Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See with Liberating Structures - Troika Consulting

How it used to go

She noticed it in the questions that remained unanswered.
Not because people didn’t ask them, but because they had nowhere to really land. When someone got stuck in their work, it quickly became an individual problem. Something to solve on your own, or perhaps discuss with a manager later.

There was hardly any room for this in team meetings. The focus was on progress, alignment, and decisions. Understandable — but it also meant that development questions often remained out of sight.

Yet she knew: those questions were there.
Doubts about approach. About role. About how something could be done smarter or differently.
The team had enough knowledge. Experience too. It just was rarely tapped into.

Slowly, a pattern emerged where people mainly found their own way. Not from unwillingness, but from habit. And with that, a large part of the collective power remained unused.

A new structure

During a joint work session, she suggested something that sounded small, but felt different.
“What if we really help each other?”

Not in the form of offering solutions or making plans, but by thinking together.

She introduced Troika Consulting as a form of peer-coaching. No experts, no hierarchy. Just colleagues helping each other look.

Three people per group. One real question. Clear roles.
She explained:

• one person brings a concrete work question
• the other two help by listening, questioning, and offering ideas
• the person asking listens and chooses what is useful

“It’s not about creating the perfect answer,” she said.
“It’s about helping each other see possibilities.”

She didn’t start herself. That was a conscious choice. She wanted to show that this belonged to everyone.

What was liberated

What emerged was trust.
Not just trust in each other, but also in the team as a whole. People discovered that they really had something to offer each other — even without a formal role or expertise.

Questions became more concrete. Less cautious.

“This is where I’m stuck.”
“I don’t understand this.”
“I don’t know how to move this forward.”

And they were caught.
Not with quick solutions, but with attention. With questions that helped to see the issue more clearly. With ideas that invited rather than determined.

The conversations had something light about them. Not because the work was simple, but because no one had to carry it alone.

What shifted

After this first experience, Troika Consulting kept coming back.
It became a natural option when someone wanted to explore something.

“Shall we make a Troika of this?” became a normal sentence.

Later, they combined Troika Consulting with 1-2-4-All to share what people got from the conversations: which questions helped, which ideas stuck, what someone was going to try themselves.

With Appreciative Interviews, they explored moments when the group had successfully dealt with a challenge before. In this, people learned not only from each other, but also from themselves.

Slowly, behavior changed. People approached each other more easily. Development questions became less private. The team began to see itself as a source of support.

The culture shifted from everyone for themselves to we can carry this together.