What is a Systemic Project Coach?

The term appears often on this site and for good reason:

The Systemic Project Coach is a new stance to address the human dynamics that derail projects.

Sparkli illustration of the Systemic Project Coach concept with a paper plane symbolizing momentum and change.

Most project issues are not technical.

They are human.

Missed expectations, resistance, emotional tension, political dynamics — these live inside projects.

Yet, most project frameworks lack the tools to address these human dynamics effectively.

Curious about how this approach can transform your projects?

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From Project Management to Systemic Coaching

Project managers are expected to operate within a familiar triangle:

Expertise:
Knowing what to do
Management:
Organizing people and tasks
Leadership:
Inspiring action

Visual showing project manager overwhelmed inside the traditional triangle of expertise, management, and leadership.

This model assumes stability, authority, and clarity. In the real world, these assumptions collapse.

Project managers are asked to be experts without having full expertise. They manage without formal power. They lead without always having followers.

They are left alone with the real blockers: ambiguity, disengagement, resistance, power plays, emotional overload.

The pressure builds inside the triangle.

And the result? They hold the pressure without leverage.

This is where the Systemic Project Coach stance comes in. It represents a posture shift — a different way to stand in the same environment.

It activates three interdependent capacities:

Self-leadership:
Staying grounded under pressure. Leading yourself before leading others.
Relational agility:
Working through tension with assertiveness and respect. Setting boundaries with presence. Using coaching techniques to support engagement without taking over.
Systemic thinking:
Stepping back to see how people, processes, and structures interact — and identifying where to act for structural impact.

ystemic Project Coach framework showing self-leadership, relational agility, and systemic thinking as empowering levers.

These capacities do not replace expertise, management, and leadership — they make them possible under pressure. They address the limits of each edge:

When expertise is not enough, self-leadership gives you discernment.
When management fails to move people, relational agility opens trust.
When leadership becomes performative, systemic thinking reveals leverage.

These are muscles to train. When they align, something else happens:

Leadership emerges as a result.

This shift opens new levers of action — without needing more control, more authority, or more effort. It is a way to lead in uncertainty by standing differently.

Same environment. New posture. Better outcomes.

What it looks like in practice

Here are three project situations that show how this stance plays out:

The deadline is slipping. The sponsor starts pressing.

Reflex:

Expertise

You feel the pressure rise and lean into your expertise to fix it fast. You rush to give answers. You jump into doing, fast. You try to prove you are still on top.

You react too quickly, without checking what is really needed.
You stop asking questions, take it all on yourself.
The team pulls back. Confidence erodes. Tension rises.

Systemic Project Coach:

Self-leadership

You pause. Notice the urge to perform and fix. You catch the reflex: “I must prove I have the answers. I need to be the one who knows.”

You ask: "What truly matters now? What is mine to carry, and what is not?"
You reframe: from proving competence to building trust.
The tone shifts. Collaboration returns. Delivery becomes a shared effort.

Two workstreams are misaligned. The tension is obvious, but no one names it.

Reflex:

Management
You try to regain control. You rework the RACI, restructure priorities and check-ins. You focus on tasks and avoid the emotional noise.

The schedule looks cleaner, but people start avoiding discussions.
Meetings stay on the surface. Misalignments grow under the radar.
Blame circulates. Engagement drops. Nothing really moves.

Systemic Project Coach:

Relational agility

You pause. You sense the discomfort and ask: “Is there something unspoken we should put on the table?” You hold the space without rushing to fix.

Tension surfaces. People feel seen and start engaging again.
You ask: “What do you think would help us move forward together?"
Ownership returns. Alignment becomes shared, not enforced.

Two stakeholders are in silent conflict. Decisions stall. You are caught in the middle.

Reflex:

Leadership

You step in to get things moving. You escalate. You absorb the fallout.

You try to be the bridge, but neither side commits.

You take on the responsibility that should be shared.
You become the exhausted scapegoat — accountable without power.

Systemic Project Coach:

Systemic thinking

You step back and map the invisible grid: misaligned interests, unofficial power lines, unresolved tensions.

You stop patching and ask each stakeholder: “What would need to be true for you to move on this?”
You adjust the map and bring the right players into the loop.
Responsibility lands where it belongs. The blockage starts to shift.

Real case:

Re-engaging a disengaged stakeholder during a CRM rollout

This case is real. It took place during a CRM rollout across EMEA in a global company. It was documented and later analyzed in Camille Caclin’s professional thesis* (ESCP, 2023).

An international inside sales team across EMEA joined a virtual meeting. One rep per country was present, along with their manager.

The goal: introduce a new CRM “smart call” feature and collect early reactions before rollout.

Each participant was invited to speak in turn.

Then came this:

“Well… Looks like Big Brother is watching.”

