COACHING EXCELLENCE IN ORGANIZATIONS

Learning Teams and Learning to Build Effective Teams

In the Coaching Excellence in Organizations (CEO) program, participants are put into teams, called Learning
Teams, to engage with others in their learning together in the program. The learning in the program is not only
in the distinctions and practices of CEO, but also by learning about the fundamental dynamics and breakdowns
that are part of people creating teams and working together in them.
Many people use the word team as though they know what it means. But most interpretations of teams, if you
asked what a team is, would describe what a team looks like if it is performing well. However, these
interpretations dont say what it is that makes a team perform well. The attempts to do so in the management
literature use terminology that doesnt answer the question of how you form a team. For example, they may say
that a team is a group of people who work together and are aligned. But this doesnt tell us how to produce
alignment, it only offers an assessment to make that a team is aligned or not.
The interpretation of what a team is that we have found is most effective is that a team is a group of people who
have a shared promise, and effective teams are those who engage in and are capable in the conversations that
produce the necessary commitments for effective teamwork. We also have a clear understanding of what these
conversations are, and how to have them. This is described elsewhere in the CEO program, but here we
want to focus on how to get started building a team, even if you dont have the whole set of distinctions yet of
what makes an effective team.
Our interpretation of teams is operational, which means that we can take action based on it. An interpretation
that is not operational is one that is descriptive, but does not clarify how to take action. Descriptive language is
tranquilizing and insidious, in that it produces the impression that the description is valuable, and that the
speaker of it is knowledgeable. But in fact, these descriptions do not produce action or the clarity of how to take
action. We cant learn to act out of descriptive language.
Take for example, a football game. The commentator describes the game, and sounds very knowledgeable.
The commentator says that the team, or the quarterback, or a player is having a good or bad game. This
assessment is usually based on the statistics of the game and who is winning. But if the commentator was
asked to tell the team, quarterback, or player what to do differently, they wont be able to unless they were a
player or coach themselves. This is because the language of executing is different than the language of
describing. The coach will speak in a language of action that the team understands.
What we need is an operational language of teams, and the interpretations that are provided in CEO are
designed to be just that. The specifics of this language of teams is spelled out in another CEO paper Building
and Leading Effective Teams, but even if you havent read this paper, we will summarize what you need to
know to make your learning team effective.

in partnership with

2006 Robert Dunham

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What shows up for a coach is players who may understand the language of the teams actions, but may not be
skilled enough to execute the actions well, or to the standard needed for the teams success. Then it is a matter
of the player learning to increase their skills, and this has to be done through practice. The fundamental
purpose of the learning team is to learn to build an effective team with others, to learn the operational language
of action for teams, and to increase your skill through practice as both a team leader and a team member. A
further purpose is to advance your ability to learn in the CEO program, but making your learning team effective
is an important part of your learning in the CEO program. To summarize, your learning team is formed for two
purposes:
1. To learn how to form effective teams; to deal with the breakdowns of teams; and to develop yourselves
as effective team leaders and team members,
2. To enhance your learning in the CEO program by interacting with others, being exposed to different
interpretations and points of view, and to be stimulated in your own thinking by conversations that open
up possibilities that would not exist if you were left in your own interpretations.

Effective Teams Dont Just Happen

We have seen many learning teams form in CEO, and some have trouble getting started. Some have trouble
satisfying the team members in their meetings and conversations, and some teams have this difficulty over a
long period of time. Some teams really gel and produce great value for their participants, and some others
disintegrate. What is the difference among these types of teams? We are going to give you some distinctions to
observe, think, and act with in this paper, but the fundamental work of learning what makes a team effective will
be revealed to you in the actions you take with your team mates, and the assessments that these actions
provoke. Your job is to learn to be the observer and actor that make your team, or any team, work together.
Good teams dont just happen. It takes leadership, and followership. The right combination of these produces
teamwork. But the leadership and followership have to come from you. No one else will provide it. Your team is
your product, and we recommend that you take the stand that it is personally your product. If you do so, and
commit to learn how to produce a good product, a good team, you eventually will do so. If you stop in this
commitment, or wait for the team to function well before you get to working with it, then you will probably have
unsatisfactory experience with this team.
The irresponsible leader is a customer without being a promisor. They say that their team isnt performing, but
stop with that assessment and take no action to change the situation. The irresponsible team member is the
same. They decide that the team isnt working to their standard or expectations and sit back and grouse, getting
resentful. This is bad leadership and membership. And leadership is a responsibility for everyone on a team,
not just the team leader. Taking responsibility is to take action to produce an outcome of value, a satisfying
future, and to resolve breakdowns.

