UCL Human Resources -

Professional Development Programme

Coaching Conversations - A radical and effective way to improve team performance

Participants: Teams

Overview:
When teams perform at their best, the members have three strong characteristics. They are clear about their shared purpose. They behave supportively towards each other. And they learn together continuously. The key to all three characteristics is the quality of the conversations they have together.

Coaching Conversations is a radical new concept in building high performance team cultures. It draws on the latest understanding of team dynamics and good practice to develop the skills and habit of dialogue that supports task achievement, collaborative behaviours and collective learning.

How does it work?

The principles of Coaching Conversations are that:

Team and their leaders form a system - and only by working with the whole system can sustainable performance improvement happen.
Teams learn best when they learn together and when they have time both to discuss new ideas and experiment with them together

Everyone in the team accesses on-line learning materials, aimed at stimulating reflection and insight. Typically each of the nine modules requires about an hour’s self-study, including diagnostic questionnaires. Then everyone in the team meets to share their learning and agree how they will apply it in their individual work and how they work together. These meetings are usually facilitated, but can be run by the team itself.

What makes Coaching Conversations so different?

Coaching Conversations echo the coaching style - learning occurs mainly through dialogue. They engage everyone in the team and allow the team to identify and deal with barriers to performance, as part of the learning process. They are highly flexible, with built-in opportunities for reflection and practice between modules, and require a minimum of time away from work. They provide a safe environment, in which the team can develop the skills to challenge themselves. They address the team as a system, so change is much more sustainable. What’s more, this multi-media approach is significantly less costly to implement than comparable classroom training, in terms of both time and money.

Preparation: Attending the half day Introduction to Coaching at UCL would be beneficial but if this is not possible you and your team may still participate in Coaching Conversation as we will recommend some preparatory reading.

Date, time and venue: Please contact Penny Bridges, OSD Consultant to discuss how Coaching Conversations may help you and your team.

Facilitator:Clutterbuck Associates

Cost:

Free for all staff on the UCL payroll
£80 for UCL Affiliated/Higher Education Institutions/Charities
£200 for External Applicants

How to book: Booking Form

OSD Course Contact: Leilani Roosman