouring to do 1 episode a week, which is a lot when you're trying to factor in, you know, training and coaching and consulting as well. But, you know, it's it's knowing that there's, you know, a few 100 people, but listening to this on a weekly basis is what keeps me going. So everyone, thank you very much for listening again. Paul and Lucy, thank you very much for coming on. This has been a product agility podcast and we're back again next week. Thank you.