When Teams Use What They Teach
The most useful thing I’ve learned about Kwela in my first few weeks came from watching our own internal meetings. I joined as Senior Consultant, I haven’t led a client session yet, and I’m still in the stretch of onboarding where most of the learning happens by observation. What I keep observing is a team that runs its own frameworks on itself, without ceremony and without anyone pointing it out.
When two people on the team see a project differently, I’ve watched them name the disagreement out loud instead of letting it sit underneath the conversation, and work through it using the same conflict resolution approach we teach clients. When someone gives feedback on a piece of work, it follows the same structure we’d coach a manager to use with their team. When a meeting starts to drift, someone will notice it and redirect using the same facilitation instincts we build in the people who come through our programs (one colleague keeps a wand on hand for exactly this moment, and it works every time).
None of this is performed for my benefit. I don’t think anyone on this team is thinking about the fact that the new consultant is watching. They’re just working the way they’ve always worked, and it happens to be exactly what’s taught in our workshops.
That consistency is rarer than it should be. Plenty of organizations can produce a well-designed leadership program, a clean framework, a compelling facilitator. Far fewer can say that the people delivering that content actually run their own team on it. There’s a real difference between a firm that has good tools and a firm whose people trust those tools enough to use them when there’s no client watching.
That difference matters for two reasons. The first is credibility. It’s one thing to teach a feedback model. It’s another to have internalized it so completely that it shows up unprompted in a Tuesday afternoon strategy meeting. It’s also something that makes me proud to be a part of a team that is authentic in its purpose and practices. The second is proof of concept. Every time I watch this team use a tool on itself, I’m watching evidence that the tool actually works, under real conditions, with real stakes, not just in a workshop room where everyone has agreed in advance to try it.
And the result is a team that’s genuinely comfortable with friction. Disagreement gets said out loud instead of buried, ideas get challenged instead of politely accepted, and nobody seems to take it personally. These frameworks are designed to produce a high-trust and effective team, and I’m watching them do it in real time. As the newest person in the room, I did decide to purposely ask myself: does this team use its own material when there’s no client watching? A few weeks in, I can already answer that for Kwela. I’ve watched it happen in ordinary meetings, on ordinary Tuesdays, over and over again. That’s a big part of why I’m excited to be building this next chapter here, and to be bringing these same skills that work to our clients.
Kwela offers a variety of services ranging from leadership development programs to coaching, team building, skills training, strategic planning and more. Explore here
Brittany Gurman, Senior Consultant
brittanyg@kwelaleadership.com
