Why Team Coaching?

he current economic climate, characterized by rapid organizational change (the need for greater speed and agility), is forcing organizations to find new ways of involving their cross-generational teams and maximizing employee efficiency. Whether you're in charge of these organizations or heading up new functions and leadership roles, you need to synchronize yourself to be operational and efficient, so as to stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Team Coaching could be just the thing to get your company on the road to stability.

But what do we mean by Team coaching? 

"Direct interaction with a team designed to assist team members in the coordinated and job/mission-appropriate use of their collective resources in accomplishing the team's work."

Hackman and Wageman (2005) 

"Help the team improve performance and the processes by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue."

D.Clutterbuck (2009) 

By involving Team Coaching, organizations ensure that what they want from coaching is aligned with what the coach offers.

Team coaches make sure that's exactly what they offer, as opposed to team facilitation or team building.  

  Group dynamics can be tricky, so here are a fewquestions to ask before embarking on team coaching:

• What are the hidden agendas? 
• What does the team avoid facing? 
• What are the things members find hard to talk about? 
• What does the team hope you'll do for them? 
• Do you have someone you can turn to like a supervisor to talk about what's going on? 

• It's very easy to get caught up in individual agendas: can you maintain the boundaries of confidentiality and neutrality? 

Team coaching functions

The coach must discard the idea that better team performance is achieved by establishing better interpersonal relationships between team members, as this is not always the case. Instead, a coach must perform three distinct functions:

- Motivational coachingaddresses team effort and encourages process improvements such as shared commitment to the group and minimizing process losses such as "social drift". Coaching by the team leader can motivate members to dedicate themselves to teamwork and share the workload.  

- Consultative coaching focuses on performance strategy and encourages the invention of new ways of doing the job based on task requirements. Successful leaders facilitate flexible problem-solving and team development.

- Educational coaching promotes the development and appropriate use of team members' knowledge and skills. Coaching team leaders increases the team's psychological safety, which in turn increases learning behaviors and improves members' skills and knowledge.

The coaching moment

Specific elements of team coaching are most effective when carried out at specific intervals in a team's life cycle.

Motivational coaching is most useful at the start of a performance period, consultative coaching in the middle of a performance period, and educational coaching when performance activities are over.

Coaching is not useless outside these periods (coaching to help members coordinate activities or coaching to reinforce good teamwork processes can be beneficial), but it wouldn't have as great an impact.

Missions and teamwork

For coaching to have a positive effect on team performance, it must focus on the team performance processes that are most important for a given mission.

For example, if a team has been tasked with moving materials, the only process required is the level of effort the team members deploy.

Focusing coaching on other processes that are not necessary, or that are limited, would be inefficient and could even diminish team performance, as it would divert collaborators' time from the most important process needed to get the job done.

Team design

Teams need to be well structured and supported if authorized coaching, focused on the three functional areas outlined above, is to be of maximum benefit.

Poor coaching interventions aimed at poorly structured and supported teams will do more harm than good to team performance.

The role of the coach

Reich (2009) attempts to examine the roles (rather than functions) that coaches can play. He identifies five fundamental coaching roles: 

1. consultant(problem-oriented intervention for urgent product or process needs) 

2.supervisor(problem-oriented intervention due to the coach's high authority) 

3. instructor(problem-based guidance to impact knowledge and expertise) 

4. facilitator(coaching as a flexible, independent relationship that emphasizes the provision of specialized services by the coach) and  

5. mentor(coaching in the form of voluntary, sometimes emotional interactions, focusing on mental support, environmental protection and non-specialized help with tasks).   

Objectives that prove the effectiveness of coaching

-Improving one or more specific aspects of team performance:the coach ensures that the team is asking the right questions, at the right time, to meet changing requirements and evolving needs.He also helps to improve the leader's ability to manage individual performance. 

-Speed things up:team coaching can help a team move quickly through stages of development that may be prevented without a coach due to mistrust, poor communication and avoidance of important but less apparent issues. 

-Making things happen differently:when culture change goes hand in hand with individual change. With team coaching, the pace and depth of change will accelerate rapidly by supporting individuals to accept and adopt new attitudes and behaviors.

To sum up, for successful team coaching :

• Be clear about the definition of a team, and make sure your target collaborators are part of a real team rather than a group.
• Don't underestimate the complexity of teamwork. In-house coaches may need more training in group dynamics in addition to their individual coaching skills.
• Consider the best time for the team to be coached, taking into account the team's life cycle, its structure and the specific tasks it is working on.

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