No laugh. Just silence.

What happened next shows how the Systemic Project Coach stance works in action:

Self-leadership

The project lead paused.

She recognized the signal: sarcasm often masks anger — and anger often reveals fear, or a boundary crossed.

Instead of brushing it off, joking back, or defending the tool, she chose presence.

She stayed grounded and genuinely curious, keeping in mind that:

If the emotional risk was low for her, it was high for him to speak up in front of his manager and peers.

Relational agility

She shifted from a delivery posture to a listening posture.

First, she gently reframed the space: that all perspectives mattered. Then, she offered him an entry or an exit:

"Thanks for the comment. Would you feel okay saying more about what made you say it? We can also talk separately, if you prefer.”

To her surprise, he opened up.

He described a painful experience in a previous company where a similar CRM tool had been used to justify layoffs.

Since then, trust in digital initiatives — and those who drive them — had been broken.

She did not jump to reassure or explain. She validated what she heard. Then asked:

“What would help rebuild trust for you?”

He was pleasantly surprised to see his input taken seriously. He named transparency, clear KPIs, and alignment with legal norms. These were immediately integrated into the next project steps.

Systemic thinking

This was not a one-off concern. It was a signal.

If trust was this fragile here, it could break elsewhere too.

She reframed what might have seemed like a one-off comment into a systemic signal — one the team needed to act on.

The rollout was adjusted: to prioritize transparency, address unspoken fears, and make the commitment and answers to feedback visible.

The project team introduced anonymized feedback loops, published clear metrics definitions, and briefed country managers on legal constraints to reassure their teams.

The stakeholder who joked about “Big Brother”?

He became a local advocate for adoption.

Leadership here meant creating the conditions for trust, not defending the tool.

What made it possible?

She read the sarcasm as a signal, not a joke.
She validated the emotion behind it, without trying to fix it.
She asked an open question and left a safe room for a no.
She asked what he would need to shift his stance — instead of guessing or persuading.
She listened fully, followed through concretely, and stayed aligned.

This was not about being nice or pleasing. It was about acting with presence, respect, and consistency.

Why did it work?

She was emotionally equipped to handle discomfort.
She did not try to control the conversation.
She took the message seriously — and turned it into action the team could deliver on.

These are skills: They are learnable and trainable.

Curious about how this approach could apply to your own challenges?

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The emotional cost of seeing the system

Choosing a systemic posture is not always easy. It means seeing what others avoid, naming what feels uncomfortable, and acting without a guaranteed outcome.

It is a soft skill with sharp edges. You see patterns, power dynamics, and unintended consequences before others even notice the tension.

It demands presence, emotional awareness, and the courage to try — even when you do not hold all the levers.

Sometimes you will face inertia, politics, or indifference. And you will need to decide: is it time to act, wait, or step out?

Staying too long in a system that misaligns with your values has a cost: cognitive dissonance builds, energy drains, and burnout lurks.

But there is another side.

In a well-mapped system, a well-placed action — even a small shift in posture — can trigger ripple effects.

You start to see what moves, learn what matters, and regain a sense of impact.

Systemic thinking means knowing where to act, where to hold back, and how to preserve yourself along the way.

Often unspoken, often undervalued, it can feel like a burden when others do not share it — but when used with clarity and care, it becomes one of your most powerful levers.

Not sure how systemic thinking may apply for you?

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The origin of the concept

The Systemic Project Coach approach was developed between 2021 and 2023 by Camille Caclin, Founder of Sparkli, as part of her professional thesis* at ESCP Business School. It bridges real-life experience, field observation, and academic research — sparked by one persistent gap:

Project managers are expected to handle complex human dynamics, yet most frameworks come from leadership or management fields, and do not address their specific constraints and context.

Its foundation draws on:

General System Theory (Ludwig von Bertalanffy) and second-order cybernetics (including Heinz von Foerster), offering a way to see projects as dynamic systems shaped by feedback loops, interdependencies, and perspective.
Neuroscience research on emotional processing and threat response, among others the work of Joseph LeDoux, helping ground the understanding of fear, resistance, and decision-making under stress.
Emotion regulation models rooted in scientific research, including those by James Gross, which help frame emotional agility as a learnable, trainable set of skills.

Additional structured models used in practice include:

The psychological safety and team learning model (Amy Edmondson),
The systems leadership lens (Peter Senge),
And the ICF coaching competency framework as a guide for coaching posture in project work.

This approach has been applied in digital transformation contexts — especially in the life sciences sector — and continues to evolve through practice.

*Caclin, C. (2023) La posture de Coach Systémique Projet: hypothèse d’un axe de mutation des compétences du chef de projet. Professional thesis. ESCP Business School. © Camille Caclin, 2023. All rights reserved.