From ambiguity to ownership: a reflective practitioner inquiry into team coaching in a global experiential learning environment

Purpose This paper examines how team coaching supported a student team in learning to organise itself under conditions of ambiguity, enabling collective ownership and shared leadership to emerge. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a reflective practitioner inquiry to examine coaching practice within a single team participating in the Global Business Challenge (GBC). Reflection was informed by programme artefacts generated through routine educational practice, including coaching session transcripts, client interactions, student reflections and other contemporaneous materials. An iterative, interpretive analysis developed a five-phase process-oriented account of how collective ownership and shared leadership emerged as the team learnt to organise itself. Findings The findings reveal a developmental trajectory from initial ambiguity and dependence toward increasing collective ownership and shared leadership. Team coaching did not resolve ambiguity but sustained it as a condition for learning, prompting the team to develop its own ways of organising. Originality/value This paper develops a process-oriented, practice-based account of how coaching supported teams to organise themselves under conditions of ambiguity, enabling collective ownership and shared leadership to emerge.