Luis Carchak: "You don’t have to be inside the team to operate with it".

We interviewed Luis Carchak, author of the book "Coaching teams in practice".

Team management is an area of work that is as complex as it is changing; the way in which it is possible to organize, energize and supervise teams and departments is very sensitive to the social, cultural and economic transformations that are constantly taking place. That is why practical experience is essential to succeed in this field.

Today we interviewed someone who for years has been able to understand for himself the logics that govern team management, and who incorporates this theoretical and practical knowledge into his work with companies and coaches. We are talking about Luis Carchak, who recently published the book "Coaching teams in practice"..

Interview with Luis Carchak, author of "Team Coaching for Practice".

Luis Carchak is Executive Coach MCC at Escuela Europea de Coaching and Director of the Team Coaching Program, as well as author of the book "Team Coaching in Practice". Throughout this interview he talks to us about the ideas that have been captured in this book.

How did the idea of writing "Team Coaching in Practice" come up?

Throughout my professional life, I have sought to unite action (from my beginnings in the world of physical education and sport) with research (I have a degree in Sociology) to put both fields at the service of organizations.

In team coaching, it has allowed me to integrate these two aspects, action and research, as well as to gather the sensitivity of the Latin look of emotions and the rigor of European companies when looking at the results.

I have been able to share, on both sides of the Atlantic, learnings and strengths among the organizations and teams I have accompanied, and to train team coaches at Escuela Europea de Coaching.

There is one more variable that explains how the book arises and that is my membership of ICF, from whose rigorous ontological framework I have done all my work, helping the expansion and institutionalization of executive coaching from its beginnings as part of the team founded by ICF in Spain.

I try to convey the idea that "experience is not what we do, but what we learn from what we do".

What do you think is the philosophy of team coaching that you capture in the pages of this book?

It is about accompanying teams in common situations so that they become cohesive and functional. I have matured the craftsmanship to interact with the team while it continues to operate and that it can set its rules and define its north, and the leader, make decisions, define the agenda and set certain rituals of feedback and feedback.

These lessons are born from the dynamic interaction between practice and theory, from having enriched my distinctions as a team coach from authors such as Segne, Lencioni, Cardon, Nardone, Robertston, Shelman, Hamel, Espinal, Rosenberg, Taleb, Leloux...

As a coach, what are the main lessons you have learned from your experience in the field of team coaching that you think you would not have internalized if you had limited yourself to studying theory?

My intention has been to show an alternative, a concrete process for teams to find agile answers and achieve results while avoiding getting bogged down in old unproductive beliefs; to offer a proposal to limit the suffering of dysfunctional conversations. For me, craftsmanship is about making conversations happen, flow and be completed without the emotional tears that are so common in organizations.

I have sought to reflect a framework of distinctions to broaden the view of the team as a complex system. I also hope to give an understanding of how to structure a team coaching process and, of course, with which crafts to do it.

What are the main myths about team management that you think your book helps to leave behind?

The first myth is that you have to be inside the team to operate with it. The team coach is outside the system most of the time observing the system. Of course, a system just by the fact of being observed is modifying itself and trying to show the best version of itself. Team coaching brings a minimum of interaction and demystifies the myth of intervention, where the one who intervenes attributes to himself a power and an ability to decide over the one who does not have that power.

Among the moments in which the coach does work and interact within the team, the ritual that the team coach generates so that in the last minutes of the meetings he accompanies, a conversation about how the team has conversed is moderated, a space where the coach's interaction is at the service of the team reflecting on how to convert its productive forms of action and discard those that were unproductive.

In team coaching, the team always has absolute sovereignty over its work, one hundred percent decision-making power. The team coach breaks the myth of guiding and opens the way to accompanying.

And the great myth that team coaching destroys is that the most absurd thing in teams is to play at being right. In complex and multidisciplinary teams, the great challenge is to play at agreeing, not at being right. But then, the whole practice of the one who accompanies the team to understand this distinction, this new way of relating to produce new results from diversity, will be the first to give up being right, the team coach is vulnerable and works from the questions and not from the answers.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens. The different forms of interaction between social sciences and teams have been based on knowledge. Team coaching works from the question, from the long road to wisdom.

Over the more than two decades that you have been working as a team coach, how have the dynamics of work in companies changed?

Our environment is changing rapidly, driven mainly by digital technologies and globalization, which means that what used to work in companies no longer makes sense and is no longer effective. And leadership is a substantial part of this process. We have seen an evolution towards smarter teams and smarter leadership.

Nowadays we talk a lot about "agile" methodologies that work so that the north-oriented system is the one that pulls. That is, with a minimum of management structure, the organization ensures that it is the commitment that gives it traction.

In terms of leadership, we no longer think of the leader as an isolated individual; he is part of the system, it is a function, and that is to be at the service of the team, the system, to achieve its purposes. The leader points out the what and gives the how, and strives to make things happen, even if he never has all the budgets he needs or all the people he would like. In short, the leader generates the emotional context to make things happen. The team coach assists in that work.

What kind of readers is the book designed for?

Although the book is called "Team Coaching in Practice" and is designed to nurture new tools, distinctions and methodologies to team coaches, with this same methodology from Escuela Europea de Coaching we train leaders for their best work within teams and, of course, is the way we train teams to be cohesive, efficient and assertive.

So if you're a team member, if you're a team leader or you supervise teams, and also if you're a team coach, it will work for you. And if you are an executive coach who wants to start testing the virtues and results of team coaching, it will certainly help you to change the way you observe, because you will stop observing by focusing on individuals to focus on the team as a system.

"Team Coaching in Practice" is how we train to sustain in teams the capital of connection, empathy and trust they need to produce results.