The skill of not participating

Continuing on my difficulties of the difference between coaching and facilitation, I came across Tony Llewellyn's Teamcoachingtoolkit and found this post about team coaching techniques, Create a thinking Environment, and now it fell into place for me!

So first, what is the problem here? Well, to think about facilitation and coaching as two different modalities in teamcoaching makes me think that I can coach a team without facilitation. That is my problem. I don't think one can. As team coaches I believe that we need to facilitate the team in the coaching session. And if we as team coaches train team coaching without training in facilitation I believe we will miss a vital part of being able to execute team coaching.

In his brilliant post about how to create a thinking environment, Tony describes it as "The technique of continually creating the right conditions to encourage the team to think both individually and collectively.It is a facilitation role." Well now we hit something here! The theory is based on Nancy Klein's Creating a thinking Environment and her research of what creates the conditions for individuals and teams to think, that she has put it down in ten conditions that forms the basis for how to facilitate that thinking environment. The point is that it describes how to learn the skill of facilitating and thereby creating an environment where the team moves forward without you as a coach participating in the actual thinking or doing of the team. Now we describe facilitation as a skill and a technique you as a team coach can use in your coaching session, not as a different modality. This really resonates with me, as I think that we should recognise that facilitation is a skill we need to master as team coaches and use in the same way we use our coaching competences.

So, in summery, facilitation is a skill and not a modality! Puh, that took me a lot of thinking to conclude! But for me that also indicates that we need to look at facilitation in a different way when we talk about team coaching and how to practice team coaching.