Take Responsibility, Be a Leader

What we are saying is that you must take responsibility for your team. What does it mean to take responsibility?
It is making the interpretation that when you assess the team isnt working, you must provide what is missing to
make it work. This puts you in the posture of producing action, not waiting for action. It puts you in the posture

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of being a leader. You may not know what to do, but in this posture you will find out, or invent what is needed. If
you wait for others, or act only if you know what to do, you become a victim, and tranquilize yourself with the
reasons for your inaction and the teams performance.
Many people in the program have found their team is unsatisfactory, at least at the beginning. The team
members dont keep commitments to be on team conference calls, they come unprepared for the call, they
havent done their work in the CEO program, or they dont know what conversations to have. The discussions
that do happen may be unsatisfactory. This is a challenge of forming a team, and learning to make it work.
Many people who dont take a leadership posture with their team, and dont look to learn from the breakdowns,
have looked instead to the CEO staff to make their teams work. Some have even complained they are not
getting their moneys worth because we didnt provide them with an effective team. We do not promise you an
effective learning team; we only promise you the opportunity, and the access to coaching, to learn how to
produce an effective learning team. The making of an effective learning team is your job, and a failure of an
effective team to show up will be your failure, your personal failure, not the failure of the CEO program, CEO
staff, or even your team mates. As a leader, you must move from a commitment to build an effective team, and
to take responsibility for the results.
We are not interested to make the teams for you, or to make it easy for you. We are interested that you learn to
build an effective team yourself. We will help you learn how to do this. Some people form effective teams quite
easily, and they are naturals that the rest of us can learn from. Some have effective teams that they lead at
work, but dont seem to be able to produce one in CEO. They often fall into the tranquilizing assessments
(tranquilizing means that the interpretation produces no action, but only justifies non-action) that the problem is
their teammates or the program. And then there are people who find teams a challenge wherever they find
them. There are opportunities to learn in all these cases.
People who have effective teams elsewhere but not in CEO are an especially interesting case. The tranquilizing
explanations of why this is so can hide an immense opportunity for learning. We are looking to make generative
interpretations as leaders, and be generative in our actions. This is the problem of being successful, and then
being 9tranquilized by your success. It often produces the problem that you see the world in terms of your
successes, and become unprepared to deal with situations that are unlike the ones you succeeded with. We
have seen many successful executives go from one company to another where they fail miserably, often with
great analysis of why it wasnt their fault. But what is missing in these cases is the ability to generate what is
missing, to see what is fundamental, and not require that the world, other people, or the systems of a situation
give you what you are comfortable with.
How can you make your team work? Or if it doesnt, still turn it into an effective learning team? Or even try
again, in necessary, and build a different, but effective team. To answer these questions, we need to look a bit
more at what a team is.

The Fundamentals of Generating an Effective Team

What are the fundamentals of generating an effective team? The elements that generate teams are
conversations, commitments, practices, standards, and competencies. This is our operational, generative
language. We will rely on the distinctions of requests, promises, assessments, conversations for action, and so

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on, as the component elements of generative conversations. This gives us the background to articulate our
generative interpretation of a team.
A team is a group of people that share a promise.
What makes the team effective is that they have the conversations that produce shared commitments
for:
1. The mission of the team, and the teams vision and values
2. Fulfilling the promises of the team and satisfying the customers for those promises
3. Act with personal ownership of the promises of the team
4. Shared standards of assessment
5. Shared practices, including
a. Coordinating action to fulfill the promise of the team
b. Anticipation, including planning, navigating, and anticipating breakdowns
c. Sharing openly their assessments about the actions of the team, the team itself, and of the
team members out of a commitment to the success of the team and of each other
6. The structure of authority on the team, including all the roles of each team member based on their
promises, and the authority they have to make requests, assessments, and declarations in particular
domains
7. Managing the mood of the team and its members for moods of success, ambition, authenticity, and
engagement
8. Engaging in practices of learning and growth to fulfill their promises, to increase the value of the
promises they can make, and to develop themselves to become more satisfied with their identities and
lives
9. Building, maintaining, and renewing trust
10. The futures of the team, of the team members, and of the organization that the team is a part of.
These conversations are the constituting conversations of the team, that is, that they are the generative
conversations that constitute, and create, the team. An effective team leader is one who insures that the
conversations to produce the shared commitments above take place. Team members act out of ownership for
these commitments just as though they were the teams leader or customer.

