When working with teams, an essential task is to help them think.

However, this also means choosing what “help them think” means.

In a solution-seeking team, their choice would most probably be, to receive help allowing them to come sooner to a conclusion and solution. Such a team will try to pull the coach into facilitating their solution-finding and even push him into leading the path to a solution.

This is not putting the team to its best use. It also is assuming that the team doesn’t know the best solution.

What the team normally is struggling with in such a situation is reading the signs of discomfort. Instead of being able to be vulnerable and willing to share, they are struggling with their ability to recognize the multitude of small details disrupting their safe space. They have lost their sense of psychological safety.

Helping a team think is about creating a space where they can connect with their unincumbered ability to think.