Coaching for Teams
When organisations were primarily office based, team cohesion and effectiveness was easy to manage and monitor because managers were physically with their teams during the work day and could easily identify when their teams were demotivated and when the team members were not on the same page.
With the hybrid and remote working environments, it has become more difficult as most interactions occur via emails and through short online meetings. Because of this, it becomes more and more difficult to notice when all is not well.
Now as businesses either formalise their hybrid or remote working environments, or start calling employees back to the office, coaching can play an important role in re-connecting teams to each other and their common goals and purpose within the organisation.
How Does Team Coaching Work?
Step 1 - Setting the Vision
The first step in bringing the team back together is to
identify the vision - what does the ideal team look like? The vision keeps the team aligned ans is used
as a reference point to make sure that the team stays on track.
Step 2 – Identifying the Goal
The goal is simply what the team wants to achieve in the
next 3 to 6 months. The goals allows the
team to have a common focus and something concrete to work towards.
Step 3 – Identifying the Current Reality
In order to understand what changes need to be made, it’s
important to first understand that the current reality is, and what the
underlying issues are. Some questions to
answer would be “What’s not working currently?” and “What’s currently holding
the team back?”
Step 4 – Identifying the Options
Here the team identifies what they can do to overcome
obstacles and what needs to be done in order to achieve the goal.
Step 5 – Create the Plan & Implement
Once the team understand its vision, goal, current reality and
options, a plan can be created detailing the changes needed and the steps to be
taken.
Once the steps are completed monitoring sessions should be
held regularly to make sure that the team remains on track and completes the
steps committed to.
Why Do We Need A Coach To Do This?
The success of the process hinges on the commitment of team’s members to the process. If there is one person who is not committed and doesn’t follow through, the rest of the team becomes demotivated. The coach can identify when someone is not committed and just going through the process (perhaps it was mandated by management and they don’t see the value), and can coach the person individually to understand why they are not committed.
Open and honest communication within the team is also important. The team should feel comfortable with having difficult conversations with each other in a respectful and constructive way. The coach will facilitate open and honest conversation and creates the safe environment for the team to deal with the issues.
A coach will be able to guide and facilitate the process
from an unbiased perspective. The coach
will also be able to guide the team to identify the underlying issues and will
guide the team on how to deal with this.
The Outcomes
Team coaching reminds teams of their purpose in organisations and when team members have a common goal to work towards, their motivation and commitment levels increase. The team also learns to deal with internal conflict and how to bring each other back to focus on their common goal.
I have conducting some team coaching sessions and I have seen one team become more cohesive and able to communicate openly and honestly with each other without egos and insecurities getting in the way, by setting a common a goal and having all team members committing to that common goal.
Another team was demotivated and didn’t believe that their
value was seen within the business. Through
the process, the team identified their vision based on their value and set
their goal in a way that would allow them to share their knowledge and expertise
with other teams. As the plan was
implemented, the team grew in their confidence and was able to demonstrate
their expertise more.
If you want to know more about team coaching and how I can
help your team and organisation, drop me an email on sumaiyah@sbuxcoaching.com to arrange a call.