Failure to launch

How do you jumpstart connection when your team's never met? Sure, pandemic-times have taught us a lot about remote connection. But Training Camp is an all-hands, team-building meeting. Scheduled early in the Reach Alliance program, teams come together to learn about one another and set the stage for their collaborative work to come. It's an important meeting to build connections, not a status meeting to report on project work. When your team takes more than two weeks to land on a date, and one participant pulls a no-show, how do you rebound as a group and get your team on track if you can’t get an early meeting off the ground? 

Nicole brought this challenge to the coaching team recently to review insights and consider strategies for common shared learning. First, we focused on defining the problem: one team member did not show up to a planned, mutually agreed upon meeting date and time was the observable fact. We also mused that there was a disconnect between member expectations, a misunderstanding of requirements and expectations, along with a lack of communication between members.

Then we considered what success for this group might look like. If we were able to coach resolution, what might that be?  We agreed that respectful, clear communication that enabled everyone wanting to be involved in the program to align on expectations, to be accountable and to show up for the team would be a success.

This was actually the result another coach had experienced once. They coached their team on giving and receiving feedback so that one program participant responded to clear team feedback by working to become a valuable member of their team as the program progressed.

And we also discussed the opposite resolution when feedback results in a program participant leaving the team. Although sometimes challenging, it can also help to clear the way forward too.