Dancing With Uncertainty

What happens when coaches and teams stop trying to control the process and start leaning into uncertainty instead?

In this episode of Teams Transformed, Georgina and Allard explore the challenges and profound opportunities that emerge when we let go of rigid agendas and embrace present-moment work. Through vivid metaphors, personal stories, and research, they reveal how uncertainty isn’t something to fear - it’s a powerful entry point for awareness, connection, and transformation.

You’ll discover:

• Why identifying the unspoken needs of a team can often unlock deeper collaboration.
• How shifting from scripted control to attuned presence creates real movement.
• The role of awareness in expanding what’s possible for a team.
• Practical ways to let possibilities emerge, rather than forcing outcomes.

This conversation invites leaders, coaches, and facilitators to see uncertainty not as chaos, but as an opportunity for teams to truly grow and learn together.

Remember to follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Brought to you by Team Coaching Studio - The world’s leading academy for team coaching. To find out more about us visit https://teamcoachingstudio.com/

Transcript

Allard [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Teams Transformed, the podcast for people who want to see real team transformation.

Georgina [00:00:07]:
For courageous coaches, curious leaders and anyone passionate about unlocking the true power of.

Georgina [00:00:12]:
Teams, we your hosts, Georgina and Allard. Here's a journey with you. Through transformational insights on how to coach teams with presence, depth and emergence, let's.

Allard [00:00:23]:
Explore not just the tools, but the art of transforming teams. This episode we'll look at the hidden gifts of uncertainty and how to turn it into an ally as we navigate the cycle of experience and help the team identify and meet its developmental needs.

Georgina [00:00:45]:
Hi, everybody. Really looking forward to my conversation with you Al today.

Allard [00:00:50]:
Me too. Our, our fifth conversation in this, in this series.

Georgina [00:00:55]:
Yeah. And today we wanted to talk a little bit about dancing with uncertainty and what an extraordinary idea that is and what that brings up for us. In a way it sounds simple, but we want to dedicate most of an episode to it because it's actually so profound in terms of our capacity to work impactfully and effectively as team coaches. So perhaps a good place to start might be what happens when uncertainty is there? What do we become aware of?

Allard [00:01:36]:
Yeah. And what, and, and, and, and what creates the uncertainty? What's the, what's the source of the uncertainty? And I think that has to do with the fact that working emergency, you're kind of working. I was going to say without a map. And that's not entirely true because I think we'll, we'll, in, in just a few minutes we'll talk about, you know, a map that is, that's, that's always kind of there. But you're not, you're not operating with, with, with a pre established kind of agenda and, and you're choosing instead to be fully present to what arises in the moment. And the, yeah, that. I think that creates a lot of, a lot of uncertainty because you just don't, well, you never really know what's going to happen, do you? It's back to life is one big experiment anyway. But, but we like to think that we know what's going, what will happen and that gives us something to hold on to, a bit of certainty.

Allard [00:02:32]:
But when that's not there.

Georgina [00:02:35]:
Yeah. Uncertainty around what's going to happen. Can we manage it? Will we be able to cope? Will it deliver value?

Allard [00:02:46]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:02:47]:
Will the team be happy with the work? Will they be content or will they be irritated by these.

Allard [00:02:53]:
And will. And will they be happy with me? Yeah, that's all.

Georgina [00:02:58]:
Whether we, you know, will I be fired?

Allard [00:03:01]:
Yep. Yeah.

Georgina [00:03:02]:
If it gets too uncertain, what is it we're going to be doing with our time, then if we're not focusing on models, theory or exercises, what are we going to be doing with our time? How are we going to fill the time? And that can create immense anxiety for people.

Allard [00:03:21]:
I'm thinking, I'm thinking back to an article that our colleague Declan woods wrote several years ago and I think it was called Team coaching not for the faint hearted or something to that effect.

Georgina [00:03:33]:
Yeah. About the fear that team coaches can experience.

Allard [00:03:38]:
Yeah. Because uncertainty leads to fear. Right.

Georgina [00:03:41]:
And yeah, so in some ways what I'm thinking about now is, is how we can reframe our relationship with uncertainty and how that might be more challenging for some than others.

Allard [00:04:00]:
Yep.

