Helping a Team of Team Coaches and Facilitators Learn Skillful Collaboration from the Inside Out
Why this Matters
Key insight from the journey:
Michael Richardson, (Owner, Expertized BV) explained: “Before we can train our clients about the Skillful Collaboration approach, we need to experience it ourselves.”
And one participant later reflected: “Sometimes the biggest growth in teams is not learning to speak more. It is learning to express the things we normally leave unsaid.”
Many leadership and team development professionals spend their careers helping others learn and grow. Yet even experienced coaches, facilitators and trainers can fall into familiar and unhelpful patterns when working together as a team. Skillful Collaboration is not simply a collection of tools and techniques. It is a set of human skills that can only be developed through practice.
This Train-the-Trainer journey gave a team of experienced learning professionals the opportunity to explore what happens when they apply the principles of Skillful Collaboration to themselves before bringing them to clients.
Challenge
The Expertized extended team was preparing to become facilitators of the Skillful Collaboration approach. While the team had extensive experience in team coaching, facilitation and learning design, they wanted to deepen their understanding of the practices, mindsets and behaviours that underpin Skillful Collaboration.
Rather than learning the methodology from presentations alone, they wanted to experience it firsthand. The goal was not simply to understand the concepts, but to discover what Skillful Collaboration feels like in practice and what becomes possible when a team intentionally develops its capabilities in conversations, decisions, meetings and peer coaching.
Approach
The journey consisted of two Train-the-Trainer workshops supported by a Skillful Collaboration Team Assessment.
The assessment provided a shared view of the team’s strengths and opportunities across the four Places of Skillful Collaboration:
- Skillful Conversations
- Skillful Decisions
- Skillful Meetings
- Skillful Peer Coaching
The assessment debrief became an important learning experience in itself. Rather than focusing solely on the scores, participants explored the different perspectives behind the results. These conversations revealed assumptions, surfaced differing experiences and demonstrated how dialogue can create deeper understanding than data alone.
The workshops then combined theory, reflection and extensive practice.
Participants explored:
- The 7 Modes of Talking and Thinking Together
- Skillful Conversations
- Emotional Agility
- Dialogic Actions
- Team Norms
- Team reflection and sense-making practices
Throughout the sessions, the emphasis was not on learning content but on experiencing collaboration in action. The team practised challenging one another respectfully, exploring different perspectives, making thinking visible and engaging in conversations that might normally remain unspoken.
As the sessions progressed, participants increasingly experimented with the very skills they would later introduce to their own clients.
Reflections
One of the most important insights was that Skillful Collaboration is not primarily about speaking more. It is about expressing what would otherwise remain unsaid. Through structured conversations and practical exercises, participants discovered how questions, emotions, disagreement and different perspectives can strengthen collaboration when approached skillfully.
The team also recognised that effective collaboration requires more than good intentions. It requires deliberate practice. Several participants discovered that some of their strongest learning came not from new concepts, but from hearing perspectives that challenged their own assumptions.
As one participant reflected afterwards, some of the most valuable moments occurred when emotions surfaced, assumptions were challenged and people discovered more courageous ways of contributing to the conversation.
The journey reinforced the idea that collaboration is not something that happens automatically because people are experienced professionals. It is a skill that can be learned, practised and refined over time.
Outcomes
The team developed a deeper understanding of the principles and practices that underpin Skillful Collaboration. They experienced firsthand how structured dialogue can improve conversations, strengthen relationships and create greater engagement.
The workshops also helped the team develop a shared language around challenge, listening, decision-making, peer support and accountability.
Together, they created a set of practical agreements including:
- Challenge is welcome
- Questions matter
- Emotions can be named respectfully
- Ownership is explicit
- Accountability is normal
- Learning happens through practice
Most importantly, the team left with the confidence, experience and practical facilitation approaches needed to bring Skillful Collaboration to their own clients and help teams develop stronger conversations, decisions, meetings and peer coaching practices.
Rather than introducing a methodology they had studied, they were now able to facilitate an approach they had lived themselves.
What Made the Difference?
The programme did not position participants as trainers learning a new framework. Instead, it invited them to become learners again.
By experiencing Skillful Collaboration from the inside out, the team gained a deeper appreciation for both the opportunities and challenges their clients face when learning new ways of working together.
This case illustrates a core principle of Skillful Collaboration:
The most effective team coaches and facilitators are not those who simply understand the concepts. They are those who have experienced the challenges, discomforts and breakthroughs of the practices themselves.
Testimonials
Michael Richardson, Owner, Expertized
“One of my biggest learnings was the importance of turning conversations into true dialogue — where we genuinely build on each other’s ideas. That’s a fundamental ingredient for real innovation. We also experienced how radical candor in discussions can create moments of discomfort, but those moments often help teams grow stronger together.
Our team mission is simple: to help our clients — and each other — grow and feel awesome while collaborating together.
This Skillful Collaboration approach is a great example of creating that kind of ‘awesomeness.’
We can’t wait to start bringing it to our clients’ teams!”
