Team Coaching

What Does Team Coaching Involve?

Team coaching, like individual coaching, takes place within an environment of confidentiality and respect for those being coached. Coaching must be voluntary with team members opting in to participate in the process.

Initially, the coach will work with the team to understand what it is the team needs to achieve. The coach may use a team survey tool to collect anonymous feedback from the team to accelerate development.

Coaches usually work with teams of four to twelve team members. Team coaching sessions are 1.5 – 2 hours long. The frequency and duration of team coaching sessions is determined by the needs of the organisation and the team.

Coaches may sometimes combine individual coaching with team coaching, and this approach can be a great way to accelerate development.

What are the Goals of Team Coaching?

We know from the research literature that it is not that important who is on the team but how those team members interact with each other. Five key dynamics set successful teams apart from other teams.

Broadly team coaches work to improve these five dynamics: –
Psychological safety: Can members of the team take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high-quality work on time?
Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans for our team clear?

Meaning of work: Are we working on something personally important for each of us?
Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we are doing matters?
(Source; Google Project Oxygen).

How Effective is Team Coaching?

The most significant barrier to high performance in teams is poor relationships between team members. Unspoken and unresolved conflicts that result in ongoing resent that members can hold for each other reduce collaboration, innovation, and productivity.

Team coaching is a highly effective way to enable teams to have courageous conversations that team members have avoided.

Team coaching acts as a tool to build internal capacity for team members to become self-sufficient in having courageous conversations with each other without the need for a coach. The key to team coaching’s effectiveness lies in its ability to create autonomy and capability within the team so that the team becomes self-sustaining.