Georgina [00:04:01]:
For example, if, if we were going on a, you know, I love traveling. So let's imagine we were going on a trip into the Amazon and a travel company may have planned for us some places to stay. So we've got a map, we've got some stations that we're going to stop at along the way. We might even have an idea that in one place we're going to go on a particular kind of tour there, going on a river cruise, let's say. But we have no idea what that encounter will be like. There could be torrential rain and floods, there could be storms, there could be wild animals that we had never thought of, like dangerous lizards that we suddenly encounter or leeches or what else might there be there that we hadn't anticipated that might take us by surprise. It could be delays, sudden plane cancellations. So, you know, we've got our map, we've got our plan, we've got the journey mapped out.

Georgina [00:05:06]:
But there's all sorts of uncertainty about what might happen along the way. And part of that work as a, on ourselves, as a team coach is about our own capacity to stay with that uncertainty. And that's about self work and, and our relationship with ourselves.

Allard [00:05:27]:
And that self work probably includes some reframing like you said. Same thing with, you know, when you think about life and you, you think, oh my God, things are so impermanent. You know, everything comes and, and then has an end. Everything is impermanent. And until you start to think about. Yeah, but you know, the why is that? Why is that not just a negative, but why is impermanence important? Because without impermanence there could be, there would be no change. For examp. Okay, that's a good reframe because now I can look at impermanence in a different way and at the same thing with this uncertainty, uncertainty that comes with this type of work.

Allard [00:06:04]:
It's, I think without uncertainty there's no possibility, you see. And so yeah, this is, this is, this is a, this is a kind of work that just revels in, in, in, in, in possibility and with possibility.

Georgina [00:06:23]:
When you talk about it like that and relate it to life and our mortality, what comes up for me is the cycle of life. And you say, you know, endings begets new beginnings. And uncertainty is a requisite precondition for discovery of new because we don't discover new by remaining certain about what's already known. So learning in itself is inherently uncertain. We're always trespassing in a way into uncertain territory. So increasing our capacity to go with that is really important. And that starts out with our attitude to how we approach team coaching. You know, many years ago Alla I, I bought a.

Georgina [00:07:24]:
A toolkit around a famous. What became a real, a real high, high fashion idea about teams. It was a fantastic book on teams. I really loved it. And about what gets in their way and how we transform teams.

Allard [00:07:40]:
I think I know the one you're talking about.

Georgina [00:07:42]:
Yeah. So I bought the toolkit in a box and it came, it came brilliantly with a CD with a slide deck already prepared in came with a facilitator's guide with timings for a half day, whole day, a one day workshop. And you know what, it even came with a script. So I was meant to memorize the script and use those words as I processed the team through this predetermined workshop. Yeah. Certainty gave me a high feeling of certainty and a high feeling of control. And yet, as I've had before when I've tried to exercise too much control over a situation, I had this feeling of going through the motions and the work not really touching the sides, not really making contact beyond some sort of cognitive idea, a model, not really making contact with what's here in the here and now.

Allard [00:08:48]:
I think you were way, way ahead of your time with this emergent and the value of that emergent approach and the value of being in contact with the here and now. And the value in a way of going beyond the script.

Georgina [00:09:07]:
Yeah. In an experimental way. Because back at the turn of the millennium there were no books on team coaching, there were no courses on team. I really wanted to work out was how to coach a team with a capital C as distinct from process a team through a workshop. And why? Because I find in one to one coaching the magic happens when we really follow the client's agenda and when we learn to deepen the conversation and to get to A point of more significance. And of course, now that's 20 years on, 25 years on that these ideas are being more understood and even researched. In fact, one of our alumni, Sebastian Fox, just completed a PhD looking into what has the greatest impact in team coaching and his research has shown what we've been talking about for the last 20 years really, is that, that the most significant impact happens during moments of mergence rather than starting out with a goal in mind.

Allard [00:10:20]:
Yeah. The piece of research is called Illuminating the Shadows. How team members and team coaches find coaching useful. Sebastian Fox, Beautiful piece of work. Because it, it, it confirms what, you know, what we've, what we've been, what we've been saying for the last few years and what you've discovered the hard way over the last decades.

Georgina [00:10:43]:
Yeah, well, what's been evident through practice and you know, in the studio of practice, we're called the team coaching studio because we really believe in the practitioner and mastering the art of team coaching. And it's really fascinating when it's backed up by science and research. So. So again, one of the other things that Seb talks about in his, his article is surfacing the elephants in the room. In our language, we talk about making the invisible visible. What's invisible may be an elephant, it may be a spider, you know, it may be something really big, maybe something very small, but very significant. So that if we're, if we're not dancing with uncertainty, if we're working to the team coaching methodology in a box with a script, and we've got half an hour for this exercise and then an hour for that exercise, there isn't much room for emergence. There isn't the kind of quality of space.

Allard [00:11:46]:
Yeah, there's not much room for. So you gains, you, you, you gain certainty, but you give up possibility.

Georgina [00:11:53]:
Yeah, I love how you put that. Yeah. Possibility of something more significant.

Allard [00:11:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Georgina [00:12:01]:
Really showing its face, being seen, becoming evident.

Allard [00:12:05]:
Yeah, yeah. So it's back to the question, I think that we, it's such a great, it's such a great question in, in, in the context of this work. It's like, what are you aware of? What are you aware of? And that starts off, that starts us off on this map, I call it a map, but you know, this, and it's known, of course in the field of gestalt as the cycle of experience. It starts with what are we aware of.

Georgina [00:12:37]:
Yeah. So the cycle of experience, as you say, is a map for helping us really navigate the territory of our exploration with a team of a team coaching journey. And we may sense that there's some work to do. And through getting into the field, as we've talked about before, through starting to encounter the team, awareness is raised for the coaches and for the team. Awareness of what, what are some of the things we might become aware.

Allard [00:13:12]:
I think of it as awareness of a need and a need that we, that we may not have been aware of 10 minutes ago, let alone, you know, a few weeks ago, but all of a sudden we're becoming aware in the faintest of ways or we're sensing, you know, we're sensing that there might be an, that we, that we, that there's a need that we need to fulfill. And that's how I think of the cycle of experience as a, as a journey of a need fulfilling kind of journey from beginning to end. And, and I think that's how ultimately that transformation, that the transformation in teams happens. It's, you know, identifying and fulfilling different needs that arise. Identifying. And, and once one need is fulfilled, then you know, the next one can appear and the next one and the next one. And those, those may be needs that we, that we knew of as we started, but it's more likely that we weren't even aware of some of those needs.

Georgina [00:14:13]:
Yeah, and those needs may be more tangible, more certain or more concrete. They may be more subjective and intangible. So for example, there may be a need for a team to clarify its vision or its purpose. Why are we a team? What's the added value of us being a team? And therefore what should we be spending our collective energy and time on and what should be handled by others in the organization? And that's a very tangible kind of conversation. There may be much deeper human needs. I don't feel I belong in this team. I feel like I'm on the outside, unable to find my way in. I don't know where the door is.

Georgina [00:15:05]:
I'm not even sure that the team want to let me in. These are very rarely spoken to in a team. So we're touching into some real sensitive needs.

Allard [00:15:18]:
Yes. And, and, and, and what's also becoming clear through what you're saying is that there are, there are individual cycles of experience, individual needs that, that want to be met.

Georgina [00:15:31]:
Yes.

Allard [00:15:31]:
And, and then of course, and there may be collective needs that want to be met. Team needs. But you're right about, you're so right to highlight the fact that individuals are sitting with their own needs. You know that that whole story about there's no I in team, it's rubbish. There's a lot of eyes in, in, in teams.

Georgina [00:15:48]:
Yeah.

Allard [00:15:48]:
And all that's happening at the same time.

Georgina [00:15:52]:
And if my needs, if none of my needs are met or if many of my needs are not met as an individual, a team, then I'm most likely just to find a way to survive or leave the team.

Allard [00:16:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or school through the motion.

Georgina [00:16:08]:
Go through the motions. Yeah. So it's how do we, how do we combine? I am we needs. How do we become aware of that in the moment? Other examples of needs that have come up lately in team coaching I've done a need for team members to look up beyond their functional identity to look up and speak to the corporate wide agenda. A need to give up some of their empire building in service of a wider whole that surfaced. A need to be clearer about what, what the corporate agenda is. You know, if I'm. If I'm not focusing on so much on my own department or function, what, what am I needing to focus on? A need to really have opportunities to slow down.