Constituting the Team

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A team is not just a group of people working together. What constitutes a team, that is generates the team, is
the commitment to a shared mission, or promise. Many people may be working with others at your work place,
but in our interpretation they are not a team without a shared promise, even though you may have thought so.
The shared promise centers and guides the actions of the team. The challenge for the learning team is to clarify
and articulate its mission, the shared commitment that everyone on the team commits to. In general, the
learning team mission is a commitment to:
Learn and build embodied skills in management and leadership through participating in the practices of the
CEO program, assessed by your CEO Coaches according to the standards of CEO.
You must develop your own teams articulation of its mission so that it is relevant for you, owned by all the team
members, and is a focusing narrative for action. It is not enough to understand, or agree with a teams mission,
you must commit to it as though you own it. To own the mission is to act as though its results are a direct
consequence of your actions and inactions, whether you are the team leader or a team member.
To make a commitment so that action can be coordinated around it, the commitment must be spoken or
articulated publicly, and subsequent actions must be consistent with the utterance of the commitment. To just
say you are committed does not mean you are committed, if you dont act out of the commitment. The Zulu tribe
in Africa has a saying: I cant hear your words for the thunder of your actions.
A key conversation from the constituting conversations listed above is to commit to the roles in the team,
particularly the role of the team leader and team member. What are the promises of the team leader, and what
are the promises of the team to the team leader, and what are the promises of the team members to each
other?
Once you have agreed to a shared promise on the team, and committed to your roles and the roles of your
team mates, you have constituted the team. But it takes the other constitutive conversations and commitments
to make the team effective. A team must have shared standards and practices, be committed to coordinate
action to satisfy its customers, and so on in order to act effectively. Through continued practice, and a continual
refinement in the teams conversations, a team generates its ability to act capably as a team. These
conversations and skills are what you are going to practice with your learning team. Your breakdowns on your
team are not deficiencies with the program, they are your opportunity to learn and build your leadership. You
are responsible for constituting, managing, and transforming the breakdowns of your team into new and
satisfying actions. You do this by connecting, finding your shared care, and then making commitments, listening
for commitment, and dealing with the breakdowns of commitments.

Team Commitments
The learning team has a number of commitments and practices that it must fulfill well in order to produce value
for the members. The general commitments and practices of a learning team include:
1. Scheduling and attending regular conference calls or meetings.
2. Setting the agenda for topics of concern for future calls and meetings.

2006 Robert Dunham

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3. Performing your CEO practices, including centering, blending, MAPs, TMAPs and other practices (the
MAP is the Managing Action Practice where you as a promisor/performer manage your making and
fulfilling of your commitments to your customers; the TMAP is the Team Managing Action Practice,
which is the team version of making and fulfilling promises to the customers of the team).
4. Making agreements of when you will read the program papers, complete the Leadership Projects
(LPs), and be prepared to discuss them in the learning team calls or meetings.
5. Send and share your MAPs, documented work, and responses to LPs to your teammates prior to
calls.
6. Be prepared for conference calls with your concerns and questions from your learning, both in your
actual work, and your learning of new CEO perspectives and practices.
7. Discussing and assessing the performance, moods, and value of the work of your learning team, the
effectiveness of your conversations, and where you can learn and perform better both individually and
as a team.
8. Discuss the breakdowns of the team, and make new commitments and take action to deal with them.
The leader for the team is responsible to see that these conversations happen and produce value, to speak as
a customer for the teams promises, to declare breakdowns, and to make requests and negotiate new
commitments. Each team member does the same from a sense of ownership for the performance of the team.
One of the conversations of teams is to develop and commit to shared standards. The team should have
regular conversations about what standards they commit to in each of the promises and practices of the team,
and make agreements about how breakdowns will be managed.
The following set of learning team commitments is an example developed by a CEO learning team.
What are we a team for?
We are supporting each other in learning & mastering the CEO discourse; through discussion of real situations
and applications of the coursework, and through helping each other meet mutual commitments to complete
coursework.
What are our goals/key promises?
Work together on our CPs, support each others work, not to fall for excuses.
Team learning calls each week.
Ongoing support via phone and email as needed.
What are our standards for teamwork?
Mutual respect as learners of CEO and masters/students of other disciplines.
Confidentiality.
Honest communication - not for the sake of looking good.
Make our commitments authentically.
Establish conditions for satisfaction with each commitment.

