How the Team Coaching approach works

The Team Coach will work to a set of principles or working assumptions as follows:

  • The team is essentially resourceful, rather than a problem to be fixed
  • The coach’s prime job is to help the team draw fully on its own resources
  • The coach also has a role in connecting the team to external resources, be they ideas, skills or techniques
  • The coach and the team work in the spirit of professional partnership rather than on a ‘doctor/patient’ model
  • Team coaching is directed toward change and achievement in an organisational context – it is not therapy or a ‘team hug’
  • The team is full of whole, real people, not just functionaries: personality, emotion and the full scale of human diversity is all part of the mix

What actually happens?

There are of course many variations – no two teams are the same or in identical circumstances, but typically:

  • Everyone’s voice is heard: the coach works on behalf of the whole team, not just the boss. An initial step is to hold confidential 1-1 discussions with each member of the team, where broad perspectives, specific issues and aspirations are explored. These are then edited by the coach into a short positioning document and shared with the team members prior to an initial meeting. Individual views are non-attributable.
  • At a first whole-team meeting, expectations about the exercise are discussed and negotiated explicitly. What the team needs from the coach, what the coach needs from the team and what the team members need from each other is discussed, and an informal but thorough contract created for the coaching intervention. This often covers important issues such as how the team will deal with uncomfortable or controversial issues. This is not just a cursory ‘ground rules’ exercise but an important part of the whole exercise, signalling as it does joint responsibility for progress and success
  • From this point in, the team works to a schedule of day-long meetings, generally around 6 in all over a period of up to a year. Each meeting is devoted to one or more aspects of the issues raised in the initial discussion process, plus agenda issues that arise out of the current discussions
  • Each meeting will move the team forward in some significant way. Typically this can involve resolutions about personal or interpersonal behaviours. Sometimes changes are about pragmatic procedural issues such as meetings structure and protocol. Some developments may involve action in the wider organisation – it is important to emphasise the team does not live in a fish-bowl bit, but is part of a wider system.  The five categories mentioned above, i.e. clarity, standards, recognition, responsibility and climate form an important part of the development agenda of many teams.      

What does the Team Coach contribute?

Team coaching combines a number of different disciplines, primarily those of:

  • Executive coaching
  • Group facilitation
  • Organisational development consulting
  • Team building

The Team Coach utilises these skills flexibly. In terms of very practical behaviours you could expect your team coach to:

  • Help the team define it’s agenda and development programme
  • Challenge unhelpful behaviours and negative assumptions
  • Present useful ideas, activities and models to help the team think through it’s issues
  • Develop structure and purpose in all discussions
  • Hold the team to account for its behaviour and performance
  • Help the team develop insight into itself, by offering or by encouraging feedback and reflection
  • Maintain positive energy and motivation – sometimes by such simple behaviours as interruption in the face of unproductive discussions
  • Help the team to face up to some of the tricky and even ‘undiscussable’ issues that can absorb so much energy
  • Help the team to plan and review development activities
  • Maintain an ‘engaged detachment’ – that is, stay in empathy and respectful rapport without inadvertently colluding with the team
  • Encourage and support through the challenging parts

A Management Futures Team Coach is ‘disaster trained’: we have been doing this kind of work for many years – decades in some cases – and have experienced and dealt with most of what can happen in teams. Although we work with a light and unassuming touch, it is very sure. You will be in safe hands.