Georgina [00:17:05]:
You know, so many agendas are packed full. As you know, I work mainly with executive teams and a paradigm I find so often is the team meets and their agenda is structured into say 10 minute blocks of time and they'll have a Pre read of 100, 200 to 300 pages, often dropping into their inbox the night before of detail, detail, detail about different departments and functions and then they're meant to do big picture strategic thinking in that time window. So sometimes what presents the need to have different. For them to build different containers, different spaces where they can have different kinds of conversations.

Allard [00:17:54]:
Yeah, need. A need. A need for connection. A need to find more meaning in the work that we do.

Georgina [00:18:00]:
A need for resilience. We're getting burnt out here. Yeah, that's come up quite a bit recently as well. A need to listen to each other.

Allard [00:18:15]:
And so it's the awareness around those, the first maybe very faint and then. And then more well defined awareness around those needs as they arise. And I think that's where the work of the team coach starts. Right. It's about bringing that to the attention of the team if the team is not already aware of it. And yeah, it's like so what are we aware of? I'm well aware, aware of the fact that there seems to be a figure arising here around a particular need. Yeah, yeah.

Georgina [00:18:54]:
Yeah. And then, and then the team's energy mobilizes around it. So the, the team, I gave an example in the previous episode of they. They became aware of their lack of having a collective purpose as a team, not by something I brought in, but brought in by a team member. Energy rose around that. They went, yeah, we see it. That would be so useful. That would help me shift my focus to contributing more at the executive level.

Georgina [00:19:24]:
So then they mobilized. They said, well, let's spend some time talking about that. And the next session they spent an hour talking about their purpose. They mobilized and that became an action, a way of satisfying that need.

Allard [00:19:42]:
Yeah, action towards satisfying the need. Yeah, yeah.

Georgina [00:19:45]:
So they get into action when the need's satisfied or not. You know, that's what we call the point of contact is when the need is satisfied. So that's always a really important checkpoint and there may be a lot of learning around there. You know, is it, is it falling flat? Are we getting somewhere? We're not getting somewhere. This is how the team learns to build their capability together. Lots of opportunity for experimentation in there.

Allard [00:20:17]:
Yeah, because it's not just about meeting the need. Right. It's then about unpacking that and do some. And making. Integrating. Integrating it and making some. Making some collect. Helping the team make some collective meaning around the whole experience.

Allard [00:20:33]:
So, so that, that, so that, that, that very important figure can then kind of withdraw into the. Can disappear into the background again and make space for. For something else.

Georgina [00:20:45]:
Yes, exactly. Integrating it so that it doesn't just disappear and evaporate, but holding it enough that it becomes part of then the. A new part of the team's norms, a new part of their lived experience.

Allard [00:21:01]:
Yeah, yeah. And it's so interesting because I see so many teams, especially in the corporate world, stuck at just a couple of stages of that whole cycle of experience. That stage of, you know, action and then, and then completing action and completing action and completing. But without. And, but that's just the middle part, so to speak, of that whole cycle of experience. There's very little awareness around what we're doing or why we're doing it, or could we be doing it differently. And then there's very little space for the lack the latter part of the whole cycle of experience. Which, which is.

Allard [00:21:36]:
Which is about unpacking and learning and integrating.

Georgina [00:21:39]:
Yes. And many of what you. Of the task they'll be focused on when they're in action is focused on getting stuff done. It's not needs around learning how we get stuff done. So it's an action orientation and not a learning orientation, not a capacity building orientation. And these ideas are often new to a team. So where we put our attention as a coach matters. If we're putting our attention when we're working with the team onto the content and in qu asking questions about the content, reflecting back observations about the content, summarizing back what we've heard different team members say, then the learning's likely to stay at the content or the output is likely to stay at the content level.

Georgina [00:22:40]:
The action will be around the content. But we have a choice to shift our lens more to awareness of process. For example, in the last episode, we talked about contact. So how as you're going about talking about your team purpose, how effectively are you staying in contact with each other? What are you noticing about your energy? So the learning can happen at many levels. What are you noticing about the dynamics? Who's in or who's on, who's off, who's in the conversation? Who are you curious about? Who might have withdrawn or checked out?

