Team Coaching
Team coaching will help you get the best from your teams.
You
know you’ve got great people in your team. They’re hand-picked
(you picked them yourself!).
You know that they
are
committed to the project they’re involved in.
They
have the right mix skills they need to deliver—on time and on budget.
The
right mix of strengths and personal qualities just isn't enough. All
the capabilities are in place … and yet you’re aware that deadlines
have been re-negotiated and the atmosphere is deteriorating.
You’re
aware that factions seem to be developing.
Some
team members
are growing more frosty, competitive or even openly hostile. Others
are retreating into their shells.
You
probably want to knock their heads together!
And
now you’re
concerned about whether they will deliver at all.
Sometimes
teams get stuck They focus more and more on “winning” arguments as
individuals, less and less on creating the atmosphere that
can deliver.
How to call “time out”, back
off and discover — like Archimedes — that furiously focussing on the
problem isn’t always the best way to solve it?
Most
teams can create that “Eureka!” experience.
And
move into an effective phase, and contribute as you always knew they
could.
Team coaching: is this your situation?
You have a clear vision for the next development your organisation needs to make.
Perhaps you’ve grown rapidly—but different departments have changed at different rates and now there are tensions. One of your teams needs to re—orient itself to align with a new role.
Your situation might be quite different to this—but the issues with the team are similar.
You have personal assurances from a bright group of people.
They’re excited about the incentives that are in place; you worked hard to ensure that each individual had a clear vision of his or her individual role—and the different roles fit together like a jig saw.
You’ve pushed, pleaded, motivated ‘til you’re blue in the face.
The team leader is having a difficult time. Feedback and team appraisal sessions have not—so far—created the new beginning you’d hoped for.
Team coaching: focusing on
challenging negative beliefs
Traditional methods of achieving change make a few assumptions.
The key assumption is that we can simply change behaviour in response to good ideas or logical thinking.
It misses the key issue of interpretation.
How often do people—and organisations—-persist in habitual patterns of behaviour that do not deliver required changes? We all interpret our surroundings, our tasks, roles and colleagues according to our beliefs about them—as individuals or teams..
If a trainer delivers a session to ten participants, each will ‘filter’ that training differently … unless underlying assumptions are explored and made visible.
A key outcome of team coaching is sustainable behavioural change. It is sustainable because it depends on individuals' re-appraisal of their own beliefs and values.
How much of the training that you have purchased until now has led to really durable changes?
Individuals, teams and groups behave as they do because they believe as they do.
Without exposing, exploring and challenging the beliefs that underpin behaviour, it is unlikely that radical and sustainable change is possible.
Much management training operates in a ’beliefs vacuum’.
Our critical assumption is that we must work with what is not usually said—or openly addressed—if hidden agendasare not to consistently sabotage the ability of the team to work together constructively.
A really effective team multiplies each individual’s contribution.
Team Coaching: six key elements
First, we focus on the organisational or operational role the team has been created to fulfil.We determine how clearly the team sees that role.
We look at individual and collective views, retaining different points of view where they can be harnessed creatively.
In order to do this we encourage the team to review their work together in six key themes:
- How clear is the vision of the outcome required?
- Which is the most appropriate strategy to achieve that outcome?Where is the (natural and appointed) leadership in the team?
- How does the day-to-day administration of the team work?
- How sensitive is the monitoring of progress towards explicit goals?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the team working?
- How does this team communicate with other key departments of the organisation.
We stimulate individual and team clarity and commitment. We increase the team members' awareness of their own hidden barriers to effectiveness.