In this interview, we talk with Terry Hildebrandt about his article, "Organizational Development ~ The importance of OD in team coaching."
Team coaching has become more popular in the last 10 years as an organization effectiveness intervention. However, team coaching requires a new set of skills and knowledge beyond what is required for coaching individuals.
Organizational development consultants have long worked with teams to improve their effectiveness. Team coaches can benefit from learning OD best practices and how they can be applied to team coaching.
In this podcast, we will discuss the fundamentals of team design, which are required for any team to be effective.
Terry Hildebrandt is an executive coach, organizational development consultant, certified coaching supervisor, and author. He is the CEO of Terry Hildebrandt and Associates, LLC and former Director of the Evidence Based Coaching Program at Fielding. Terry has over 25 years of coaching experience and 34 years of business experience. Terry works primarily with mid-level and senior executives including members of the executive committee, board chairs, chief executive officers, vice presidents, directors, and selected promising leaders. He specializes in leadership coaching, organizational change, and team development. He earned his PhD in Human and Organizational Systems from the Fielding Graduate University.
Join us as we discuss the fundamentals of team design with Terry.
Watch the full interview by clicking here.
Find the full article here: https://bit.ly/thildebrandt
Learn more about Terry here.
Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/
In this episode, I talk with Terry about his article published in our December 2022 issue.
In this interview, we talk with Terry Hildebrandt about his article, "Organizational Development ~ The importance of OD in team coaching."
Team coaching has become more popular in the last 10 years as an organization effectiveness intervention. However, team coaching requires a new set of skills and knowledge beyond what is required for coaching individuals.
Organizational development consultants have long worked with teams to improve their effectiveness. Team coaches can benefit from learning OD best practices and how they can be applied to team coaching.
In this podcast, we will discuss the fundamentals of team design, which are required for any team to be effective.
Terry Hildebrandt is an executive coach, organizational development consultant, certified coaching supervisor, and author. He is the CEO of Terry Hildebrandt and Associates, LLC and former Director of the Evidence Based Coaching Program at Fielding. Terry has over 25 years of coaching experience and 34 years of business experience. Terry works primarily with mid-level and senior executives including members of the executive committee, board chairs, chief executive officers, vice presidents, directors, and selected promising leaders. He specializes in leadership coaching, organizational change, and team development. He earned his PhD in Human and Organizational Systems from the Fielding Graduate University.
Join us as we discuss the fundamentals of team design with Terry.
Watch the full interview by clicking here.
Find the full article here: https://bit.ly/thildebrandt
Learn more about Terry here.
Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/
In this episode, I talk with Terry about his article published in our December 2022 issue.
Hi there, I'm Garry Schleifer, and this is Beyond the Page, brought to you by choice, the magazine of professional coaching. Choice is more than just a magazine. It's a community of people who use and share coaching tools, tips, and techniques to add value to their businesses and impact their clients. It's an institution of learning built over the course of 20 years, yes, we've been publishing for just over 20 years, and dedicated to improving the lives of coaches and their clients. In today's episode, I'm speaking with first of all dear friend, executive coach, organizational development consultant, certified coaching supervisor and author Terry Hildebrandt, who is the author of an article in our latest issue of team and group coaching. His article is entitled Organizational Development, the Importance of OD in Team Coaching. A little bit about Terry.
:He's the CEO of Terry Hildebrandt and Associates, LLC, and former director of the Evidence-Based Coaching Program at Fielding. He has over 25 years of coaching experience and 34 years of business experience. Sounds a lot like me.You got a few more on me though. Terry works primarily with mid-level and senior managers, including members of the executive committee, board chairs, chief executive officers, vice presidents, directors, and selected promising leaders. He specializes in leadership coaching, organizational change, and team development. He earned his PhD in human and organizational systems from the Fielding Graduate University. Welcome, Terry. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's a real pleasure and long overdue, long overdue. Wow. What a great article. Of course it had to come from an OD perspective, so I just really love that you did that. But also team, you do a lot of team coaching as well, and I'm sure you've seen a lot. You've added this perspective OD. Why do you feel it's important to bring OD to team coaching?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, my own background, I started out as a team coach at Hewlett Packard Company in 97, believe it or not. So that's, that's where I actually cut my teeth in the coaching industry. So I didn't actually do that much one-on-one coaching for probably eight years. It was like all team coaching.