Allard [00:23:26]:
Yeah, it. This whole, these last few minutes of the conversation really remind me of a big, really an important difference between the, this type of coaching, team coaching, the emergent, Emergent kind of approach, and where maybe more traditional ways of team coaching and how they, how they, how they understand the notion of how change happens so differently. Because I think the traditional methodology says, well, change happens because we set, you know, it's the grow model. We set a goal up front and then we take steps towards meeting that goal. And that's how, how change happened. And, and I think that's, and honestly, maybe like other people listening to this, but that's where I was for a long, long time, you know, until. And I kept running into problems with teams because if you ask, if you ask an individual, so, you know, what is it that you want right now? What's your goal for this session? That's such a typical, you know, team coaching question, isn't it, that we all had drilled into us. What do you want to achieve in the next 30, 60 minutes? It's one thing to ask that of one person, but when, you know, if you sit down with a team of 10 people and ask that question, you're likely to get 10 different questions back, 10 different answers.

Allard [00:24:41]:
You get answers and possibly more questions back. So, yeah, so it, and that's, that's, that doesn't set you up for, I think, for a really successful kind of conversation. But the emergent approach of saying, you know, okay, well, the content of the conversation is not so important at this point. Just have a conversation and then it doesn't matter where we start, but because eventually awareness around specific needs is going to arise. As long as we as Long as we're on the lookout for them and as long as we're making contact with.

Georgina [00:25:13]:
With what's happening, they can't not arise. Because as soon as there's a human system, we have patterns. We have patterns of interaction.

Allard [00:25:25]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:25:26]:
And there's, there's so much data there that we can become aware of, that we don't, we don't need to import other tools from the outside to generate that awareness. It's there. Colleagues listening can practice this at home, around the dinner table. Who speaks the most? What do they speak about? Who's quietest? What's the interaction between them? Do people ask questions of each other? Are they curious? Are they deeply curious? Are we in contact with each other? Are we listening? Are we responding?

Allard [00:26:09]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:26:09]:
How's the flow of that interchange happening?

Allard [00:26:12]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:26:13]:
What's the, what are we focused on our conversations? Are we.

Allard [00:26:16]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:26:16]:
Are we focused on the everyday minutiae of life? Are we talking about politics? We talk about big world philosophy?

Allard [00:26:23]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:26:23]:
Not to judge any of that, but to heighten our awareness of our, of our patterns in order to see if they're supporting us in, in the team sense, being the best version of a team we can be.

Allard [00:26:38]:
Yeah. Because all of those, all of those, all of those phenomena that you just highlighted, maybe pointers towards developmental needs in the team. Maybe not all of them. They may not all be significant. They may not all of them carry enough collective energy to see it through a whole cycle of experience. It may get stuck at one point because, you know, there's a bit of mobilization, but we never get really to taking action because there just wasn't enough thrust behind it. But eventually you're right, you're going to, there, there's going to be that one thing that enough people rally behind and go, yeah, that's important to us right here, right now.

Georgina [00:27:20]:
That's something that we, yeah. That we really need to focus on, develop our capacity around. Absolutely.

Allard [00:27:25]:
Yeah.

Georgina [00:27:26]:
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, in, in the next episode we'll, we'll talk a bit more about this, about working emergently and, and the meta skills is a technology for change. But for now, have a great afternoon, evening, morning, wherever you are, and we look forward to seeing you next time.

Allard [00:27:47]:
And have fun observing people at the dinner table or wherever, wherever it is that you are. And not so much not observing the content, but the, the way they, the way they, the way they relate together and, and see if that gives you an inkling about what, what, what possible figures and might, might might be worth delving into if you were to work with them. Yeah. See you all very soon.

Georgina [00:28:15]:
See you soon.

Allard [00:28:23]:
Thanks for joining today's journey of teams transformed.

Georgina [00:28:26]:
If this sparked a new insight or a deeper question, we invite you to sit with it. Not to solve it, but to let it unfold.

Allard [00:28:35]:
For resources, community and reflection prompts, visit teamcoachingstudio.com until the next time, stay present.

Georgina [00:28:44]:
Stay curious, and keep leaning into the art of emergence.