Calling time on the team away day

Things changed for me in 1996. I was fortunate to be trained as an internal coach in a companywide transformation programme. Over a short period of time my interest in bricks, blocks and concrete waned and I became passionate about the latent potential of people and particularly teams. A few years later I moved to Wates Construction in an operational role, but once they discovered my experience in company change, I was put in charge of their transformation programme.

It was during the time of the Latham and Egan reports on reforming the construction industry, and so it seemed I was in the right place at the right time, and armed with a useful skill set (coaching) and some stage presence.

Trust, teamwork, partnering, collaboration were the orders of the day when I set up my own coaching company in 2001 and project launch workshops and team away days were my bread-and-butter. Oh, and a seven-year long gig with Costain, leading the roll-out of their transformation programme.

From ‘happy clappy’ team away days to DeliverStart2Finish™

In the early days of my ‘team coaching’ I only had a few days’ worth of exercises to put the participants through and limited insights to share, so I focused on project launch team away days. These were one off workshops that quickly got the team together, put faces to names, produced an action plan and a charter and people left fairly happy.

There was a high demand and few of us ‘team coaches’ out there so I was busy and after three or four years had mastered happy clappy workshops.

Though something was missing for me. My associate, Paul, who went through the same coach training as me, warned me that a one-off, one-day workshop without proper follow through was really just entertainment. “And we are not in the entertainment business Dave,” he said.

My feedback scores were mostly nines and tens although, deep down, I knew people were leaving the room cracking on with their day job as normal and ignoring their action plan and charter. They were good for getting people together, breaking the ice and putting faces to names but they didn’t need me for that and my mission was bigger than that.

From that point onwards I resolved to develop a process that enables a collection of hard working individuals to become an effective team and deliver their business results – from start to finish. Now, many years in the making this tried and tested process is called DeliverStart2Finish™

In 2008, I called time on team away days and haven’t done one since, except when very confident of upgrading to my DS2F process on the day.

Why team coaching?

I work with big project leadership teams, the six or so people representing the user, client and contractor right at the top of the project.

These individuals don’t get to choose each other. They are thrown together and are expected somehow to provide joined up leadership to the thousands of people who are managing and delivering the project.

As team coach, I enable them to establish and sustain themselves as a leadership team.

Sustain is really important. I hear people say “we’re a good team” as if, once established, the team becomes a static and fixed entity. In fact, a team is a complex, dynamic entity, a living system that is either growing or descending into disorder. Usually it’s the latter, and when disorder sets in at the top of the project, it quickly spreads throughout it.

In his book “Systems Thinking And Other Dangerous Habits”, Bill Dettmer states: “The Second Law of Thermodynamics specifies the existence of entropy – the tendency of any system to move towards disorder or randomness, absent of affirmative efforts to replace lost energy or otherwise hold the system together. In the same way human organisations can’t operate on automatic pilot. Constant effort and attention is required to sustain: sense of mission, morale, harmony, teamworking, leadership.”

Psychic entropy is a natural condition for humans, we lose focus and become confused. The same applies with teams, and the impact is multiplied.

“Constant effort and attention is required” – this is my work with leadership teams, enabling them to combat entropy so they can continuously provide joined up and effective leadership.

Scaling and evolving

For over 20 years my mission has been to change the construction industry. It sounds grand but it’s what I have been doing tiny little bit by tiny little bit, top down, one leadership team at a time.

I believe things can be better for construction people, and when things are better for construction people the construction industry is better.

Effective leadership makes things better and also enables people to make things better for themselves.

My work with big project leadership teams is scaled by their work, their leadership.

However, there is a lot of construction going on and there’s a lot of entropy. And there only is me and my little team. And, faced with the pandemic two years ago, I decided to move all of my coaching online. No more conference rooms! My customers tell me it’s even better online, but that’s for another blog post.

Some leaders, however, want the coaching to be in-person, in a conference room. So, I have created a DIY version of my DeliverStart2Finish™ in which I remotely coach the leader to do it themselves. They facilitate the process with their team in the conference room, and together we make sure it works.

My next evolution is to mentor new team coaches in the use of DS2F so they can coach within a framework and are not bound by having only one days’ worth of stuff to do with the team. I really don’t want to encourage the start of those happy-clappy workshops again.

And now onstream is my Coach for Results programme aimed at training young construction professionals in the essentials of a coaching style of management so they perform better right now, become effective managers and, over time, great leaders. Done at scale this will change the industry from the ground up. And who knows? A few may go on to become professionally certified coaches just like me. Details here.