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Manage breakdowns in commitments by 1 time period in advance per time period the promise is going
to be missed.

What are our practices?

Sharing MAPs.
Weekly by end of day Monday.
Weekly team call.
On Tuesdays at 10 AM.
Calling and documentation.
Alternate calling and commitment-writing responsibilities each week.
Whoever calls is not responsible for sending out the team's updated commitments.
And vice versa.
Call script.
Review of progress against key promises and standards.
Check-in:
Did we review each others MAPs?
What was provoked?
Learning project discussion.
Discuss currently committed work.
Commit to prepare for next weeks learning discussion.
We expect that Leadership discussions should be a part of the call, but were unsure of how to include
it.
Notes from call sent to team by end of day on the day of the call.
Notes should cover key pieces of MAP review and CP discussion.
Both send notes to each other; this practices observing the observers.
cc notes to CEO coaching staff so they can observe our learning and guide appropriately.
Commitment-writer documents current/new team commitments and sends to team and coaches.

Learning Conversations
For some people learning conversations are a new kind of conversation to have. Our culture trains us as
students to do our own work separately, and we dont learn to learn together. The conversations of a learning
team are not a report on what weve done, to show what we know, or to pass a quiz. They are to explore what
we dont know, to explore what is possible, to learn from different perspectives, and to declare breakdowns and
ask for help in our competencies and learning.
Remember that CEO is about embodying new skills in order to open more powerful futures for ourselves, and
to enable us to better take care of what we care about. It is about honest self-observation, seeing what is
possible, declaring commitments for learning as capacities for new action, and putting oneself into the practices
to produce that embodied learning. What is crucial is to keep connected to what we care about, why we are
learning, and to always look to clarify for the sake of what you are learning and practicing. Otherwise we will
become disconnected from true learning. It will become irrelevant to the concerns you are living, and at best
become academic learning.
In academic learning we do our work in order to get a good grade, or perhaps to get by. We do the homework
for the teacher, often do it at the last minute and see it as a thing to do and get out of the way. We expose

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ourselves to ideas, get the homework done, but dont connect it to our concerns and our lives. We dont
practice, and dont develop actual skill. The game is to get through the course, not to develop actual
competence that is relevant for you. If these tendencies exist for you, then the learning practices of CEO are
about learning how not to fall into this academic way of learning, and to produce valuable embodied learning
for yourself. Keep it relevant, practice, and practice some more. Be clear about the skill you are building,
practice it in your work and life, and get feedback as you practice from your coaches, customers, and learning
colleagues.
Learning happens out of exploring questions and exploring the space of opportunities that they open, not
looking for or showing what you already know. The areas you want to explore in your learning practices and
conversations are the domains of:

Possibilities
Breakdowns
New Action, and
New Commitments.

These areas of looking are powerful for expanding the kind of observer and actor you can be. Remember, as
human beings we are products of our history, our language, and our embodiment. To learn, we want to be an
observer of the kind of observer and actor we are, see new possibilities, make new commitments, and then
practice to fulfill them, all within the context of designing and taking care of our concerns. We are products of
our discourses, the conversations that have shaped us. We are looking to be designers of changes to our
discourses through learning, in order to alter our capacities for action, and our ability to create futures to fulfill
our ambitions and to take care of our concerns, and the concerns of others.
Some further key practices and questions for your exploration in your learning, whether in your individual study
and reflection, in your preparation for your learning conversations, or in your learning team conversations
include:
1. Clarify how your learning connects to the concerns of your life, your possibilities, your future, and your
commitments.
2. Be in a mood of honest self-observation and self-reflection. Dont fall into looking good, showing that
you know, or avoiding looking for and seeing where you dont know and arent competent. Remember,
if you already know, there is nothing to learn. Look for what you dont know, which is a move of
mastery, and explore what is opened for you.
3. What are your breakdowns? Look for where you have breakdowns; share this with other observers and
coaches that you trust, for there is the opportunity for learning.
4. What are the new possibilities that are being opened by what you are learning? What are the
possibilities that you are looking for?
5. What opportunities are being opened by what you are learning and exploring? What actions and
commitments do you have to make to realize these opportunities?

