Team Conversational Capacity Coaching

Only a mediocre team is always at its best
— Charles Fountain

Collective Conversational Capacity (C3)

Ideally, every member of your team is working on their personal ability to work in the sweet spot under pressure. But to help your team boost its performance you can also invest in team coaching to help build its collective conversational capacity (C3).

What is Team C3 Coaching?

Team coaching is an investment in team competence – the team’s ability to perform to purpose under pressure.

“Really, coaching is simplicity,” said the legendary Tom Landry. “It’s getting players to play better than they think that they can.” Our team coaching process serves the same goal – to show a team how to perform even better than they think they can. Our specialty certified coaches do this by working with the team to better align their conversational behavior with their team’s purpose.

How does it work?

Conversational capacity is a skill-based discipline, so as in sports or the martial arts, it requires more engaged, directive coaching. The C3 coach provides a range of suggestions, practices, activities, support, and feedback to help the team identify what works best for their unique characteristics and circumstances.

The coach first works with the team to diagnose the current culture, goals, and challenges, and then creates a customized, hands-on process to build the team’s C3 as they sharpen the most relevant team competencies, such as

  • Meetings and Decision-Making
  • Change Management
  • Crafting Strategy
  • Creativity & Innovation
  • Collaboration across Boundaries
  • Adaptive Learning
  • Creating a Conversational Culture
  • Performance Feedback
  • Smart Team Leadership
  • Influence without Authority
  • Leading and Managing in a Crisis
  • Sales in the Sweet Spot
  • And more

Two Interdependent Goals

This is not a routine, cookie-cutter approach. It’s an adaptive process of learning. The team implements new ideas and practices, experiments, reflects, and adjusts course when necessary. They use this process as a vehicle for building a more focused and disciplined team. The process has two interdependent goals:

  1. To sharpen pivotal team practices.
  2. To strengthen their collective conversational capacity in the process.

Who is it For?

Team coaching is a great investment for a variety of teams:

  • Newly formed teams who want to set their performance on solid ground from the start.
  • Teams gearing up for a significant change or challenge.
  • Teams that are working well but want to shift their performance into an even higher gear.
  • Critical teams that aren’t working so well and need help reaching loftier levels of communication and collaboration.

Learning Objectives

  • Create a tailored process to help the team increase the fit between conversational behavior of the team and the purpose of the team.
  • Build their collective conversational capacity (C3) as they improve core activities such as running meetings, making decisions, improving coordination and collaboration across boundaries (baton passes), crafting strategy, and managing change.
  • Help the team apply and adopt potent new practices and activities to build their C3.
  • Help team members learn to complement and support one another under pressure.
  • Help the team put in place an ongoing set of practices that help them build their C3 in a sustainable way long after the formal team coaching process is over.

Length: C3 Coaching engagements typically last from 6 to 12 months.