Embracing the Unexpected: The Key to Breakthrough Results
In the world of professional coaching, we often cling to structure, frameworks, and well-worn methodologies. But what if the most powerful coaching happens when we have the courage to step into uncertainty and work emergently with our clients? This approach requires bravery, presence, and a willingness to trust the process, even when the destination isn’t clear.
The Trap of Traditional Team Development
For decades, team development has followed a predictable pattern. This classic approach involves administering “the latest team assessment that always promises to be the best in the world,” measuring the team against some idealised standard, identifying gaps, and running workshops to close those gaps.
This formulaic approach might look something like:
“This team shows they’re low on trust? Let’s do a workshop on trust. Let’s teach them what trust means, perhaps using a well known model, run some exercises, and check the box.”
While these workshops can deliver valuable content, they rarely create lasting change in team dynamics. Yet organisations continue this cycle, constantly “wheeling out the newest, latest tool or toolkit” in hopes of different results.
Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short
The fundamental problem isn’t with the assessment tools or conceptual frameworks themselves; many are well-researched and insightful. The issue lies with our approach to change.
When we take teams away for off-site workshops, we’re removing them from their actual working context. We’re discussing behaviours they should implement when they return to their high-pressure environments, but research shows less than 10% of training transfers from classroom to workplace.
This disconnect happens because our behaviors are deeply embedded in our contexts. A participant might practice effective communication styles during a workshop on personality preferences, but back at work, facing budget cuts and departmental competition, those lessons quickly evaporate under pressure.
The Alternative: Emergent Coaching
Working emergently as a coach means letting go of rigid plans and predetermined outcomes. Instead of imposing a structure, you create the conditions where growth and learning can emerge organically within the team’s actual working environment.
This approach requires:
- Presence: Being fully attentive to what’s actually happening in the room, not what your model says should be happening
- Patience: Understanding that meaningful change unfolds over time, not in workshop increments
- Courage: Trusting yourself to navigate uncertainty without the safety net of prescribed exercises
- Contextual awareness: Working with teams in their real environments, where behaviours are embedded
The Time Commitment Reality
Transformational team development isn’t a quick fix: If you’re going on a transformational journey with a senior team… you’re really looking at a journey of a year or two years.
This timeline makes sense when we consider how long individual coaching takes to create meaningful change.
Now multiply that by the complexity of team dynamics, organisational challenges, and logistical hurdles of bringing everyone together consistently. Real transformation requires “commitment to a learning journey together over time.” It benefits from engaging a team coach to support the team in that transformation for the long term
Principles for Embracing the Unexpected
To embrace the unexpected in your coaching practice:
Stay curious instead of certain. Approach each situation with genuine curiosity rather than assuming you know what’s needed. Questions like “What’s actually happening here?” and “What does this team uniquely need?” open more possibilities than “Which model should I apply?”
Work with what emerges. When unexpected tensions, insights, or dynamics arise during coaching, treat them as valuable information rather than distractions from your plan. Often the most important work happens when you follow these emergent threads.
Build muscle for discomfort. Both you and your clients need to develop tolerance for the discomfort of not knowing what comes next. This skill, staying present and engaged during uncertainty, is precisely what teams need in today’s volatile business environment.
Prioritize context over content. Rather than focusing exclusively on delivering content (models, frameworks, concepts), pay close attention to the context in which learning happens. How can you create conditions where learning transfers to the workplace?
Extend the timeline. Replace the “workshop fix” mentality with a longer developmental journey. Set proper expectations with clients about realistic timeframes for transformational change.
The Courage to Begin
Emergent coaching requires more from both coach and client. For coaches, it demands that we release the safety of prescribed methods and trust our ability to navigate complexity. For clients, it asks for commitment to a longer, less predictable journey than the quick fix promised by traditional approaches.
But the rewards are substantial: teams that genuinely transform rather than temporarily perform, and sustainable changes that emerge from within rather than being imposed from without.
The most effective coaches know when to reference models and when to set them aside, when to rely on structure and when to embrace the unexpected. In that balance lies the art of transformative coaching.
As we move forward in this profession, may we find the courage to work more emergently, trusting that what unfolds in the moment, while uncertain, often contains precisely what our clients need.
Ready to find your courage? Join Georgina Woudstra where she delivers the only Diploma in Emergent Team Coaching.