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6. What assessments do you have in domains of action that you are investigating, and what would open
up if you had different assessments? What are the assessments that you, your actions, your
interpretations, your commitments, and your moods provoke in others? What is opened by looking from
their points of view?
7. How is what you are learning opening possibilities for new commitments? What new commitments will
you make out of what you are learning?
8. What are the standards of the CEO discipline in the domains of action you are learning? How do you
assess yourself according to these standards? What opportunities for learning and embodying new
skills are opened by the gaps between where you assess yourself to be and where you declare your
ambition to be? What actions do you commit to in order to close these gaps, and how does this take
care of your concerns?
When we are in conversation as open and aware observers, conversations with others will always open
possibilities that are not possible to generate alone. This is why conversation is such an important and powerful
learning practice. All of our thinking and observations occur in the interpretations that we embody. We are
looking for new opportunities for embodiment. In your learning team you want to learn the conversations that
open new possibilities, assist you with breakdowns, and give you feedback on yourself and your interpretations.
Addressing the questions above can be good provocations for your reflection and exploration. We also need to
learn to attend to blending with the listening, concerns, moods, and embodiment of others in our conversations.

The Learning Team Call or Meeting Agenda

With the background of learning conversations above, we have found the most productive use of your learning
team conversations will be in the following three areas:
1. Take a breakdown or current concern of a member of the team in their real life or work, and explore
how what you are learning in the distinctions and practices of CEO allow you to interpret and design
possible new actions, skills, interpretations and commitments with the person with the breakdown. This
will probably open possibilities for the other team members as well.
2. Take a topic of importance to the group from the distinctions and practices presented in CEO that you
are mutually investigating and explore the questions, interpretations, possibilities and actions that it
opens up for you in your lives and work. Prepare for this conversation usually by agreeing in advance
what the team will read, write, or engage in, practice, or prepare for the discussion.
3. Review and assess your learning teams call and its performance in general.
Avoid being academic in the conversations, discussing abstract ideas, concepts, principles and distinctions.
Real learning doesnt come from academic clarification, but from relating the relevance of the distinction or
practice to breakdowns and opportunities that apply to someones real life. Bring up your concerns for learning
in terms of how this is relevant for you in your current actions, possibilities, situations, and futures.
Your team meeting or call agenda should include the following elements:

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1. Team leaders announcement of the promises for the meeting, review of the agenda, and discussion of
any agenda changes.
2. Quick check-ins of the members, e.g. announcing any big recent events or peoples mood for the
conversation.
3. Current real issues, challenges, and opportunities team member(s) are engaged with.
4. The learning distinction, practice, or concern that was agreed to discuss.
5. Review of the teams call, suggestions for improvement.

Bringing Yourself to Learning

How you bring yourself to the learning team calls (or meetings) will have a lot to do with whether the call turns
out to be valuable for you and your teammates. The first place to look is if you come to the call prepared,
having done the appropriate reading, conversations, and practices for fulfilling your agreements with the team.
If the team has no agreements, then the team needs to make them. The learning team call is a place to learn
from your shared learning, which you want to design to some extent with your team, and not just show up cold.
If the team doesnt make agreements for performance, the conversations tend to get abstract, and thereby
irrelevant, quickly. The conversations should be about your learning, your lives, your work, and what you are
learning from being in action.
You should observe yourself, and see if you have the tendency to wait for it to be done to you. No one is
responsible to do it to you or for you, or to insure you are learning, or even to insure that the conversations
among the team are relevant or valuable to you. If they are not, then it is time to speak up, offer assessments,
make offers, requests, proposals, and assessments and invite the design of the conversations your team is
having so that they are mutually satisfying.
The mood of the calls should be one of serious self-reflection, ambition and interest, and openness that there
are other interpretations and perspectives than your own that may be as useful, or more so, than your own. The
conversations are not about who is right, but always about what each interpretation opens and closes, and
whether you see possibilities for yourself in these interpretations. It is about observing, speculating, designing,
and committing for real action in your life. It is not about looking good, being smart, knowing the answers, or
competing to be better than your teammates. Its a partnership, not a competition.
The learning team calls are an opportunity to practice leadership, to make proposals that forward the work of
the team, to offer assessments of the teams performance that open new possibilities and deal with
breakdowns, and bring yourself as a serious beginner to your learning. Resignation, and its cousin, resentment,
are the enemy. If you find yourself or someone else in these moods, it is because you or they are trapped in the
interpretation that possibilities you value are closed, and you cant do anything about it. And with resentment, it
includes blaming someone else and refusing to take action to resolve the breakdown. We have to practice to
always look for and create what we can do about the future, not to surrender to resignation or resentment.

