4 Lessons I Have Learned As a Team Building Success Coach

By Larry Lipman

As a Team Building Success Coach, I have learned 4 valuable lessons in the art of Team Building.

The first is that I cannot change people. The only person I can change is myself. Knowing this has stopped me from wasting my time and energy on family, friends, and clients!

Instead, I help create positive change in people’s behavior using the art of “awareness coaching” --

Lesson 2:
When debriefing activities, I ask specific questions that help participants become more aware of their actions, behavior, and attitude. “Why did you do this, what was your experience, how can you improve that, what would you do differently?” As they come up with their own answers, they choose to stay the same or change. It is their choice.

Awareness is the key to all 4 lessons. Most of us live our lives acting and reacting unconsciously until our behaviors become a pattern. Pattern is the enemy of change. Awareness breaks this pattern. I have learned that discovering new ways of looking at things will prompt behavioral change. Awareness is the pattern interrupt that creates change.

Lesson 3 in the art of Team Building is facilitating activities that kick out these needs:

* Need to be right

* Need to look good in front of others

* Need to be perfect

* Need to protect our egos

* Need to judge

By authenticating a day with as few of these needs as possible, I find that participants engage, take risks, share, cooperate, and learn more about themselves and others. These are the ingredients of awareness coaching.

Lesson 4 is pausing --- taking time to reflect. We don’t take time to do that.

Giving participants some quiet time is key. Getting lost in our own minds and listening to our inner voice is what awareness is all about. This valuable time anchors the learning and yields the outcomes for which I was hired in the first place.