The three metaskills: a technology for change
The skills that form the foundation of emergent team coaching
Episode 6 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 the sixth episode of Teams Transformed, Georgina and Allard explore what they call "a technology for change". This is the three meta skills that form the foundation of emergent team coaching. They reveal how presence, use of self, and active experiments work together as higher-order competencies that enable coaches to navigate uncertainty and create transformational moments in team coaching.
Through personal stories and practical examples, they demonstrate why these skills are "meta" - elevated competencies that make other coaching tools effective. They explain why they represent a technology that's always available, even when traditional methods fail.
Key Themes Explored
Meta Skills vs. Coaching Skills
Georgina explains how the three meta skills developed from the Team Coaching Studio competency framework. While traditional coaching competencies like active listening and powerful questioning are essential, these three higher-order competencies "weave magic in the moment for emergent team coaching." They represent elevated skills that must be embedded deeply in coaches' practice to invite learning at a collective level.
Presence: The Being Intervention
Presence goes beyond simply being present: it's an intentional way of being that serves as an intervention itself. Georgina shares her journey from showing up with contained energy and a "poker face" to developing capacity for fluidity, lightness, and provocation. Allard recalls being told he "lacked gravitas" and learning to flex his presence muscle depending on the team and situation. The hosts emphasise that presence creates psychological safety and determines whether interventions land. The same powerful question can sound like an attack or an invitation depending on the presence behind it.
Use of Self: Three Modes of Awareness
Use of self involves utilising the whole experience - what's happening externally and internally - as data to raise team awareness. The hosts describe three modes:
- Mode One: Structuring and facilitating (giving instructions, directing process)
- Mode Two: The helicopter/balcony view (observing patterns, seeing the dance between team members rather than individual moves)
- Mode Three: The submarine position (sensing internally, noticing bodily sensations and feelings)
Georgina shares a powerful story where a language barrier forced her to rely entirely on mode three, demonstrating how sensing and feeling provide extraordinary data when other channels are unavailable.
Active Experiments: From Awareness to Action
Active experiments translate newfound awareness into action and interaction. Rather than teaching predetermined methods, coaches invite teams to co-create experiments in the moment. Georgina offers an example of a team stuck in circular conversation: instead of providing a decision-making framework, she might invite them to "develop a process between yourselves for how you're going to conclude this." The experimental nature means ownership increases dramatically because it's the team's creation, and learning happens regardless of whether the experiment "works."
A Real-World Integration
Georgina shares a recent coaching story that brings all three meta skills together. A team member volunteering to facilitate found her interventions completely ignored. Through inquiry, the coaches discovered it wasn't what she said but how she said it - her hesitant presence made it easy to sweep aside. The experiment: "Say it like you mean it, even if you come on too strong." This micro-experiment emerged uniquely from the phenomena in the room and couldn't have been predicted or scripted.
Key takeaways
🎯 Higher-Order Competencies: Meta skills are elevated skills that make other coaching tools effective.
🧭 Always Available: Unlike models and frameworks that can fail, presence, use of self, and active experiments are always with you.
👁️ Three Modes of Awareness: Mode one (facilitating), mode two (helicopter view of patterns), and mode three (submarine sensing of internal experience) offer different lenses for making use of self.
🎭 Presence as Intervention: How you say something matters as much as what you say.
🔬 Co-Created Experiments: Rather than teaching methods, invite teams to experiment with their own solutions, dramatically increasing ownership and learning.
⚖️ Presence vs. Use of Self: Presence is a being intervention that shapes how content lands; use of self is an act of gathering and sharing observations or sensing.
🎪 Emergent and Unpredictable: The most powerful experiments emerge from phenomena in the room and cannot be scripted or predicted in advance.
Why listen?
Reveal the foundational competencies that distinguish emergent team coaching from traditional coaching, showing how presence, use of self, and active experiments work together as an integrated system.
Offers practical guidance for developing each meta skill, including exercises like standing on chairs (helicopter view) and lying down with eyes closed (submarine sensing).
Demonstrates through real examples how these skills create transformational moments that scripted approaches cannot access.
Provides permission to trust internal resources over external tools, reframing coaching as something that comes from within rather than from toolkits.
Addresses the "wobble" of coaching practice with the metaphor of Weebles - toys that wobble but don't fall down - showing how these meta skills provide stability when everything else fails.
The episode concludes with an invitation to listeners: reflect on the impact your presence has, and recognise that you can only discover this by asking others how they experience you across different contexts.
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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