Managing Moods

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10

The moods of the team can be respect, ambition, seriousness about the possibilities you are dealing with, joy in
learning, centeredness with breakdowns, and appreciation for each other and your work together. The moods
can also fall into resignation, resentment, righteousness, irresponsibility, boredom, and distrust. Moods are also
a place of learning, action, competence, and leadership in CEO. If you find yourself or the team falling into
negative moods, dont become tranquilized by the story that justifies the mood. For example I am resigned
because that team member alwaysor never Moods are triggered by what is out there, but are not caused
by what is out there. Moods are a product of our own interpretations and our automatic, embodied
predispositions to situations. The learning team meetings give you a place to practice observing and managing
moods, your own, those of others, and of the team as a whole.
The posture you will find most empowering for you is to take responsibility for the moods around you, and in
particular for your own moods. If negative moods arise, look at the story and assessment that goes with the
mood. Look at redesigning the story and the assessment of the mood by inventing new actions or new
interpretations. Move resignation and resentment to acceptance and ambition. Stay centered on why you are
learning, and stay centered in your commitment to learn to learn together with your team. Act from these
commitments.
As Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the martial art of aikido, said, True victory is victory over the Self. If you
manage yourself first, then you will have more impact on others. Resigned or resentful contraction, giving up,
and blaming never attracted others to the possibilities you are interested in. Be compassionate for our
humanity, both in yourself and others, that we make mistakes, are not perfect, and are the products of our
histories and past practices. Include all that, but dont let it decide your future actions and capabilities. Recenter, and start again to build or rebuild the future. You can always have the next conversation, and it can
transform what is possible, the commitments and possibilities you share, and the future you can produce.

Responsibilities of the Team Leader

In our interpretation a team leader is not the person who knows the best, is the best performer, who has the
answers, or even who gives the orders. The team leader is the person responsible to make sure that the team
has the conversations that produce an effective team engaging in the constitutive conversations productively,
making assessments, making commitments, engaging in conversations for action, building trust, and so on. The
leader may not be the best at these conversations, or even lead them all, but they are responsible that the
conversations happen in the best possible way and that they produce satisfying commitments and actions for
the customers of the team and the team members themselves. Good leaders ask for help if they need it to
produce the outcomes they are committed to. Their commitment is to the outcome, not just what they can do
individually, and they go towards the desired outcomes by engaging the commitment and involvement of
others.
The team leader also takes on the role as a customer for the team, and for the promises of the team members.
The team leader is not alone in this, since each team member should do the same thing, but the team leader is
responsible to make their own assessments of the team and the teams performance, to see that the
assessments of an committed and able customer are made, and that they take the lead in doing so if the
conversations are missing among the team members. They also request authority from the team members to
be the customer for the team, in other words that the team members commit to satisfy their agreements with
them. They also ask for and get the commitment from the team members for the leaders authority to make
decisions on behalf of the team when the team cannot produce consensus.

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11

For the learning teams, the team leader is responsible to see that the commitments of the team members are
made, that calls are scheduled, the standards of the team are agreed upon (or declared by the leader in the
absence of consensus), and that the team is engaged in productive learning conversations, or productive
learning about how to have productive learning conversations.

Responsibilities of the Team Member

The learning team members are responsible to make commitments to the mission of the team, to the actions,
practices, and standards of the team, to make and manage their own promises to the team, and to respectfully
speak their assessments about the team and the team members concerning the shared promises of the team.
In our interpretation of teams, the most powerful teams are ones in which each team member takes ownership
of, and acts as a customer for, the promises of the team as a whole and the promises of each team member to
the team. They speak from the same perspective as the team leader in being a customer for the teams
promises, although they grant authority to the team leader to lead the coordination of the teams conversations
(which can be delegated as part of the leadership), and grant that the team leader can make declarations for
the team in the cases where the team cannot achieve consensus.
Each team member is responsible to be an active participant in CEO and the CEO practices, to make
agreements and fulfill them to the team as to what reading, writing, work and practices they will participate in, to
prepare for team calls, to be on the calls they commit to, to manage their commitments to the team and any
breakdowns that arise around them, and to engage in learning conversations with a commitment to the learning
and its value for every team member. Each team member takes leadership in observing moods, breakdowns,
commitments, and actions, declares their assessments and makes requests, proposals, or invitations based on
them out of a commitment to provoke effective team learning and teamwork.

Its All Commitment

A focus of your learning is to deepen your experience, understanding, embodiment, and capability of
commitment. Commitment is not just what we say, what we utter, but must be where we act on behalf of
fulfilling a future that was articulated. Working with your teams you will see different interpretations and levels of
seriousness about commitments. Our philosophy is that you should announce your level of commitment when
you make the commitment (unless it is a shared background and doesnt need to be spoken). For example, you
might assure someone that a promise you are making will definitely be fulfilled, unless there is an act of God.
On another occasion, you might say that your promise has a fifty-fifty chance of being fulfilled, and you will keep
the customer apprised as to what is happening.
When people listen that you have made a promise they see you as obligated to perform future actions and
produce future results. They may organize themselves to make other commitments based on the promise you
made, or that they listened you made. Not fulfilling your promise may produce significant consequences for
others, impacting the promises they have made, changing the future they were counting on.
If what you will produce is not clearly agreed upon, then others will fall into their expectations. Unmet
expectations is one way that people are disappointed, miscoordination happens, and distrust arises.

2006 Robert Dunham

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12

To commit is to declare that a shared future will happen. In the learning team, as in any team, the challenge is
to clarify the articulation of the future you agree to produce, to clarify the level of commitment of the participants
in producing that future, what can be expected, and to perform consistent with the agreements made. As in any
relationship, there are breakdowns, and the future of the relationship depends on how you handle these
breakdowns. Such breakdowns might produce distrust, and the team will function as well as trust is rebuilt and
maintained.
Remember that promises include the articulation of conditions of satisfaction. If these conditions of
satisfaction are not explicitly articulated, they are always interpreted by the listener. The point of a promise, and
its agreement, is to produce the satisfaction and value of its fulfillment. If there are breakdowns in fulfillment, the
practices of team building (and managing relationships) are to:

declare breakdowns,
assess what is missing,
make new commitments and take new actions with assessments, complaints and apologies, requests
and offers as needed
re-center on the commitment to be a team, and navigate to fulfill the shared promises together,
take care of the relationship,
manage the moods, and
repair any broken trust.

If fulfillment doesnt produce satisfaction, then there is a different kind of breakdown, of the lack of relevance or
value of the condition of satisfaction that was agreed upon. Managing this breakdown calls for the same
elements of conversation. To be a team is to commit to shared futures, make them happen, and with every
breakdown to reconstitute trust and commitment to a future that will still satisfy.
This is why the breakdowns of your learning teams are opportunities to learn to produce what is missing missing commitments, new or changed commitments, to repair trust, manage moods, and adjust together to
produce a mutually satisfying future.

Trust, Breakdowns, Identity, and Rebuilding Trust

We build trust by keeping our promises. Trust is an assessment of whether someone will fulfill the promises and
future actions they commit to. Over time our actions and the assessments that they provoke produce our public
identity, the story and assessments of who we are and what we can be trusted for. We can build identities of
being trustworthy if we keep most of our promises, let people know in advance when we have a breakdown in
fulfilling them, and take care of the consequences of our breakdowns. If we dont do this, we will build an
identity of a kind of jerk, perhaps a charming jerk, or even a criminal jerk.
When promises you are a customer for are not fulfilled, or managed well, the appropriate move to make is a
complaint. The complaint is an assertion that a promise had been broken, and is a request for a new promise. It
shows that you are willing to engage again in a shared future. If you do not fulfill promises you have made, or
manage them well, then the appropriate move to make is an apology. An apology is a declaration that your
actions have not reflected your intentions, you recognize the consequence to your customer, and you offer a
new promise for action. In apologies, we also offer promises to do what was missing, or not to do what was
damaging, in the future relationship with the customer.

2006 Robert Dunham

All rights reserved worldwide. Not to be copied or reprinted without permission.

