From high performing to high value creating

On the morning of Friday 12 June, forty executives gathered for a breakfast session on systemic team coaching. What was intended as a compact forty-five-minute session ran over, because the questions that arose were too relevant to leave unanswered.

Teams that hold their ground under pressure

Mark Siezen put it well in our interview series: the only certainty is that uncertainty will return. Contexts shift faster, complexity increases, and with it the pressure on leaders grows. In our earlier article on [complementary teams], we explored what teams need to sustain their potential when circumstances change. Systemic team coaching offers a concrete response: it helps teams not only collaborate more effectively, but above all align more closely with what their environment requires of them.

Sebijn Bunt, Consultant within the Leadership Practice at Odgers, opened the session with a question that sounds simpler than it is: how do you build teams that perform well not only when conditions are favourable, but also maintain direction when context shifts? Under pressure, teams often revert to familiar patterns. Attention turns inward, energy dissipates, and decision-making stalls at precisely the moment when direction is needed most.

Not the individual, but the connection between people

The session was led by Hein Dijksterhuis, executive team coach and specialist in systemic leadership. He illustrated what changes when teams make the transition from high performing to high value creating. The focus shifts from the quality of individual team members to what they make possible together that no one could achieve alone.

That requires a different way of seeing. The individual is no longer the centre of attention; the connection between people is. During the session, the Japanese concept of ma was introduced: the space between people. It is precisely there that what often goes unspoken in teams becomes visible. Those who examine that in-between space begin to recognise patterns that are difficult to identify at the individual level.

From inside out: for whom does the team create value?

A high value creating team sees itself as part of a larger whole. It focuses not only on its own tasks, but on the people and groups for whom it creates value. It looks ahead to future needs and actively brings outside expectations inward. The relationship between the team and its environment takes precedence over internal dynamics alone.

Triodos Bank illustrates this concretely. The bank began as a small institution with a clear but limited client base. What followed was not a classic strategy process of boardroom documents and top-down decisions, but a shared process of thinking in which bank and clients determined direction together. Clients gained insight into where their savings were directed and were actively invited to contribute to the organisation's course. From that mutual connection and collective movement towards action, change finance emerged as a guiding principle, and ultimately the recognition by the Financial Times as the world's most sustainable bank. A position the bank had never initially envisioned for itself.

The lesson this illustrates: organisations that remain agile in uncertain times are those that continuously attune to what is happening around them and adapt accordingly.

Four dimensions of a high value creating team

The session concluded with a practical framework of four dimensions.

1. Commissioning: why does the team exist and what does the principal expect?
2. Clarifying: what results and roles are required?
3. Co-creating: how does the team collaborate, even when interests diverge?
4. Connecting: which stakeholders outside the team are needed to achieve results?

Systemic team coaching is therefore not a team-building exercise, a strategy session, or an additional burden on already full agendas. It is a way of helping teams look afresh at their purpose, their mutual connections, and their value for the world beyond. With the aim that the collective functions more effectively, even after the coaching engagement has concluded.

What stays with you

What resonated most in the room was recognition. Not with the terminology, but with the underlying tension: teams want to be more than the sum of their parts, yet under pressure they tend to turn inward. The session made clear that the question is not only how to assemble a better team. More important is what conditions are needed for the team that already exists to genuinely work for the world outside.

At Odgers, we believe that good advisers keep moving, keep asking questions, and bring others along in that process. If you recognise these challenges, or would like to explore leadership in complex circumstances further, get in touch with Sebijn.