Harmonious collaboration, driving excellence
Team Coaching & development
Effective collaboration for high value delivery.
In the post-Covid era, teams are under greater pressure than ever to deliver high value with increasingly leaner resources and challenging expectations, being able to perform with consistency and efficiency.
My Team Coaching approach focuses on creating clarity for teams and leaders in the greater, systemic context of their organisation and stakeholders.
For teams to achieve consistent high value delivery it is essential to take a holistic and systemic view of
- its core purpose and value to its stakeholders
- how this value is understood, delivered and measured
- the discreet and combined skills and talents of its members
- how it defines and adapts processes that work to support these skills and ways of working
- how effectively it creates a culture that promotes excellence in a supportive and stimulating environment
A Team Coaching engagement might come about for many reasons: a team may be forming or undergoing a difficult transition, there might be a perception that the team is under-performing or experiencing low morale or high turnover, the team lead is new to leadership or perhaps the team has a specific, defined challenge ahead.
In all of these situations coaching the team will have significant benefits for the team, its members, its stakeholders and the organisation as a whole.
What does Team Coaching involve?
Orientation
Understanding the team in context
Working with the whole team we will gain a clear understanding of its purpose and remit. We make a careful analysis of the team's stakeholders and the relationships with them: what value does each need from the team? How does the team currently engage with them? How is the team perceived by them?
We analyse the team's understanding of its current state and work together to gather feedback to create a more objective view of the current systemic context.
We establish a common understanding of the team's current ways of working and performance using tools like Tuckman's Stages of Group Development, Lencioni's 5 Functions and Belbin Team Roles. We consider current and past KPIs and OKRs, setting an objective baseline to give us a framework for development.
We look at team culture and collaboration - gaining an understanding of individuals' strength, preferences and communication styles - we map this understanding to the current context and challenges. We also examine the team culture - how does it really feel to be a member of this team?
The orientation phase will incorporate team conversations, workshops, surveys and individual discussion
Action
Defining and implementing change
From our baseline analysis, we revisit the originally defined challenge.
We identify and prioritise the changes and development needed - mapping this to goals that will deliver the highest impact now and set strong foundations for future growth. What must the future look like? How will we get there?
These changes might encompass:
- Creating a team charter, refining the team's vision and values
- Redefining or implementing new processes that yield higher value and strengthen collaboration and stakeholder involvement
- Developing communication and collaboration within the team and cross-function
- Identifying and supporting team members with professional and personal development
- Enhancing team culture and wellbeing
- Facilitating change and difficult conversations
We define the actions that will help the team achieve its new goals and identify the opportunities to implement the necessary changes.
In the action phase we will have regular check in sessions and coaching sessions around critical team activities.
Review
Evaluating change and improvement
Returning to the baseline analysis, we evaluate the changes that have been implemented.
We work to collect a quantitative and qualitative understanding of what has changed for the team, engaging again with stakeholders and peers, reviewing KPIs and examining team health and culture.
We consider how fully we have met the goals we set, and how the context has changed as a result. We review the changes to team processes and ways of working and start to understand what the next phase of team development will look like.
We reflect on the growth of the team as a unit, in the context of the system and on the development of team members.
We make a plan for maintaining the current state of the team, understanding how to handle opportunities and threats and how to develop and maintain resilience as a team.