Tony Richards > Tony's Quotes

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“a team-based learning and development intervention that considers the team to be a system and is applied collectively to the team as a whole. The focus of team coaching is on team performance and the achievement of a common or shared team goal. Team learning is empowered via specific team coaching activities for self and team reflection, which is facilitated by the team coach(es) through the application of coaching techniques such as impactful, reflective questioning which raises awareness, builds trusting relationships and improves communication. A team coach does not provide advice or solutions to the team. Rather, team coaching requires advanced coaching skills from the coach such as considering multiple perspectives simultaneously and observing and interpreting dynamic interactions and is typically provided over a series of sessions rather than as a one-off intervention (p. 73).”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Team coaching helps teams work together, with others and within their wider environment, to create lasting change by developing safe and trusting relationships, better ways of working and new thinking, so that they maximize their collective potential, purpose and performance goals.”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“In what was described as the first systemic examination of the effectiveness of individual coaching in the workplace, Jones et al (2016)”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“It is our view that the ‘Being, Doing and Knowing’ of team coaching is essential for those who want to be team coaches professionally, as well as those who wish to practise elements of team coaching within their role, eg team leaders.”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Relationship elements with the strongest correlation to successful therapeutic outcomes (Norcross, 2010) Useful questions for building relationships at an individual and team level”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Relationship elements with the strongest correlation to successful therapeutic outcomes (Norcross, 2010) Useful questions for building relationships at an individual and team level Empathy “Involves entering the private, perceptual world of the other” and “communicating that understanding back to the client in ways that can be received and appreciated” (p. 118). How well do you really listen (listening like they are the most important person in the world)? Do you listen to the whole person (beyond their words)? How well do you sensitively communicate back your understanding of how you think the other person is feeling (feeling with another)? Alliance “The quality and strength of the collaborative relationship” (p. 120) How strong is your emotional bond to the other person? What can you do to strengthen it? What could be getting in the way of a stronger bond? Cohesion (in groups) “The forces that cause members to remain in the group” (p. 121) How do you help the team develop cohesion? What do you do that decreases team cohesion? What could you do more of to develop team cohesion? Goal Consensus and Collaboration “The therapist and client journey together toward a mutual destination” (p. 122) Does the relationship have a joint overriding purpose from which goals can be derived? What do you want to achieve together that you cannot do separately? What would success for this relationship look like? Adapted from Norcross (2010: 118–25)”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Being, Doing and Knowing”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Reflective questions How do you want to be known as a team coach? If you are a team leader or manager, what aspects of the ‘Being, Doing and Knowing’ of team coaching would be useful in your work? When reflecting on ‘Being, Doing and Knowing’, where are your: Strengths? Areas of development? How can you build upon your strengths? What can you do to develop further as a team coach? Upon reviewing the ‘Being, Doing and Knowing’ model of team coaching development: Where do you think you spend most of your time? How aligned is this with what you would like it to be? What does this insight mean for your development as a team coach?”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“What does the future need from this team?”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Skip table Area Description Desirable features Key benefits eg Youth Services Organization Purpose ​–​Why do we exist beyond financial gain? ​–​Emotional appeal ​–​The emphasis shouldn’t change over time ​–​Calls for a togetherness ​–​Grabs attention ​–​Memorable ​–​Benefits selected stakeholders (eg employees, customers, society) ​–​Heart then head appeal ​–​Inspires selflessness ​–​Creates belonging ​–​Catalyst for collaboration ​–​Helps people find meaning ​–​Attracts followers ​–​Creates advocates ​–​To give hope to vulnerable young people Vision ​–​What would success look, feel and sound like? ​–​Brings purpose to life ​–​Evokes imagery ​–​Takes a long-term view ​–​Increases clarity ​–​Has uniqueness ​–​Presents a challenge ​–​Commercial reference ​–​Provides an impetus for and inspires action ​–​Creates focus beyond the day-to-day activities ​–​Provides a benchmark to measure progress against ​–​To become the most respected, innovative and sustainably funded youth services provider in xx countries”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“The ideal team purpose process should… The ideal team purpose should… ​–​energize ​–​inspire ​–​include robust dialogue ​–​demonstrate patience ​–​be emotionally demanding ​–​help reveal discrepancies and conflicts in team members’ roles (Wageman et al, 2008) ​–​be clear/give clarity ​–​be challenging ​–​be consequential (Wageman et al, 2008; Hackman, 2011) ​–​take time ​–​take effort ​–​be a joint creation (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993, 1993b) ​–​provide meaning beyond making money ​–​be aspirational as opposed to preventative and reactive ​–​energize others ​–​encourage collective responsibility ​–​(Edmondson, 2012) ​–​unearth the motivation and energy of individual members ​–​surface differences of opinion ​–​renew a sense of passion and commitment (Leary-Joyce and Lines, 2018) ​–​have an element related to winning, being first, revolutionizing or being cutting edge ​–​belong to each individual in the team ​–​belong collectively to the team (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993b) ​–​involve dialogue with wider system sponsors (Hawkins, 2017) ​–​orientate a team towards its objective, helping them choose strategies to support their work (Hackman, 2011)”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Tools and techniques for developing team purpose”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Taking inspiration from Personal Construct Psychology and the work of Burr et al (2014), it can be useful for the team to reflect on the following questions: How do we perceive ourselves as a team? How do we perceive the other team? How do we think the other team perceives us? How do we think the other team perceives themselves?”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Writing about conflict resolution and issues relating to identity, Barbour and Bourne (2020) have highlighted the usefulness of adapting the same questions to reflect on the future relationship. For example: How do we need to perceive ourselves as a team? How do we need to perceive the other team? How do we need the other team to perceive us? How do we need the other team to perceive themselves?”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Importantly, reflective practice is about more than just thinking, it is about learning and then doing something different.”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Resources required Flip chart paper and pens, virtual whiteboard/platform. A3 cards with the six logical levels (Dilts, 1990) headings printed on them as below (you can also use flip charts or display virtually): Purpose Identity Values and Beliefs Skills and Capabilities Behaviours Environment”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“TOOL 2: Picture this! Exploring identity”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“TOOL 3: Newspaper Headlines – creating your identity”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“TOOL 4: Personal Identity Timeline – exploring who I am”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“TOOL 6: What’s your story? Sharing personal identity”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“TOOL 5: Personal Identity Wheel – understanding my identity”
― Lucy Widdowson, Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success

“Within this short definition are 10 aspects of an effective team:”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“Katzenbach and Smith (1993b) developed their original work to look at how effective teams can develop into high-performing teams.”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“Figure 2.1 Katzenbach and Smith’s model of team development”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“they simply define a high-performing team as: ‘A small group of people so committed to something larger than themselves that they will not be denied’ (p 259). This simple but powerful statement provides a provocative challenge to all those who want to lead or coach high-performing teams: how to help the team discover its compelling purpose that will engender the passion and commitment to fulfil it.”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“A mechanistic rather than a living organism metaphor A high-performing team is a concept that grew out of 20th-century mechanistic linear thinking. High performance was a term used for manufacturing machinery, or cars that could accelerate fast from standstill to 60 mph. It was about achieving greater productivity and efficiency out of a fixed system, so that it creates more, faster and cheaper. High performance is unconcerned about whether what is produced is of beneficial value. It is focused on efficiency rather than creating benefit for all stakeholders. Sub-optimization Some teams I have worked with over the years have been motivated to be the ‘best team on the block’, the standout region in their company.”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“As Bill Gates wrote: ‘Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership

“These should not be seen as predetermined or inevitable. Most often groups start by dealing with their own boundaries, membership and group rules and expectations. Schutz (1973) calls this ‘inclusion’; Tuckman (1965) ‘the stages of forming and norming’. This is often addressed in the ‘contracting’ stage in team development, where issues of confidentiality, commitment”
― Peter Hawkins, Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership