When Nature Becomes a Partner in Coaching Teams

If your team keeps circling the same issues, or the team is looking for fresh and powerful insights and thoughts, consider changing the room and environment to the outdoors. Nature can be a powerful way to identify new perspectives and ideas, as well as provide a place that is restorative, energising and alive.

As Paul Jefferies, Professional Team Coach - specialising in coaching outdoors - says, “Nature is part of us. We are part of nature." And when teams reconnect with a wider system, attention expands, the system is reinvigorated, courage rises, and new options and opportunities appear.

As Paul explains, teams rarely get stuck for lack of intelligence, wisdom, knowledge and experience; they get stuck because their context is narrow or contracts, especially if teams are in rooms where they work and meet constantly. 

Routines, such as sitting in the same place or the same roles and activities, can compress perspective. Paul cites, “the boardroom is called the boardroom because it’s boring,” and also comments on how leaders instinctively stare out of the window when they need fresh thinking.

How nature can expand individual and team awareness

Paul’s encouragement is literal and metaphorical: “Invite your clients to come out through the window.” Shift the environment and you’ll shift the conversation.

In the outdoors, the field of awareness can widen. Horizons, weather, what makes up the environment - trees, water, colour and what lives and appears in nature - can nudge longer-term thinking by opening up coaching conversations connected with or in nature, which can be carried out in a variety of ways, such as:

•  Walking side-by-side, which can loosen defensiveness by relaxing into nature and where silence can feel natural, supporting deeper reflection.
• Body-led ‘constellation’ exercises on the grass or by water or incorporating different types of trees or equipment (such as playground frames), anything alive (or dead) - for example: birds, squirrels, ants, butterflies - the team notices in the environment to reveal hidden truths that perhaps have never been surfaced before.
• Mindfulness exercises utilising the environment.
• Coaching processes and exercises that can be adapted to the outdoors.

Team coaching, Paul reminds us, “is messy, and it’s challenging (and rewarding) work,” but in the outdoors, the mess can become meaningful when you partner with it and get creative about what nature is wisely reflecting back to us. For example, autumn colours and falling leaves might signify it's time to acknowledge, celebrate and enjoy what has been 'harvested' as well as time to prepare for the next season.

Practicalities to consider when coaching in nature

• Weather & logistics. Do a risk assessment and create a kit list. Be prepared for weather changes: somewhere to go if it rains or cools down or warms up.
• Keep groups workable (6 to 8 ideal being outside; 10 to 12 max), co-coach if larger.
• Privacy. Choose semi-private venues (estates, campuses, nature centres) with varied micro-spaces such as woodland, lawn to support psychological safety.
• Climate constraints. Hot regions: early/late sessions, shade, blended indoor -outdoor flow, biophilic urban spots (atriums, living walls, waterfronts). Cold/wet: shorter bursts outside with warm retreats.
• “Will this stay business-focused?” Anchor the day to the purpose of it as well as what is in it for stakeholders. Nature isn’t the agenda; it’s the amplifier of learning, resourcefulness and wisdom.

Why outdoor coaching lasts

Two ingredients make outdoor work 'sticky': the somatic element to it and the shared experience. People feel shifts in their bodies while doing real work together. Those moments become anchor points that teams still reference months or years later.

Outdoor coaching stays with teams long after the session ends because of the meaning-making together in motion. As Paul highlights, there is something powerful about sharing an experience that is felt in the body, not just discussed in words.

When a team walks together, pauses together, or stands in relation to something in the landscape, the shift isn’t only cognitive - it’s relational - connecting to the wider system the team is operating within: themselves, each other, their context and the beauty and wisdom of nature.

The outdoors becomes a shared reference point that the team can return to again and again. It’s potentially a moment when something opened up a powerful conversation, a dialogue that softened, a pattern that became unmistakable, a piece of insight that “landed” because it was experienced in combination with being understood.

As Paul reflects, teams don’t often lack expertise or intention. They become constrained by context. Step outside that context - literally and somatically - and what seemed fixed can become fluid again.

When teams remember they are part of something larger, they often begin to lead in larger, wiser, more connected and collaborative ways.

Closing reflections

When teams step back into their work, the outdoors doesn’t disappear: it remains as a reference point the team can return to in memory, language and shared experience. As a coach or leader of a team, you might consider the following questions to support your own and your team’s reflection:

• What might shift if we changed the environment in which those conversations happen?
• If the team were to “step outside through the window,” what new horizons might become visible?
• What is one simple, safe experiment we could try outdoors to invite fresh thinking?

When the context expands, the possibilities do too.

Be Empowered

www.empower-world.com

To listen to the Podcast Episode 241, Team Coaching, Outdoors: Reconnecting People, Purpose and System, with Jeanine Bailey and Podcast guest Paul Jefferies, click here.

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