Coaching Teams with Causal Loop Diagrams

When coaching teams the emerging complexity can be daunting and overwhelming. Have you struggled to plan a coaching strategy to help them? As coaches, we listen intensely. We listen to various team members and stakeholders: all those conflicting views, interdependent influences, a web of emotions, behaviors and miscommunications…can be too much. Sometimes, we just stand in front of all that information and wonder – where do I begin?

What I found immensely helpful when coaching teams in these situations is visualizing these dynamics with causal loop diagrams. Simply put, visualizing helps us deal with information complexity – making it easier to identify a coaching strategy or focus. It can help our teams too – in understanding how they influence each other and make the team function as it does. Or help an individual in understanding how his behavior, beliefs and goals interact with each other and how to break an unwanted behavior to get to the desired outcome.

I would love to share with you what causal loop diagrams are and how to use them in coaching. We will share stories, look at an example, and build causal loop diagrams together. After the session, you will have another tool at your coaching belt that makes creating a coaching strategy a little easier in very complex situations.