:Wow. Brilliant. So that was my foundation. And when I first started, I decided I needed to go back to school. So I got a Master's in OD at that point and, and really applied all of those principles in the field of team coaching. Team coaching didn't really exist, I think in 97. No one called it that. It was almost all facilitation and team development.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes. That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. But now we would, in retrospect, definitely call it team coaching. I find that the principles of OD along with lots of other areas like psychology and neuroscience, et cetera, really inform the practice of coaching. Team coaching, specifically, I think is well suited for drawing upon the research and best practices of OD.
Speaker 1:Right. Wow. That's so interesting and one thing we didn't mention in your profile is that you also have a huge background in assessments and measurements and instruments. You've written for us so many times. That's why it's way past due that we're talking. But that must help you as well in giving you I would say a leg up on working with teams and all these CEOs and C-suite people you work with.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think instruments are a great way to even launch a team coaching engagement because you can do things like getting people to know each other better with personality tools. There are also specific instruments right now that have been around a while that measure team effectiveness, so you can pinpoint what the strengths are of the i ntact team, w hat some of their issues might be, and also give them a framework for team functioning. A lot of times n ew teams may not have any background i n team dynamics, s o doing an assessment is a good w ay to kick that off and very quickly understand what some of their challenges are. Even blind spots that they may not even be aware of that the team coach can bring forward and give them some team self-awareness, w hich is different than individuals. Most of the coaching in the last 30 years has been with individuals, and so team is a whole different ballgame. As you probably know, the I C F just recently announced their own team coaching certifications, so they acknowledged that it took some different competencies and I think t he OD folks have known that for a long time since they've worked with teams for so long.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Terry, help our audience understand this. So you've mentioned a few modalities, facilitation, training, OD, team coaching. So as a team coach, do you do all of them? Do you do some of them? When do you actually get to the coaching part? I know coaches are anxious to do that, but from what I've been hearing, there's a lot of work goes on before you actually coach, which is still coaching the work, but it's not like the team.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I think it depends on where the team is in its evolution. Some teams have done a lot of foundational work, they already have purpose, mission, vision, and strategies and maybe they're midstream and are looking for a team coach to work on a specific topic like culture or maybe they're working on processes or structure. So I think a team coach can come in at any phase to support a team, but if you're working with a brand new team, I recommend a roadmap that the team coach can support that particular team in and laying out a developmental process for them. OD is well suited for that. That's their bread and butter. That's what they do every day looking at foundations and measurements and culture processes and structure. But any one of those could be something where a team coach could come in and help them sort out issues or even team processes like communication or conflict or how do they solve problems. You can be very narrow. I think some team coaches probably focus in on very narrow things like conflict management and may help a team work through some of their issues that they might have or maybe even combine team coaching with a combination of leadership coaching where you're coaching the whole team, but also the leader and helping them as well to be m ore effective. So all kinds of combinations exist a nd I think it's pretty common for team coaches to come in for the team and then later contract with individuals once the team coaching is done. So people go back and forth between different modalities.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. In my interviews and reading the articles, it's never really a clear straight line. I mean, it's driven by what the team needs or what the organization needs or is guiding to, which sometimes may be in conflict with what the team needs and other things may be discovered. When you mentioned organizational development OD, it's sounded to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's kind of like OD is the checklist, that roadmap that you were talking about. It's like what's their mission? What's their purpose? Check, check, check. Oh, they don't? Let's do some work on that. Does a leader want that? So check in back to the stakeholders. And do you ever introduce actual training? Well, I guess you would, training and or facilitation, in order to get the learning versus the coaching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I would do the training myself if I'm an expert in that space, or I might recommend the team go out and source their own trainer to get the skills that they need. So if there's a skill gap, training can really help with that. It's technically not coaching because it's training, but I think all these different tools are resources for a team coach to consider and need to have in their toolbox so they can really look at it from a holistic perspective. Especially if the team is looking for you to serve them in the long term. When I was an internal team coach, I worked with certain teams for years and actually became like almost a member of the team in some ways.
:Not in terms of content but in terms of process. So they would have me attend their meetings on a regular basis and support them in an ongoing way. I think the longest service I had with a team was probably seven years and I saw them start to finish where they practically closed down the business. So seeing the life cycle of a team is also really interesting. It's a fascinating element of team coaching.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm just kind of reflecting. We've been around for a while. Back in the day, a team might have actually stayed together longer than they do now. It's more of a gig economy and gig structures. Do you find that teams don't stay together long or as long as they used to?
