Coaching Teams

Our executive transformational coaching enables boards and senior management to reflect upon a wide variety of subjects and implement goals. It is an effective means of ‘being held to account’ by an experienced coach who provides challenge and insight. Subjects can include: building self-awareness and confidence, change, strategy, emotional intelligence, business planning, people development, team dynamics, authenticity, being a leader, letting go and many others.

Having an outside perspective from a qualified leadership coach enables boards and executive teams to reflect and challenge themselves within a framework that leads to performance outcomes.

Rather than the group being taught or trained, the coach enables group learning through challenging and supportive questioning within a framework that gets to actions points. Importantly, these actions are not imposed, but are owned by the group.

This approach can be particularly useful where there is a lack of:

• Clear roles and ways of working
• Clarity around what behaviours are serving and not-serving the team
• Mutual trust and understanding
• Momentum and energy (when the team is a talking shop)
• Clear understanding about the business strategy and or how to implement it

These sessions can be a board meeting facilitation, a two-hour slot as part of a strategic away day or a half or full day dealing with a topic such as a project review, setting a vision and strategy or getting clarity on a business critical topic.

Team building covers a myriad of outdoor and indoor activities that force participants to come together in a collective in order to work more effectively together.  These interventions have their place. Our approach is to enhance team effectiveness by focusing on the emotional intelligence and self-awareness of the individuals and the team, before exploring team dynamics.

The coach will seek to tap into the collective wisdom of the group, only offering outside advice or knowledge when it best serves the interests of the participants. Therefore, the process is very much a ‘do with’ rather than a ‘do to’. The individuals within the group will be expected to make a contribution. During a session, the group may be split into pairs, triads or in half, to discuss a particular point or work through a model. Responses will then be fed back and shared with the whole group.

A typical one-day intervention, usually covers the following themes:

• Recognising and celebrating individual difference
• How does our behaviour change in a team or group
• What is a team?
• Team dynamics and rules
• Inter-team communication
• Team strengths
• The characteristics of a high performing team
• What are the dysfunctions of teams? And how can we avoid them?
• Action planning and next steps

In some interventions, having a team profile can significantly help to raise awareness and bring clarity to areas of development that the team may wish to address.