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 The reality is, especially in the workplace, the mental model most followed as a team paradigm is way out of date or simply inadequate for the requirements placed on teams today.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 […]