Coaching teams for high-performance

Team Coaching is a relatively new development in the Executive Coaching world and different people have subtly different definitions of what team coaching really is. 

The most widely used definition of team coaching has been provided by Hackman & Wageman (2005) who defined team coaching as a “direct interaction with a team intended to help members make co-ordinated and task-appropriate use of their collective resources in accomplishing the team’s work”.  

Clutterbuck (2011) has a team coaching definition which describes “helping the team improve performance, and the processes by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue”, focusing on the benefits of team coaching.

Thornton (2016) defined team coaching as “coaching a team to achieve a common goal, paying attention to both individual performance and to group collaboration and performance”. 

Bringing in ‘systems thinking’

Most descriptions miss the important point that in today’s highly connected and fast-changing world, team coaching needs to include focusing the team as much on what’s happening outside the team and the dynamics with in it. Without paying attention on the organisational system, and stakeholders inside and outside the team, team coaches risk supporting a team to develop in a vacuum, potentially ignoring the real needs of it’s stakeholders, customers and clients. 

Peter Hawkins (2014) attempts to address this when he states that team coaching in practice needs to include the wider system in which the team operates and a focus on the whole learning cycle of the team.  This thinking is incorporated into Hawkins (2014) definition of ‘systemic’ team coaching as “a process by which a team coach works with the whole team, both when they are together and when they are apart, in order to help them improve both their collective performance and how they work together, and also how they develop their collective leadership, to more effectively engage with all their stakeholder groups to jointly transform the wider business”.

Lanz (2016) on the other hand, places more emphasis on the importance of the relationship between team and its coach. This focus on relationship is equally important as most coach’s and their clients recognise the quality of their relationship – the trust, rapport and level of safety the client feels in the coaches presence – has a strong impact on the coaching’s success. 

Lanz definition of team coaching is “working with a whole team to support the development of healthy integrated relationships within the individual, between team members and key organizational stakeholders to support the delivery of a team task in the most efficient, enjoyable and sustainable way possible.  The quality of relationships enables the team to get to true clarity of purpose, develop effective use of resources and focus on delivering the task”. 

The role of the team coach 

In my Whole Team Systemic Coaching Model, we define the coach’s role as:

“To support a team in learning about themselves and the systems in which they operate in order to implement change which benefits their internal and external stakeholders, their organisation, their individual and collective development –and the individuals and communities who their work affects”