Increasingly I am working with teams as organisations recognise that teams can outperform individuals acting alone or in groups, especially when performance requires multiple skills, judgments and experience. The role of coaching is to support team members to move beyond individual roles and accountability, to develop new interpersonal skills, to pursue disciplined action, to value difference and diversity, to trust, and to change attitudes and behaviour. Team Coaching helps teams make this journey and hence become more effective, increase their performance, and deliver the business vision and goals.

Team Coaching works in principle very much like individual coaching, - the main difference being that the coach more visibly and explicitly manages the team's working process to ensure that the team members move forward together and that the team doesn't fragment. In doing this, the coach seeks to ensure that the team members attend to five key areas - ensuring a clear commission, focusing on the team mission, working together effectively, delivering the commission, and developing as a team.

What are the Benefits?

Coaching improves team performance because it:

• works live with the on-going issues and goals the team is engaged with.
• is results oriented. The coach helps the team identify clear goals - and then achieve them.
• builds on the experience, skills and talents already present in the team.
• generates shared commitment to and accountability for the goals of the team as a whole, not just individual's own goals.
• sharpens communication and interpersonal skills.
• values and builds on the diversity in the team, rather than seeking uniformity.
• promotes an appreciative and challenging climate in which members are able to perform to their best.
• ensures that meetings are focused - and hence more effective and efficient.
• manages the group dynamics which can undermine team effectives and uses them move the team to higher levels of performance.
• supports the team in delivering its commission.

Contact Mike

If you'd like to explore these ideas further or discuss working with Mike to improve your team's - or Board's -effectiveness then contact him here.