Interventions for Team Coaches
Every project team gets stuck at some point, and usually in the same places. This page collects the situations we meet in almost every project, the signals that announce them and the interventions that work. Use it as a library, not as a script.
Bernhard Doll
Business Design Maverick
Content
An intervention is anything you do to change the course of a team: a question, a change of format, a conversation in the corridor, a call to the sponsor. Most interventions are small. The real skill is noticing early that one is needed, which is why every situation below starts with the signals. See the Team Coach page for the role and its three perspectives (trainer, mentor and coach), and Hacks for Team Coaches for the habits that prevent many of these situations in the first place.
1. Before you Intervene
Five rules that apply to every situation on this page.
Observe before you act: Write down what you see and hear, not what you conclude. "Anna has spoken for 40 minutes, Tom not at all" is an observation. "Anna dominates the team" is an interpretation, and the team will argue with it instead of with the problem.
Work on the process, not the content: You change how the team works (the question it asks, the format, the order of speakers), never what it concludes. The moment you argue for a business model, you have stopped coaching.
Lightest effective intervention first: Start with a question. If that is not enough, mirror what you observe. Then change the format. Then talk one-on-one. The sponsor is the last step, not the first.
Plenary for the method, one-on-one for the person: Correct a method error in front of the team, because everyone learns from it. Address behaviour in private. Nobody changes their behaviour after being exposed in front of colleagues.
Early beats elegant: An intervention in week two is a nudge. The same intervention the day before D-Day is a crisis. If you are unsure whether it is time, it usually is.
2. Thinking Traps
The traps every team falls into, because every human does. You won't prevent them. Your job is to make them visible before they shape the result.
Situation | What you notice | What you do |
Solution love | The team quotes the three interviews that confirm the idea and forgets the seven that don't. Critical feedback gets explained away: "That customer just didn't get it." This is Confirmation Bias at work. | Ask: "What would we have to see to drop this idea?" Have the team write the answer down before the next round of interviews. Involve the whole team in collecting and analysing, not just the person who brought the idea. |
Opinions dressed as facts | "Customers want…", "The market needs…", without a name, a number or a source. | Ask: "Who said that, and how many of them?" Keep the Anti-Bullsh*t Spray within reach: it calls out vague talk without making it personal (see Facts Over Opinions). |
Product instead of business | Discussions circle around features, screens and technology. Nobody asks who pays, how much and why. | Ask the killer questions an investor would ask: "Who pays? How much? Why us?" Bring the discussion back to the Business Model (see Think Business, Not Product). |
Premature consensus | Agreement comes fast, nobody contradicts, and the most senior person's view becomes the team's view within minutes. | Let everyone write down their position before anyone speaks. Ask the quietest person first. Appoint a devil's advocate for one session. For longer stretches, bring in a Maverick. |
Soft hypotheses | Hypotheses without numbers, "validate" used for open questions, experiments nobody could possibly fail. | If a hypothesis has no number, it is not yet a hypothesis. Ask: "Which result would prove us wrong?" Separate what the team explores from what it validates (see Exploring Questions and Validating Hypotheses). |
Too far to stop | Late in the sprint, the team argues with the effort already spent: "We've come too far to stop now." This is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. | Ask: "If we started today, with what we know now, would we start this?" A stop at D-Day is a result, not a failure. Make sure the team can present it as one (see Decide Workshop). |
3. Team Dynamics
How the team works together decides what it can find out. These situations rarely go away on their own.
Situation | What you notice | What you do |
One voice dominates | One member, often the most senior, speaks first and longest. The others wait for that verdict before they commit. | Change the format, not the person: individual writing before discussion, a fixed speaking order, time-boxed contributions. If that is not enough, talk to the person one-on-one before the next workshop. Most dominant members don't notice that they dominate. |
Silent members | Someone contributes in the break but not in the room, or only ever agrees. | Give them a task with a visible output: an interview, a prototype, a part of the presentation. Ask for their view one-on-one first, then help them bring it into the room. Leadership emerges from doing, not from status (see Social Side of Prototyping). |
Lost in details | Forty minutes on the colour of a button, the wording of a slide or a single edge case. | Ask: "Which decision does this discussion serve?" Park what has no answer yet and time-box the rest. Take minor decisions away from the team, so it has energy left for the big ones. |
Conflict under the surface | Side comments, cynical jokes, sub-groups that meet without the others, tasks that bounce back and forth between two people. | Name what you observe, in private first and with each party. Then bring it into the room as a question about how the team works, not about who is right. Don't let it travel to D-Day (see Hacks for Team Coaches). |
"Just tell us" | "You've seen this a hundred times. Just tell us what works." | Put on the mentor hat and share what you have seen in other projects: patterns, not a recommendation. Then hand the question back. A team that adopts your answer will not defend it at D-Day. |
4. Progress and Energy
Most sprints don't fail for lack of insight. They fail on calendars, nerves and fatigue.
Situation | What you notice | What you do |
No time for the sprint | Tasks slip from one status call to the next. "I'm very busy, but I'll make it work." | Treat it as a priority problem, not a capacity problem. Go one-on-one first, redistribute within the team second, call a GTD Workshop third. The sponsor comes last (see Hacks for Team Coaches). |
Fear of the customer | The interview guide gets polished for the third time, the first appointment keeps moving. Desk research grows, customer contact doesn't. | Train the interview in a role play (trainer hat). Then join the first interviews yourself and let the team lead (mentor hat). Fix the date of the first customer contact in the next status call (see #GOOTFB and Customer & User Interview). |
Mood dip | Energy drops halfway through: first results contradict the idea, the day job catches up, the end is not in sight. | Name the dip as part of the process. The mood curve on the Team Coach page shows it. Make progress visible: what do we know today that we didn't know three weeks ago? Celebrate the small landings. |
Endless exploration | Every insight opens three new questions, and the team follows all of them. Nobody wants to commit to a business model "before we know more". | Remind the team that the goal is a decision, not certainty. Fix the next decision point and work backwards: what do we need to know by then, and what can wait? Show something rough rather than wait for the perfect answer (see Demo or Die). |
5. Sponsor and Organisation
Some situations start outside the team. Your mandate comes from the charter, so use it.
Situation | What you notice | What you do |
The sponsor's favourite | The Project Sponsor's own idea keeps reappearing in the results. Findings get softened before they reach the sponsor. | Talk to the sponsor one-on-one about what the team is finding, before the team has to present it. Use the Sponsor's Sneak Preview for early reactions, and remind both sides what the charter asks for: a decision based on facts. |
Blocked by the organisation | No access to existing customers, data that is "not available", approvals that take weeks. | Clarify with the sponsor which blockade they can lift and which one the team has to work around, and settle it in days, not weeks. Next time, clear these flanks before the kick-off (see Hacks for Team Coaches). |
The team works for you | Results are presented to you instead of discussed with each other. The team waits for your approval before it moves on. | Step back visibly. Let the Team Manager run the next status call. Sit at the side in the workshop and answer questions with questions. The team works for the sponsor, not for you. |
6. Build your Library
No list covers every team. Keep a log of the situations you meet: what you observed, what you did and what happened next. Review it with your co-coach after every project. The interventions that worked become your library, and the ones that didn't teach you even more.
Keep in mind
These interventions serve the Guiding Principles, not the other way round. Missing a situation? Send it to us, together with the intervention that worked — or the one that didn't: support@orangehills.com.