Coaching, one of three

Team coaching

A leadership team is more than the people in it. When something is not working, the discussion commonly turns to who is at fault, while the thing that needs attention is how the team works together. Team coaching addresses that instead: the agreements the team has never stated aloud, the subjects it leaves alone, and how it behaves under pressure.

Talk about your team

See the other two

Team coaching session with a leadership team

When it is the right instrument

When the same disagreement returns in different clothing. When decisions are taken in the meeting and quietly unmade in the corridor afterwards. When a reorganization has changed the chart and nothing has changed in how people actually work. Or when everyone is entirely courteous and nothing moves.

Three further team coaching topics sit alongside those above: conflict without damage, team vision, and team potential. Three more programs work with leadership groups rather than with the team system: a lab in which a group turns written principles into behavior anyone can recognize, an alignment session after a restructure, and a modular leadership program across three to six months.

Working agreements written by a leadership team

The practical part

Who it is forLeadership teams, cross-functional teams, teams that have recently been restructured or merged, and teams navigating conflict or change.

FormatHalf a day to two days in person, or an engagement of four to six sessions across three to six months.

Group sizeOne intact team, usually 6 to 15 people.

Starts withDiscovery interviews with the team and its leader, so that the agenda rests on what is real.

Based onICF team coaching competencies and code of ethics, systemic work from ORSC training with CRR Global, published research from Gottman and Mindell.

OutputWorking agreements, a role map, and commitments the team reviews itself.

The crucial revelation was the power of communication. The more I engage, the more openness I receive from others.
Angela, Chief Accountant, ABM

I realized that the barriers were in my mind, and the actual situation was quite different.
Angela, Chief Accountant, ABM

Questions people ask

How does this differ from a team workshop?

A workshop provides a group with content and a productive day. Team coaching works with the team itself, over time, on the patterns it maintains without intending to.

Is a single session enough?

Where the purpose is to align everyone after a reorganization, it can be. Where a team has held the same pattern for years, a single session will not be sufficient.

Do you work with the team leader separately?

Usually yes, alongside the team work. The leader forms part of the picture rather than observing it, so the two threads reinforce one another.

What if there is genuine conflict in the team?

Then that is the work. It begins by naming the patterns rather than the people, which is the only way the subject becomes discussable.

One team, one honest conversation

Where a leadership team is courteous in the room and frustrated outside it, that is a pattern rather than a matter of personalities.

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