Executive & Team Coach QFCA, ICF Master Certified Coach & Mentor Coach EMCC Accredited Supervisor & Master Practitioner, President ICF Doha.
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One-on-one coaching is a way for individuals to significantly impact the bottom line, top line, organizational culture and so forth. Yet, this focus on the individual is only part of the picture. How many times in one-on-one coaching sessions do internal stakeholders “appear” in the coaching sessions? Almost every session, right? And they should! Effective systemic coaching addresses the individual and the systems of which they are a part. Positive sustainable transformation occurs when the outside-in needs of the systems are surfaced. This involves shifting paradigms and behaviors, strengthening talents, developing skills and knowledge and managing transition by celebrating milestones while also handling setbacks and dependencies. If you can deliver one-on-one coaching alongside team coaching, the impact of coaching is magnified.
An International Coach Federation-accredited and approved coach training, systemic coaching is becoming a way of “being” at my company as coachees use their skills in their departments, including procurement, the employment standards office, events and business development. Mentor coaching and supervision are also provided for competency development and benchmarking.
Individual performance is often dependent on the team environment. This includes how often and how effectively they connect, what resources they utilize and the present business climate. That said, high individual performance does not necessarily equate to high team performance. In fact, sometimes the opposite may be the case. Conflicting demands on organizations is the new normal as systems need increased strategic iterative approaches to achieve with fewer resources and less time. Teams may feel there is little or no energy left to spend on revisiting stakeholder mapping, realigning objectives, developing relationships, creating reciprocal networking and maintaining process agility. Yet, addressing these areas increases overall team effectiveness. In a crisis, teams can work head down and hard as opposed to smart, losing future focus and causing inside-out mentality and dissonance with clients — it’s about surviving as opposed to partnering up to embrace opportunities.
Team coaching can be conducted by internal or external coaches, a team-leader-as-coach across divisions and business functions or by rotating team members. The best practice is when two coaches co-create with a team. Impact is magnified as the individual and team energies surface, self-as-instrument is activated (where coaches tap into their intuition and share what they are experiencing to enable deep reflection and understanding with the team) and what I call “fierce courage” and “dancing in the moment” is embraced. These dynamics hold the space should entrenchment occur.
At my company, we use the results-oriented, non-linear CoachME Model with a pure team coaching focus. Not just team building, the goal is real long-term engagement that enables sustainable results built around skills, knowledge, behaviors, transition planning, action and reflection. Teams, both online and in-person, take deep dives into clarifying purpose and stakeholders’ needs as they question assumptions and embrace diversity. Team members have reported that new ways of working emerge as they draw upon their collective strengths. The model advocates psychological safety, collective learning, deep listening, powerful questioning and constructive, empathetic challenge. Teams step into reflection and results, gaining coherence and consistency around priorities. The model is also translated into 25-plus languages, thereby supporting inclusion.
When leaders and managers develop coaching skills through training, mentor coaching and supervision, they can more effectively:
• empower others
• operationalize strategy iteratively
• link coaching with key organizational metrics
• work on process, impact and people dynamics
• reflect on practice (such as after an event) and in practice (real-time)
• engage with stakeholders’ needs
Capitalizing On A Corporate Coaching Culture
A corporate coaching culture is the way employees and other stakeholders think, feel and act in relation to their workplace as symbols, stories and traditions that are shared and passed on as “the way we do things around here.” With time and effort, a corporate coaching culture can foster facilitation, communication, cooperation, empowerment and engagement while reducing blame and silos. These skills encourage open dialogue and transparency, which is not always an easy journey, but one worth the time and effort. Coaching conversations become “the way we do things around here.”
Essential Pointers For Team Coaching Effectiveness
• Ponder purpose. Partner with the team to really clarify their purpose as well as the ways the team coaching can support it.
• Calculate culture. Explore the team culture and values in line with the changing environment.
• Focus on the whole. The goal is to facilitate learning for the team overall.
• Sense and see systemically. Partner to understand the complex organizational and external dynamics in which the team operates.
• Leverage leadership. Use 360-impact and risk psychometrics with the team leader as well as team type and entrepreneurial reports to enable personal growth.
• Increase creativity. This supports transformation in terms of processes, systems, products, services and behaviors.
• Consider the present, plus future focus. Adjust temporal orientation to achieve a better balance between attention to the past, present, near future and long-term future.
• Contract constantly. Contract from the get-go on ways of working together, managing boundaries within the team and the wider systems.
• Dive into data. Use a team-level tool to identify strengths and development needs at the team level from the perspectives of various stakeholders.
• Leverage a long-term view. Team coaching is not a quick fix yet it supports managing setbacks and dependencies.
• Realign and restore. Work with the team to establish ways they can be even more resilient, share leadership and constantly use clean communication.
Team coaching can reenergize, recalibrate and realign teams as the whole becomes evidently much more than the sum of its parts. As I see it, there is a clear business case for team coaching. My company surveyed more than 100 global teams and found that less than 27% rated themselves as high performing. We also found that less than 25 of the 38 global companies did not tactically or strategically use cross-functional or cross-department team coaching to create a team coaching culture. What’s one way you can partner to enable the true potential of your team today?
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