“Be more of a lion” was the feedback given to a team member struggling to find their voice in group dynamics. But what does this really mean for team development? How can teams move beyond prescriptive feedback that asks individuals to change who they are, toward feedback that unleashes each member’s authentic contribution?
As team coaches, we observe that feedback within teams often follows a problematic pattern: it’s prescriptive (telling people what to become), judgmental (assessing ability to change), or constraining (asking members to suppress parts of themselves). This undermines both individual growth and team cohesion because it questions people’s fundamental identity rather than supporting their development.
A New Paradigm for Team Feedback
The dominant paradigm treats development as gap-filling by those who “know better” – an outside-in, individualistic approach. However, sustainable team development happens through collective awareness, shared sense-making, and adaptive responses. This inside-out, systemic paradigm recognizes that team feedback occurs within a complex web of relationships and cultural dynamics.
For team coaches, this means addressing three interconnected aspects: the team’s cultural environment, the coach’s developmental mindset, and the quality of relationships within the team.
Creating the Right Team Environment
Teams operate within one of two feedback systems:
The Jungle Team
Creates caution and defensiveness. Mistakes signal failure, growth is seen as fixing deficiencies, and only select members are viewed as having potential. Good contributions go unrecognized.
The Pride Team
Generates trust and curiosity. Mistakes become learning opportunities, continuous growth is everyone’s right and responsibility, achievements are celebrated, and development builds on strengths. Everyone’s potential is recognized and nurtured.
Most teams default toward jungle dynamics because our broader culture emphasizes weakness-fixing over strength-building. Creating pride dynamics requires intentional effort from both coaches and team members.
Team coaches must help teams develop awareness of their feedback culture. This involves understanding both the dominant team behaviors and how feedback is actually experienced by members. Tools like team psychological safety assessments or feedback culture audits can reveal current patterns.
Teams also need awareness of bias in their feedback practices. Research shows that women and people of color receive significantly more non-actionable, personality-focused feedback, limiting their growth opportunities. Inclusive teams actively monitor for such biases and work to create equitable feedback practices.
“In Team Coaching, we help teams use feedback as a catalyst for trust and performance”
The Team Coach’s Mindset and Beliefs
How coaches, or leaders, approach team feedback reflects their developmental paradigm. Are they entering the jungle or supporting the pride?
Outside-In Approach
Adopting behaviors that work for others, following directions from those who “know better,” implementing instructions from external authorities.
Inside-Out Approach
Becoming more authentically themselves, developing personal insight and self-awareness, engaging in collective sense-making and team alignment.
The coach’s mindset determines everything: how they frame conversations, the effort invested in building trust, the quality of their listening, and the questions they ask. “Be more of a lion” reveals beliefs about leadership and team dynamics – it suggests denying authentic self-expression to fit a predetermined mold.
Effective team coaching requires deep self-awareness from the coach. This allows them to check their mindset and show up as a partner rather than a judge or teacher. A pride-focused mindset brings clarity of intention: to explore and co-create rather than instruct and correct.
Building Trust: The Foundation of Team Growth
Trust enables psychological safety for experimentation, failure, and open learning. Team coaches can influence team culture by championing positive behaviors, aligning team processes with growth values, and modeling vulnerability and continuous learning.
Trust becomes habitual within team relationships, which is why appreciative feedback is crucial. It creates the relational foundation necessary for developmental conversations.
At the heart of trusting team relationships is the ability to engage in genuine dialogue. This requires skills, positive intent, open mindset, growth-enabling beliefs, and deep self-awareness – what we call SIMBA (Skills, Intention, Mindset, Beliefs, Awareness).
Team Feedback in Action
Rather than prescriptive checklists, effective team feedback follows these elements:
Preparation and Opening
Coaches examine their intention and mindset. Are they showing up as partners? They focus on observed patterns and behaviors, their impact on team dynamics, and why this matters for collective success.
Dialogue
Active listening to team responses, inviting questions, asking about experiences and perspectives, working toward shared understanding of different viewpoints.
Bridge to Future
Seeking resolution about what the team takes forward, how members might experiment with new approaches, and how the coach can support collective growth.
Conclusion
Team coaching offers a unique opportunity for different conversations – ones where deep listening, curiosity, and shared exploration lead to greater collective awareness, insight, and innovation, alongside stronger team relationships.
Feedback becomes transformative when it operates from a systemic, inside-out paradigm that:
- Creates environments of trust and collaboration
- Communicates observations in recognizable, relevant ways
- Engages in conversations promoting openness and hope rather than defensiveness and insecurity
Teams need investment in both systemic and individual awareness to harness feedback effectively. They must build trusting relationships and environments with more pride than jungle dynamics. Only then will feedback processes have real traction and credibility.
To help release the lion inside each team member, coaches must embrace SIMBA – developing themselves with the Skills, Intention, Mindset, Beliefs, and Awareness required to facilitate authentic team transformation.
Stephen Burt and Marien Perez, May 2024
Related:
Other recommended reading:
Harvard Business Review – “The Feedback Fallacy”
MIT Sloan – “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams”