The First Clues when Coaching a Team: The journey starts here

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With Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong

Episode 22 of the Teams Transformed Podcast

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.

About this Episode

In this episode of Teams Transformed, Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong launch a new podcast series, Where Teams Come Alive, inviting listeners behind the scenes of a real-world team coaching journey from its very first point of contact.

Rather than presenting a polished case study or a predetermined roadmap, Georgina and Allard introduce the complexity, uncertainty, and emergence that characterise authentic team coaching work. Through the lens of a fictional yet highly representative executive team called ACME Inc., they begin exploring how a coaching engagement unfolds long before coaches ever enter the room with a team.

The episode centres on an initial conversation with Sarah, ACME’s HR sponsor, who reaches out seeking support for the organisation’s senior leadership team. Her request sounds familiar to many coaches: the team wants to become “one team” and operate more cohesively. Yet as Georgina and Allard reflect on the conversation, they uncover how seemingly simple requests often conceal deeper questions, assumptions, and systemic dynamics.

Together, they model the practice of debriefing after an initial client meeting, demonstrating how experienced team coaches gather data not only from what is said, but from tone, timing, language, emotions, and even seemingly minor details such as hurried emails or references to past team development activities. Through their conversation, listeners gain insight into how coaches make meaning from early signals within a system and begin forming hypotheses without rushing to conclusions.

Georgina and Allard also explore the tension between clients’ desire for certainty and structure and the reality of emergent team coaching. While sponsors often seek clear diagnoses, frameworks, and solutions, the hosts discuss the importance of remaining curious and responsive to what reveals itself over time rather than prematurely defining the work.

Throughout the episode, they reflect on their own internal responses to the engagement, acknowledging feelings of pressure, expectations to demonstrate expertise, and the subtle influence that client dynamics can have on coaches themselves. Their openness provides a valuable reminder that team coaching is not only about observing teams but also about observing ourselves as practitioners.

This opening chapter establishes the foundation for the series by showing that team coaching begins long before the first intervention. Every interaction offers data, every conversation shapes understanding, and every journey unfolds uniquely as teams gradually come alive through the coaching process.

About our guests

Georgina Woudstra

Georgina Woudstra has been at the forefront of team coaching since the early 1990s, when she recognised that teams, rather than individual leaders, are the key to sustainable organisational transformation.

Her work is grounded in the belief that traditional facilitation alone cannot create lasting change. Instead, meaningful transformation emerges when coaches learn to work with teams in real time, especially in moments of tension, uncertainty, and complexity.

After years of refining her approach as an internal team coach, Georgina founded Team Coaching Studio in 2017 to support coaches in developing the mindset, skills, and presence needed for emergent team coaching practice.

In 2022, she became one of the first coaches globally to earn the ICF’s Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC). She is also the author of Mastering the Art of Team Coaching and has built a global community dedicated to advancing the practice of team coaching worldwide.

Before entering the coaching profession, Georgina founded and led several innovative businesses, giving her firsthand understanding of both the rewards and challenges of leadership and entrepreneurship.

Allard de Jong

Allard de Jong began his career in advertising and marketing, leading global campaigns for brands including Ford, Holiday Inn, and Jeep.

During this time, he discovered that his true passion lay not in helping products succeed, but in helping people unlock their potential.

His transition into professional coaching led him into intensive study and a leadership role as Director of Training for CoachVille in Spain. Since 2001, Allard has coached and trained executives across major international organisations including McDonald's, Philip Morris, Airbus, Warner Bros., and Procter & Gamble.

His work focuses primarily on leadership development and emotional intelligence, helping leaders move beyond technical capability toward deeper self-awareness, connection, and impact.

Having worked across five continents, Allard brings a deeply cross-cultural perspective to coaching and leadership development. His philosophy is rooted in the belief that every person holds noble and positive potential, and that organisations can become powerful forces for positive change in the world.

Key Themes Explored

Team Coaching Begins Before Meeting the Team

The hosts emphasise that valuable information emerges from the very first email, phone call, or sponsor conversation. Every interaction contains clues about the wider system, its culture, its pressures, and its assumptions.

“One Team” Needs Deeper Exploration

Sarah’s request for a more cohesive leadership team sounds straightforward, but Georgina and Allard highlight how terms like “one team” often mean different things to different stakeholders and require careful inquiry rather than immediate solutions.

Data Exists Everywhere

The conversation demonstrates how experienced coaches gather information from multiple sources, including language, emotions, organisational patterns, timing, sponsor behaviour, and their own internal reactions.

The Sponsor Is Part of the System

Sarah’s eagerness to get the engagement right, her references to the CEO, and her focus on credibility all provide insight into the organisational dynamics influencing the team and its leaders.

Structure and Emergence Must Be Balanced

The hosts reflect on the challenge of introducing emergent team coaching to clients who may be seeking diagnostic models, assessments, and predefined solutions. Effective coaching requires meeting clients where they are while remaining open to discovery.

Coaches Must Monitor Their Own Reactions

Georgina and Allard openly discuss feelings of pressure, performance anxiety, and the desire to appear knowledgeable. They illustrate how self-awareness helps coaches avoid unconsciously reinforcing unhelpful dynamics.

Parallel Process Offers Valuable Insight

The hosts explore whether the pressure they feel may reflect pressure experienced by Sarah herself, demonstrating how coaches can gain information about a system through their own emotional responses.

Team Coaching Requires Partnership

The episode highlights the importance of the coaching relationship itself. Georgina and Allard discuss intentionally showing up as equal partners rather than allowing organisational assumptions to position one coach as more important than the other.

Curiosity Creates Better Questions

Rather than rushing toward interventions, the coaches remain focused on understanding the team’s reality. Questions become more important than answers during the early stages of engagement.

Every Journey Unfolds Differently

The episode reinforces the central premise of the series: there is no universal team coaching journey. Each engagement develops according to the unique needs, relationships, and circumstances of the system.

Key Takeaways

🔍 Team coaching begins with the very first contact, not the first workshop.

💬 Requests for a “more cohesive team” often require deeper exploration.

🧠 Coaches gather data from conversations, behaviours, emotions, and context.

🌱 Emergent coaching means staying open to what unfolds rather than forcing solutions.

⚖️ Structure and flexibility must coexist throughout the coaching journey.

👂 Sponsors provide valuable information about the wider organisational system.

🪞 Coaches’ internal reactions can reveal important systemic dynamics.

🤝 Strong coaching partnerships model the collaboration teams themselves need.

❓ Powerful questions often matter more than immediate answers.

✨ Every team coaching engagement follows its own unique path.

Why listen?

This episode offers a rare opportunity to observe the earliest stages of a team coaching engagement and understand how experienced practitioners make sense of what they encounter before any formal intervention begins.

Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong provide an honest, reflective, and practical exploration of how coaches gather data, navigate ambiguity, and balance client expectations with an emergent approach to transformation. Rather than presenting certainty, they demonstrate the value of curiosity, reflection, and thoughtful inquiry.

Listeners will gain insight into the often invisible work that takes place behind the scenes of team coaching, including sponsor conversations, contracting considerations, systemic observation, and coach self-awareness. The episode also highlights the importance of resisting quick fixes and allowing understanding to develop gradually over time.

Whether you are a team coach, leadership coach, organisational consultant, facilitator, HR professional, or leader interested in systemic transformation, this episode provides a valuable introduction to the realities of team coaching and the art of helping teams come alive together.

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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Teams Transformed is brought to you by Team Coaching Studio - dedicated to advancing the field of team coaching through world-class education, certification, practice, connection and community.

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Where Teams Come Alive: Introducing series 3 of the Teams Transformed podcast