13

Complaints and apologies are moves to rebuild trust after promises are broken by making new agreements,
new promises, and giving each other the chance to demonstrate that promises can be fulfilled and managed.
Your learning team is a place to practice building, and rebuilding trust with each other. Your breakdowns can be
an opportunity to learn to build trust, rather than evidence that the future, or the other person, is untrustworthy.

Managing Commitments, Breakdowns, and Satisfaction

We manage trust by managing commitments. Part of managing commitments is managing the breakdowns that
arise in their fulfillment. If we manage commitments and breakdowns well, by maintaining our connection to our
customers and teammates, staying in communication, keeping our shared future up to date, and showing that
we care about the consequences of our actions on others, we will also manage satisfaction. Trust, value,
satisfaction, and breakdowns are all assessments about the fulfillment of commitments and the impact that they
are having on the future. How we manage a commitment affects all these assessments of trust, value,
satisfaction, and breakdowns. As you practice with your learning team, you have the opportunity to learn how to
manage all of these together at once. To manage trust, value, satisfaction, and breakdowns are the skills of the
competent manager and leader.
The actions of managing trust, value, satisfaction, and breakdowns include the following:
Apologies
Managing Capacity
Complaints
Requests
Promises
Declaring Breakdowns
Asking for Help
Offers
Offering and Opening to Assessments
Clarifying conditions of satisfaction
Revoking
Canceling
Keeping the story of the shared future up to date
Keeping the level of commitment clear and current

The Learning Team is Your Product, Your Place to Learn, and you will be Assessed
Based on the Team You Produce
We have had a wide range of performance of learning teams and people in them. We have had teams that
create so much value for each other that they set up conference calls every week, instead of every other week.
We have teams that have graduated from CEO but still continue their team calls as part of their personal
practices for years afterwards, and who are committed to them as a permanent practice in their lives. They
have learned how to have conversations dealing with their real lives, their real concerns, and to create value
and possibilities for each other in their conversations.

2006 Robert Dunham

All rights reserved worldwide. Not to be copied or reprinted without permission.

14

We have also had teams that have only partial attendance at their calls, with participants that dont engage in
the program work at an agreed upon pace, who dont prepare for the calls, and they dont seem to have
conversations that produce satisfaction. Some teams occasionally even disband or disintegrate. We see that
foundations for an effective learning team are commitments and practices to learn how to:

Keep the work of the program focused on what is relevant in your life and your ambition
Not make the program or its work academic
Be serious about practicing
Be honest in your commitment, and your commitments
Be open to the assessments and observations of others
To declare breakdowns and ask for help appropriately, and
Learn to design interpretations and action, to design the Self and embodiment that you are, not just
look for answers or techniques.

The program does not provide you with learning teams. You have to build them. In your work careers, you
almost never get provided with effective teams either, you have to build them.
Any team will encounter the breakdowns that human beings are, and the challenges that all teams have to
overcome. Other teams that you have been on that work were made that way by some leader or leaders and
members. If you are having difficulty producing an effective team, it is time to go back to the fundamental
phenomena that generate teams. Look at what was already in place in your working teams that is now missing.
The learning team is the place to learn to invent what is missing. And what is missing is always fundamentally
commitments and competencies. If you have missing commitments, ask for them, offer them. If you are
declined after many attempts, get coaching. If you team isnt working, we keep encouraging you to look at what
is missing in you, not the others. If it still doesnt work, find people who will share similar commitments with you.
Most teams can get to shared commitments, but the journey can be challenging and even painful. It is
overcoming this challenge that is the most important learning of the learning team.
Keep going into the future, take action, ask for help designing, dont get paralyzed, and learn what it is about
yourself and other people that is the source of shared futures, shared commitment, satisfying teamwork, and of
the breakdowns with all these.
Part of how your coaches will assess you is how well you learn with your learning team, how well you build your
learning team, and how well you deal with the breakdowns and challenges of your team.

Create the Future

We create the future in our lives with other people where we share commitments or not, where we share
standards or not, where we coordinate well or not. The learning team is not just a place to enhance your
learning in CEO, but is a place to learn about the fundamental human characteristics of commitment, styles,
listening, and practices. Your learning team is a place to learn how to be a more powerful leader in dealing with
these phenomena. We invite you to hold your learning team as an important place for your learning and
practicing in management and leadership.

2006 Robert Dunham

All rights reserved worldwide. Not to be copied or reprinted without permission.

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