The Engagement Session: Building Trust from Day One
With Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong
Episode 23 of the Teams Transformed Podcast
About Teams Transformed
Teams Transformed is the podcast for courageous coaches, curious leaders, and anyone passionate about unlocking the true power of teams. Hosted by TCS Founder and Senior Faculty Georgina Woudstra and Allard De Jong, listen to explore transformational insights on how to coach teams with presence, depth, and emergence, diving into not just the tools, but the art of team coaching itself.
This episode
In this episode of Teams Transformed, Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong continue their podcast series, Where Teams Come Alive, inviting listeners behind the scenes of a real-world team coaching journey. Picking up from their initial stakeholder contracting with HR sponsor Sarah, they step directly into the debrief of their very first live contact with the client system: a 90-minute engagement session with the senior executive team at ACME Inc.
In this episode, we peel back the layers of this initial touchpoint - the engagement session - showing how a system starts to reveal its true nature from the moment the coaches enter the room. For coaches accustomed to one-to-one settings, this session operates like a systemic chemistry meeting, offering a vital baseline to track what the team feels like and determine if the coaching approach is a genuine fit.
The conversation moves deeply into the mechanics of co-coaching dynamics, the deployment of light diagnostic tools, and the integration of one-to-one coaching designed strictly in service of the collective system. About our guests
Key Themes Explored in this episode
In this Episode, Georgina and Allard reflect on what was noticed more than on what was said
The Engagement Session as a Chemistry Meeting
Georgina and Allard reflect on how the engagement session was an essential threshold to experience the team as a single living system, allowing them to test alignment and establish a fit before executing active interventions.
The System Unconsciously Broadcasts Its Reality
A 90 minute slot becoming a 75 minute sessions revealed more about team dynamics than any briefing document could.
Presence and Full Inclusion Signal Readiness
Georgina and Allard reflect on the positive indicator that arrived in the room: full presence
Defendedness vs. Spontaneous Openness
While healthy teams frequently lead with stories of structural strength, the ACME Inc. executives demonstrated immediate vulnerability by explicitly naming their primary behavioral block: an ongoing pattern of conflict avoidance.
External Pressures Fuel the Need for Alignment
The hosts discuss how ACME's wider industrial context marked by high-growth phases, industry mergers, and the dual existential threat and opportunity of AI demands a rapid shift away from organisational silos toward true collective alignment. How can the team coach support the team at working at pace?
Navigating Top-Down Power Dynamics
Georgina and Allard noticed these dynamics at play but acknowledged in their reflection how the coaching container is not yet strong enough to safely hold dissenting opinions or open conflict.
Managing the Expert Trap and Performance Pressure
Both coaches reflect on the internal pressure they felt to step into an "expert" role when invited by the team to define what "good looks like." They model how they caught themselves deploying academic frameworks like Katzenbach and Smith to establish credibility.
Shattering the Guru Dynamic Through Co-Coaching
By intentionally shifting who initiated the corporate presentation, the hosts signaled absolute equality right from the start, actively disrupting the unhelpful "one guru and one briefcase holder" stereotype.
Key Takeaways
🔍 The engagement session is a vital diagnostic threshold to meet the team as a whole system rather than a collection of separate leaders.
⏱️ Logistical patterns like lateness and hurried agendas are live data, directly mirroring the operational realities and cultural pressures of the client.
🧠 A team's willingness to label their own conflict avoidance early is a significant milestone, proving the coaching container is secure enough to begin transformational work.
📊 Lightweight diagnostic tools like the "Team Selfie" offer structure, giving data-driven teams a clear method to measure progress and track ROI without constraining emergent coaching.
👥 Individual coaching must always serve the collective system, aligned intentionally to support the team’s overall journey toward operating as "one team."
🤝 Co-coaches must actively model systemic equality, consciously tracking how their internal balance of power impacts the client's internal hierarchies and leadership dynamics.
Why listen?
This episode offers a rare opportunity to observe the critical initial threshold of a team coaching engagement, demonstrating how a client system broadcasts its true nature from the very first interaction. Hosts Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong explore how to resist the "expert trap," navigate power dynamics, and co-coach with absolute systemic equality, modeling the art of building a secure container where transformational work can begin.
About your hosts
Georgina Woudstra is the Founder and Senior Faculty of Team Coaching Studio, an ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC) with over 20 years of experience. Georgina is recognised globally as one of the leading lights in team coaching and was among the first coaches to receive ICF's Advanced Certificate in Team Coaching.
Allard De Jong is a seasoned leadership development expert with two decades of experience solving organisational 'people problems' and accelerating leadership development. He brings a unique perspective on transformative inquiry and divergent thinking to team coaching practice.
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