Team coaching has become more and more popular, and when you think about the importance of any team you’re in, it’s easy to see why. Let’s face it, we’re all part of a team every day - whether you’re in NZ’s team of 5 million, a sports team, a work team, or a team at home - we want to both get results and enjoy the journey.
When you think about a great team you worked in, as well as achieving more, I bet you felt great too - motivated, valued, and had at least one good friend in the team.
Collaboration in, and across, great teams are how we will keep getting things done, especially as the world speeds up, and problems get more complicated everywhere. We have the ability to solve problems together, we ‘simply’ need to work together well.
Though, as a team member, you know there is no ‘simple’ in teams (and no ‘I’ in teams either, as the old saying goes). And you know we’ve all been trying to help make teams better in many different ways across the years:
leadership development (where only the leader gets up-skilled and even then can quickly fall back into old habits),
performance management (where we try to manage the low performers out of teams, and usually cause unintended consequences to them, ourselves, and the entire team somewhere along the long journey)
‘agile’ teams (which may or may not work well, depending on so many things).
These three ideas are all entire blogs for another day, and don’t necessarily solve for high performing teams.
Team coaching works because it takes into account each of the team, how the team works together, and the environment it works in. Looking at this trio as a system helps get results that work.
When does team coaching work?
When you want to get better at what you do, have a problem you want to solve, or a goal to achieve (i.e. anytime). Here are some examples:
How do we get better results or actually get the right stuff done?
How do we build a better team culture and psychological safety?
What are our team purpose, goals and values, and how do we use these to get clarity and work together well?
How do we improve our customer processes and stakeholder engagement?
How do we work together well as a new team?
How do we solve problems together?
How do we make better decisions?
How do we learn together?
What new ways of working will help us perform?
Who is team coaching for?
Team coaching gets results for Boards, Executive teams, organisational departments, and individual teams (even entire organisations).
Team coaching can be run by a team leader, however it’s often more effective to bring in an outside coach, so the leader can be part of the entire solution.
How does team coaching work?
Peter Hawkins defines team coaching as “enabling a team to function at more than the sum of its parts, by clarifying its mission and improving its external and internal relationships. It is different, therefore, from coaching team leaders on how to lead their teams, or coaching individuals in a group setting.”
This is why team coaching works, as it’s all about co-design of a way forward which works in your organisation, team and environment.
How do I find out more?
Team coaching is still a relatively new area, though expanding quickly because of the results it is generating and some practitioners, researchers and organisations have been using this for many years, so there are already great resources out there. Try some of these:
Email Anna - I’d love to talk to you about team coaching
Read a book - Clutterbuck, David. Coaching the team at work 2.
Listen to a podcast - Team coaching zone #19 Systemic team coaching
Google - Systemic Team coaching (and be amazed at all the resources)
Have fun!