Team Coaching – Five Steps Closer to Thriving
Did you know that less than 10% of teams are truly effective?*
How could team coaching promote this, and what benefit could it offer you? In this blog, Melinda Holmén brings out five selected perspectives on teams and their coaching.
Individual coaching has become more popular. Even though the vast majority still haven’t experienced the transformative power of coaching, most people already have an idea of what it means. A coach is a person who collaborates with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that aims to inspire and maximize their personal and professional potential.**
Team coaching, on the other hand, is still a relatively unknown form of team development. It is also often misunderstood or confused with only supporting the building phase of teams. Let’s explore more!
Nugget nr 1: Coaching a team is not the same as building it. Team building is often seen as a one-time, shorter intervention. Maybe a group trip, a personality test and review for the whole team, or a communication workshop. All of these are valuable and can play an important role in building trust and connection. The team coaching process is again a structured, longer process that can take several months. The goal of the process is to improve both the team’s dynamics and its goals, for example, business results. A functioning team not only solves a current problem but has a deep understanding and consciously built model of how they want to operate, what they want to believe, and how they want to work together.
Nugget nr 2: Coaching a team is like rowing the team in a boat efficiently across the river in one go and not everyone separately. This also sounds cost-effective. While in individual coaching, everyone is met separately as an individual, in team coaching, the focus is on the whole; the team is, therefore, together “It” that is being looked at. Team coaching strengthens the team’s awareness of this whole. If a team wants to change how they work together, they must first see themselves as a whole – this is systems intelligence!
Nugget nr 3: What gets measured gets done. Team coaching makes it easy to measure the team’s strengths at the beginning and end of the process. The team can see their strengths and development targets more clearly and align what needs to be focused on. The focus of development can be, for example, communication, decision-making, resources, trust or something else. The best team coaching process is also connected to the organization’s key goals and metrics. In this case, the team can clearly see the rate of return on their “investment”.
Nugget nr 4: Teams need the most connection, sense of belonging, and shared understanding. In all my team discussions and work, especially in hybrid and global teams, the need for them to get to know each other better, trust each other more and communicate more effectively comes up repeatedly. This is the most common answer when managers are asked what would make the most significant change in their company’s teams. Through the team coaching process, this possibility is opened for teams. The goal is a team space where its members can feel safe, take their time and start talking constructively about what really matters.
Nugget nr 5: Courage increases open and well-intentioned challenge. The best teams are teams where people dare to challenge each other. Imagine being in a team where people care about each other but also dare to be radically honest and open with each other – both challenging each other and daring to admit their failures and shortcomings. The team’s coaching process supports this goal. It also means that previously quieter voices become visible, shared, and heard and that the loudest can find new channels. Braver teams get more done.
If you have a team and goals for developing your working methods, increasing mutual understanding, becoming aware of systems, improving efficiency, and focusing on important things – what do you do for these? When do you start the team coaching process? The best answer would be yesterday; the next best would be today.
Author: Melinda Holmén, Leadership, Teams, Career- and Stress-Balance coach, Coach Partner Thewind Oy, PCC Professional Certified Coach ICF, CPCC Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, PQ Positive Intelligence Coach, MSc. Econ. 15 years of experience in international business management and coaching. More than 1000 certified coaching hours.
*) Team Coaching International (TCI)
**) ICF International Coaching Federation