Team Development: What Does It Mean in Terms of Team Coaching?
We’ve all been on teams and observed teams. There is an easy assumption to make that we know what a team is in terms of team development. The reality is, especially in the workplace, the mental model most followed as a team paradigm is way out of date or simply inadequate for the requirements placed on teams today. Team Development Redefined Here is a way to illustrate that situation. Imagine you have a scrapbook of […]
Team Coaching Discovery Success in Six Steps
A successful team coaching project starts with a clear understanding of the need, the fit an agreement on intended outcomes. Both the team coach and the team sponsor know: “where we are; where we’re headed; and how we’ll get there”. We use the placeholder, “team sponsor” for the organization’s role because that initiative may have come from many places. It may have originated with HR Business Partners, OD or Learning & Development professionals. So for […]
5 Essential Competencies For Team Coaching Effectiveness
Coaching a team is enormously gratifying work. It can also chaotic, engaging, turbulent, emotional, fun, frustrating, and surprising. All of that in a very short period of time, sometimes simultaneously. Although team coaching shares similarities with individual coaching or executive coaching it is a very different, public environment with layers of relationships and a unique set of challenges. Team coaching requires a much broader focus as the underlying goal is to improve team performance. The […]
The Business Case for Team Coaching
For quite a while now there’s been a buzz around the subject of “team coaching” similar to what we saw with individual coaching 10 or 15 years ago. Team leaders, concerned about their own team’s performance, are asking for help and hearing for the first time about team coaching. Internal HR business partners and OD specialists are inquiring in their networks and attending breakout sessions on the topic at conferences. Team coaching was a small […]
What Are The Differences Between Individual & Team Coaching?
Based on the interest we’ve seen worldwide in HR and coaching conference topics, social media references and the questions we’re asked on a more frequent basis, curiosity about team coaching is popping up all over. One of the most common questions we’re asked is this: “What are the differences between individual and team coaching and what do those distinctions mean in practical terms?” Team coaching may be the fastest growing segment of the coaching profession. Because […]
This Team is Not a Well-Oiled Machine. And That’s the Point.
What’s wrong with being a “well-oiled machine?” you might ask. “Isn’t that the goal? Smooth-running, friction-free, rolling along”. Here’s the basic problem with that picture: it’s out of date. It applies to a work environment that passed into history at least a generation ago. Only the mindset remains. The structure of work has changed from assembly line to relationship. In an industrial age a mechanical model for getting the work done made sense. The mental […]
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How To Improve Team Communication with Active Listening
In today’s business world the importance of effective team communication is indisputable. What’s also beyond dispute is that the increasing rate of daily business activity presents a challenge to communication on teams. But speed alone is hardly the only aspect of communication that is putting pressure on teams. Add to the equation new forms of communication, greater distance, and virtual dependency. There was a time when the speakerphone in the middle of the conference room […]
Improve Accountability on Teams in 4 Simple Steps
As team coaches, we face many challenges in our work with teams, often at once. Low trust, poor communication and lack of alignment are but a few of them. Where those factors are clear to the team as the discussion begins to take place, others aren’t. Among the more misunderstood factors is achieving accountability as a team. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of accountability is as follows: An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or […]
5 Keys to Successful Navigation in a VUCA World
The world we live and work in is increasingly a world that can be easily described as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. As an acronym, a VUCA World. The US military coined that terminology to help train leaders in effective response to modern battlefield conditions. But those four words also aptly describe the environment in which organizations do business every day. A quick internet search of “VUCA” will yield dozens of articles on the topic […]
How To Turn Team Conflict Into Trust, Resilience & Results
Team conflict is normal. Avoiding team conflict is also normal. We see that tendency when we work with teams and, let’s be honest: we often see it in ourselves. We would rather avoid than engage, even when we know that it can ultimately be a valuable contribution to team performance. The simple truth is unattended team conflict, over time, cripples the team’s ability to effectively collaborate. All sorts of bad behavior results, much of it […]
6 Challenges of Coaching Virtual Teams & How to Address Them
With the rapid rate of technological innovation over the past couple of decades, the changes we’ve seen in the workplace have been considerable. With increasing frequency, more teams within more organizations are being created with members who are globally dispersed and connected only by technology. As team coaches, we need to learn how to do our work in an ever growing virtual world which means coaching virtual teams. That’s the reality. From the organization’s point […]
Coaching The Team as a System
A team is a living system—more than a collection of individual parts. A team as a system has rules for belonging and behavior. Those rules are not written down in the employee handbook. New team members learn the rules by observing and by touching the hot wire or being rewarded with a pat on the back. A team has an identity and a personality. A team holds certain beliefs and expresses certain values. A team […]