Team Coaching

We provide team coaching to experienced leadership teams and the systems they are leading. The art of coaching such teams is to engage them on their issues and agendas, live in the room, using structures and models when needed to progress the team, not the other way round. This enables us to surface real issues and get resolution of them.

Why Team Coaching?

Different teams have different needs which will influence what you need to focus on, eg

• The team needs to form in pursuit of a collective intent
• The team needs to adapt and reset through COVID.
• The team needs to be clear on how to be a high performing team and drive a high performing culture.
• Team members need to get to know each other (especially new members) and reflect on how to get the most out of each other.
• The team needs to find its feet under a new leader, and be aware of new expectations.
• The first 12 months of a team will provide many learning situations that need processing and harvesting.

The Benefits of Team Coaching

• Reduced tensions or lack of collaboration
• Increased focus on a common goal
• Faster integration of new members into the team
• Increased trust and strengths of relationships
• Improved leadership of the team and by the team
• Personal development for each team member

What we know works

5 key areas that need to be explored to become a high performing team. They are:

1. Mandate – is it clear why this team exists and what ‘space’ it occupies, what decisions belong to the team?
2. Strategy/goal – What is the unifying goal that the team can only deliver by working together i.e. that cannot be achieved apart? Is there a shared and agreed strategy?
3. Dynamics – How do the team members operate, is it aligned with the above? Is the team getting the leadership they need to succeed?
4. External Stakeholders – How are the team managing the external boundaries and influencers? Is the team too insular or overly sensitive to outside pressures?
5. Learning – Is this the best learning space that there can be for the members of the team? Are we enabling each other to perform at a higher rate than if not working on our learning together?

The culture a team behaves is obviously the sum of these. Often it is useful for the team to consider the culture it has, or has inherited and the culture it needs to create. That is determined by the strategy they deploy to deliver on the mandate.

Our Approach

We offer both online virtual team coaching sessions and face to face offsite team coaching. We find the following sequence has a high impact on a team:

• Quick start – an intensive initial process on line or face to face – evening and day session
• The focus is being in a team and getting to know each other as people. A light touch on the shared strategies and goals to ensure alignment.
• Team Contracting – How the team agrees to operate, behaviours expected as well as what the team needs from the leader and what the leader needs from the team.
• High Performing Dynamics – designing an ongoing process with the team providing time to explore the actual dynamics and what makes each team member ‘tick’.
• Learning to Perform – an evening/day session to share what we are learning about our own leadership, any changes in team performance and how the team is moving the culture.