Coaching Pairs
helping each other grow as leaders
Teams sharing
responsibility for developing each other as leaders
Hello, my name is Pete Ashby and WELCOME to Coaching Pairs!
For most of my working life I have worked with leadership teams as a facilitator, supporting them with developing strategies for going "from good to great".
Ever since lockdown came to an end in 2021, and I started facilitating in-person meetings with teams again, I have been struck by how so many of them have become distinctly fragmented in the ways in which they work.
A good number of CEOs like to argue that hybrid working hasn't had any negative impact on their leadership team and all is fine and dandy!
In reality, my experience has been that hybrid working has made many leaders less accommodating towards the needs of others, more rigid about what they will and won't do and noticeably more jaded about the merits of cross-organisation working.
So I believe that it is now more important than ever for leadership teams to look at what they can do to strengthen cross team working and create a more unified leadership culture.
This is why I set up Coaching Pairs earlier this year, to support leadership teams in taking responsibility for helping each other grow as leaders, through coaching each other in pairs, with new pairs every six months.
Coaching Pairs offer teams a way of building your own capacity for developing yourselves, and keeping on doing so in a way that's self-sustaining.
Below I explain how Coaching Pairs should help with strengthening cross-functional working, that is so crucial to top teams delivering your top strategy priorities.
Then the next page explains how to go about setting up Coaching Pairs, so that they become part of your strategy for creating a higher trust and higher performing leadership team.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this website, please get in touch. My contact details are in the footer below.
Many thanks.
September 2024
The key: stronger cross-functional
loyalties
In so many teams, our natural tendency is to reserve our primary loyalties for those colleagues with whom we share functional responsibilities.
It is this link between loyalties and functions that has led to the strength of silos in many organisations, and all of the resulting "turf wars".
Coaching Pairs are designed to help counteract the negative influences of silos, through building stronger loyalties ACROSS the wider organisation.
To a large degree, this idea of Coaching Pairs has its roots in my experience facilitating all sorts of Executive Team Awaydays and listening to CEOs complain that they are NOT achieving the drive and focus they need to deliver their top strategic priorities.
Through these discussions we have seen how it's at the cross-functional level where vital initiatives are falling down some of the gaps between different teams. it is these gaps that result in so many leadership initiatives losing their clarity and edge over time.
Coaching Pairs offer you an opportunity to build bridges with peers across your wider leadership team.
They enable you to pair up with colleagues from functions that you have little to do with on a day-to-day basis.
The more you each invest in these relationships, the greater your chance of developing a culture where there's "no more them and us".
Developing a culture in which "there is only us" is essential if your whole leadership team really is to share responsibility for delivering your top strategic priorities.
From trust to accountability:
the six elements of working
together in Coaching Pairs
On the next page we set out the key steps involved in establishing Coaching Pairs, together with the six elements involved in working together in Coaching Pairs.
It is these elements - trusting each other, championing each other, empowering each other, challenging ourselves, questioning each other and sharing accountability - that have the power to bring leadership and coaching together as one.
An idea worth spreading!
As we develop the resources on this website, we will remain firm in our commitment that there should be no paywalls and subscription schemes.
This is because we believe that Coaching Pairs are an "idea worth spreading".
They could do so much to help create team cultures that combine self-challenge and cross-team support in ways that are genuinely developmental for everyone involved.
So, if you have a colleague in another organisation where you think Coaching Pairs could fit in well, please share the link - and ask them to let us know (email below) if they go for the idea.