Hi Reader,

I was referred to a tech startup recently by a contact who sits on their board.

His read: the leadership team weren't communicating with each other.

Way too focused on the 'doing' with no investment in the relationship between them. He thought team coaching was what they needed, made the introduction, and they agreed to it.

So I sent an email to set up the first conversation.

Nothing.

Now, there's an easy explanation - emailing a leadership team collectively is always a bit murky. Who responds? Who owns it?

If you're in clear communication with each other, that's a five-second conversation. If you're not... the email just sits there.

I've noticed this enough times now to stop being surprised by it.

The thing a team most needs to work on almost always shows up in how they engage with the process of working on it.

I have another client who had explicit feedback from his team that he's not present enough for them. He's also the person who never books our next coaching session unless I chase him.

This is what makes leadership team work genuinely hard to do well. You're not just designing an intervention.

You're working with a system that is already demonstrating the problem, often before anyone's acknowledged it's a problem.

Which means the most useful thing - before any offsite, any workshop, any team coaching programme is a conversation about what's actually going on. Not what the team says is going on. What the engagement process is already showing you.

If you're looking at a leadership team and sensing something's off, - or you know someone who is - I'd rather have that conversation early than design something that lands on top of a dynamic no-one's named yet.

Catherine

P.S. The startup team has yet to reply.