Speaker 2:No, I think it really depends on the industry and the business. Some teams are very ad hoc teams where they come together for a period of time and then they disband. There are other teams, like management teams or executive teams that might be around for a long, long time but individual members come and go as they get promoted or find different opportunities or retire, et cetera. So I think both can be true but it does seem like the life cycles of businesses are faster than they used to be. So even executive teams are morphing into new businesses or restructuring. We see that all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't remember what the organization was, but there was one where it was actually part of the culture of the organization that you were on not only on different teams, but you made a point of moving to another team after a certain time. So it was part of the actual structure of the team to not be with the team forever to allow fresh ideas and things like that.
Speaker 2:There's a new OD, maybe not that new, but becoming more experimented with called adhocracy and that adhocracy approach, instead of being hierarchical with stable roles, it's more team-based and teams come and go depending on what the business need is. There've been a few organizations that have experimented with adhocracy and you're exactly right, in those environments team membership can change a lot. They kind of grab people as they need them to maybe launch a product or solve a big problem then the team disbands and people go elsewhere to solve new problems. It's not based on seniority or power structures, but mainly based on expertise.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wow. We've talked a lot about the value of a team coach for an organization. Is there anything else that we didn't say?
Speaker 2:Well, I think a team coach has a lot of different potential value. One is for new teams getting started. I think for existing teams that might be stuck and want to move forward or may be having some kind of dysfunctional situation, you can bring in a team coach to try and sort that out and get them unstuck and moving forward. I think it's also important sometimes to bring in a team coach when the work is being finished and to think about how to celebrate and close out a team and to think about transitions to the next big thing or helping people find new roles. I've actually supported teams in all those different phases of the lifecycle and I think as a internal team coach, which might be in HR, it might be in OD department, it could be in quality. I actually did almost all of my team coaching out of the quality function, believe it or not. That is a great opportunity to be with a team on an ongoing basis because you are employed by that organization and they don't have to find funding all the time. I think with external teams you have the ongoing challenges of funding and contracting but an external coach can add value in different ways through confidentiality and a third party perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's an interesting perspective because, for the most part, I was always thinking the team forms and a coach starts, but there's different places in the life cycle. Yeah, of course. It makes sense. What I found most interesting is to be brought in to help it move on, to celebrate and possibly disband. That's interesting. Wow. That'd be kind of fun cause I love doing the celebration part. I'm always asking my clients to do that and in a way doesn't have to be like a trip around the world kind of thing. It's just like, what are you gonna do to acknowledge this milestone?
Speaker 2:Yeah. There was one organization I worked with that formally shut down. They were ending that product line because the technology had morphed into something else and the group was being transitioned to a new charter. But I worked with the HR leader as a coach and we developed a wake and a celebration process and a memory book and it was quite formal and lots of ritual involved with it. We even had a coffin. So it was really, really fun. Because it was literally the end but we wanted to kind of have that as a milestone and celebrate all of what good things came from that organization which had been around, I think,about 20 years. So it was a significant transition.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wow. That's great. I reflect back on when I sold my third party logistics company to another company and I became the president of that company. But before we left the old building, somebody did a video of the event to give us afterwards, but we had acknowledgements and celebration and food and all that sort of thing in the warehouse where the majority of the work had gone on for the past like 10 years. That was really kind of cool. So yeah, thanks for taking me back there. That was a fun time. I love that. Okay. So I have to ask the big question, this is more for me I think, but whatever usually is for me is for my audience. What training does a team coach need to have to be effective?
Speaker 2:Well, just like any specific vertical in coaching if you're going to be an executive coach, you need to know a little bit about leadership and strategy and what it means to be an executive. If you're gonna be an ADHD coach, you need to know something about that dynamic and what people need to be effective. Same thing with teams. If you've never served on a team or you have no background in team dynamics, I do recommend you get some training and OD is a great background to have for team coaching. A master's in OD is one of the kind of standard things that a lot of people go do and if you want to not be so broad, it may be focused in on a specific area. You might get training in that specific element of team functioning. But I think every team coach at minimum needs to know what are the elements of a high functioning team. Getting certified in one of the tools that you can understand what makes a team work is a good start because it'll give you some theories and frameworks that you can apply. If you're going to go deep in like conflict or communication or culture, getting training in those specific areas. If you get an OD Master's, it covers all of that.
Speaker 1:With a few years of work too.
