Team Coaching Helps Teams Achieve Faster and Better Results
Many leaders desire teams to have internal harmony so that work goes smoothly and conflict is avoided. They often double down on this philosophy by hiring or promoting new members to their teams that “fit” into the harmonious culture they’ve worked to create. This may have worked in times of no competition or stagnant industry innovation, but in this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world it is a recipe for disaster. Teams and organizations need to embrace differences from divergent voices of all ethnicities and genders to achieve better outcomes.
Studies have shown that diversity helps improve productivity by leading people to consider different perspectives, thereby leading organizations to develop more complex and better approaches in how they respond to changing market situations.
Leaders who understand this seek to develop and empower all team members to voice their ideas and concerns in a respectful way, even when they differ from those held by others, including the leader. By having more ideas and perspectives to shape a concept or decision, the team delivers a more comprehensive solution. The differences bring about more creativity and ideas that build upon each other. This type of healthy dialogue, where different ideas and healthy debate exist, regularly beats harmony that values conflict avoidance and going with the flow.
To encourage and grow innovation, higher performance, and the divergent thinking that comes with greater inclusion, more organizations are pursuing team coaching. Team coaching has been one of the fastest growing trends in executive coaching for the past several years. It is a natural extension of one-on-one leadership coaching. Employers have seen the positive effects of individual coaching for leaders and now are using coaching with teams, especially leadership teams, as they realize all work succeeds or fails based on how teams align, work together, commit and share accountabilities to achieve their objectives.
Team coaching brings about faster and better results than coaching only the leader and waiting to see the results materialize for the leader’s team indirectly. Team coaching gets everyone on the team aligned with the team goals and committed to their individual objectives and timelines to make things happen. It also encourages better team dynamics, which in turn foster cooperation. Individual team members learn to embrace the notion that “We” is greater “Me.”
Leadership team coaching is not something any coach can do. It requires experience and expertise in working with teams. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) has recognized this; it recently introduced Team Coaching Competencies and specified how they work within the overall ICF Core Competencies.
In addition to team coaching expertise and experience working within the framework of the ICF Team Coaching Competencies, success with teams also requires coaches to have tools and processes that help accelerate teams in creating greater alignment, teamwork and commitment. The optimum result is a win-win-win proposition at individual, team and organizational levels.
Teams that miss commitments, display low morale and have higher turnover often suffer from low employee inclusion and engagement scores on organizational health surveys. When this happens the leadership team usually lacks the alignment necessary to get things going in the right direction. Good leaders realize that when these types of negative conditions exist, they need to bring in organizational consultants or coaches that can help.
How can leadership team coaching help your organization with greater alignment, teamwork and commitment to get back on track and start winning again?
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Lance Hazzard, PCC, CPCC, is an Executive Team Coach and a certified Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach helping people and organizations achieve success. Lance and Eric T. Hicks, Ph.D., co-authored Accelerating Leadership, published in June 2019. Lance is Executive Coach and President at Oppnå® Executive & Achievement Coaching. More information on the book, Lance and Oppnå® Coaching can be found at the links below: