But they rarely focus on why they need to do these things, what’s at stake and what are the consequences if they don’t This is what team coaching aims to support. Helping teams to have conversations with each other, that rarely if ever occur in corporate life, in service of what is expected of them by stakeholders, to deliver on their promises. What makes a good Team Coach? Working as a team coach brings into full view the skill, maturity, wisdom and idiosyncrasies of the coach, as well as their own under evolved areas as a human being in progress. Their willingness and ability to be vulnerable is important and they’ll model this with the team as they build connectivity and relationship trust. Some of my best learning as a coach in the last 15 years, has been to understand more fully who I am as a person, my purpose as a coach, what I stand for - my gifts and my challenges as a human being and practitioner. It comes down to the work I’ve done on myself. Team coaching more than any of the work I do, brings this into full focus. If anything is going to bring out your insecurities as a practitioner, coaching teams will! Yet I do this work, not because it’s easy – it absolutely isn’t, but because its important work. Some of us are lucky to remember a great team experience we’ve had. The majority of us however, are more likely to remember the misery of being in a dysfunctional one. What role does supervision play? Increasingly, there has been much more focus on supervision for coaches in general, for the reasons above, and you can times that by 20, when you coach teams! Supervision – generally thought of as a ‘nice to have’ by most coach colleagues in the past, in our view has become mandatory, when coaching teams. We build this into our fees and routinely share the importance of it with our clients, as we work with teams dealing with ever changing complexity. In today’s organisations and with the pace at which organisations change and evolve, all team members have a role to play in the organisation achieving collective outcomes and/or solving challenging problems of growth, divestment, innovation and often for its survival. This requires good listening – listening to views that are different to yours, with genuine curiosity and courage, to arrive at the best solution for the organisation - for now. This means some team members will need to compromise and not hold it against others when they do! Traditional leader development programs, off sites etc, whilst helpful for setting strategy, goals, analysing data, deciding priorities and for bonding over dinner and activities - will rarely if ever get to this point. Team Coaching doesn’t ‘mess around’ it gets there quickly – providing certain things are in place. What about collegiality and collaboration between peer teams: Leaders are rarely taught how to be collegiate with peers, nor to have robust conversations where they openly share differing views, and where they learn to compromise without taking things personally, when decisions don’t go their way. Team members need to learn this with colleagues – this doesn’t mean free for all by the way! It’s about developing strong listening ability, giving themselves enough space away from their own need to be seen as performing, to consider another colleagues’ perspective fully. It’s also about recognising one’s biases and the behaviours that are getting in the way of the collaboration required to achieve the organisation’s overall goals and agenda . We’re often asked what gets in the way of collaboration and team effectiveness? We see the following show up when we’re working with teams, where we believe Team Coaching can play a role. When the culture is one of polite respect, team members learn to nod and agree. They will elect not to share their views and fall away passively, because the louder voice steps in [as always!], which is different to feeling they can fully self-express/share a different view, then compromise for the greater good. Or if the organisation or team is headed by a very strong, directive leader, team members learn how to not oppose them directly, instead they go via the back door, vie for attention and obtain kudos for being a good lieutenant, before they can then get their own way. The most challenging is when we see people who have learned to ‘go along to get along’ because it’s not the done thing to say how we really feel about that new idea or mandate sent down from on high.
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