Speaker 2:Well, there are programs you can do in one year or two years, so it's not too bad but it is an investment. If you choose not to get a Master's, there are certificates in OD. Nowadays you can now get certified as a team coach. The ICF is currently working to credit new organizations in this space. They now have their competency model out for a little while. That was the first step and now they're actually going to credit specific training organizations. So that's another way to get a certificate from a reputable team coaching program. But if you're going to be going after that approach, make sure that organization has some experience in the series and models of team effectiveness.
Speaker 1:Oh, something just came to mind. So do you coach teams by yourself or do you co-coach?
Speaker 2:I do both. If it's a multi-team environment, I may bring in a colleague to work with me. Just recently I was in DC and brought in a colleague who was a real expert in emotional self-management. So we co-coached that group. He was there for the first day. It was a bit of combination of training and coaching and then I stayed on for the next day for the team meeting to help them apply it, which was more on the coach side. So I have brought in specific experts that are world class folks that really are deeply ingrained in a specific area and that you can do that as a team coaching with instruments too. You know, maybe you want to use the Berkman or the Hogan or some other tool and you may not be certified, you can bring in someone who is and work with them as a partner. I do that with a lot of folks too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It goes back to the earlier conversation about all the different aspects of working with the team. Do they need OD work? Do they need the roadmap? Is it trainings? Is it facilitation? Are we ready for coaching? That kind of thing. Interesting. Interesting. And thank you for that other point. Who do you want to coach as a team? Do you w ant t o coach in technology? Do you w ant t o coach in HR? Do you w ant t o coach in C-suite? Do you w ant t o coach project-only b ase? Something like that. So that's a good start. A lot of coaches should be doing that anyway when they start out coach coaching, who do you like to coach? Be cause t hat always ma kes y our life a lot easier.
Speaker 2:I would agree with that. Everyone has their own industry background and experience and it certainly helps to have credibility by having some background in those areas. Since I was an engineer and worked in tech for a lot of years, I do a lot of work with tech teams, but really in the last eight years, I've done a lot more work in healthcare as well. Senior teams, they have all the same kind of issues.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of transferable skills That you can use with different groups. I do find some differences between nonprofit, for-profit and government. Those do have their own nuances, but I'm the kind of guy who likes variety.
:You do. That's good. Wow. So what would you like our audience to do as a result of the article and this conversation?
Speaker 2:My main reason for writing the article is to help folks see that OD does have something to offer to keep coaching and if you're new to OD or haven't explored it, I do recommend all team coaches spend a little time in that reading some of that literature or getting some training so that they can be well equipped to be effective team coaches. I think it's a mistake to say, oh, I've b een an executive coach for 15 years. I can coach a team. Probably not. If you aren't familiar with team dynamics and some of the foundational processes and models, you can get i n over your head really quickly because having eight people managing that conversation versus managing a conversation with one executive o r one leader is very different. Being able to facilitate or understand team dynamics is really important.
Speaker 1:I can imagine too, there are a lot of organizations now that already offer team coaching. Have a conversation with somebody that you know works in that kind of organization to see what are the requirements to be a part of the group that coaches. Exactly like you say, are they requiring OD experience or OD training and coach training and stuff like that? You know, I've interviewed a number of people for this issue, obviously read all the articles a few times, and I'm just now getting comfortable with the idea of the possibility of being a team coach.
Speaker 2:Okay. All right. You personally?
Speaker 1:Me personally.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Because I love working in collaboration, which is why I love doing these podcasts. So thank you again. And it's just so much fun to do it. Every issue I pick a lead person to work with and they help me with the title and the themes, et cetera. So turn that collaboration outwards and watch watch the ripple effect of that. So from one to many as my friend Jennifer Britton says. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this Beyond the Page episode. What's the best way to reach you, Terry?
Speaker 2:You can either reach out via telephone, it's(720) 318-6625 or check out my website terryhildebrandt.com. And my email's easy as well, terry@terryhildebrandt.com.
Speaker 1:Well-branded my friend, well-branded. Well, that's excellent. Thank you again so much for both writing so many times and for now being on our podcast. Really appreciate it. You're wise beyond your years, my friend. Wise beyond your ears and years.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks Garry. It's always a pleasure to support you and your work and I wish you success going forward as a team coach, hopefully.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stay tuned. That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app. We know for sure we're on Apple and also Spotify. And don't forget to sign up for your free digital issue of choice Magazine by going to choice-online.com and clicking the signup now button. I'm Gary Schleifer, enjoy your journey to mastery.