Team Coaching assists executive teams to have open and honest discussions, develop more trust, challenge each other, and understand how they are operating in order to work together in more creative and potent ways. The experience of team coaching enhances your ability to influentially take up your leadership in a group – whether you are the formal leader or a team member – so that the teams you are involved with can reach their full potential.
We have spent the last thirty-five years experiencing, learning about, and working with groups of people. We understand the power of a high functioning team and the destructiveness and waste of talent and potential when teams are not working well. The most important focus in our team building workshops is on the team’s goals, issues and ability to communicate openly and directly. After a diagnostic phase involving the key stakeholders, a workshop (amongst other possible interventions) is developed to address the key issues, themes and concerns raised. Careful thought goes into the design and set-up of any workshop we deliver. By systematically going though the briefing and preparing stages of the consulting process, we ensure commitment and buy-in from the workshop participants.
Sometimes managers contact us because they are aware of problems within their team. Sometimes there are issues with one team relating to other teams. We also work with teams that are high functioning and are looking for that extra edge in how they work together and how to capitalise even more on their strengths. Organisations benefit from our team coaching workshops in various ways which include:
- The right team members working together more productively to achieve results
- Less time wasted in uninspiring meetings
- Increased ability to manage and facilitate group processes
- More effective decision making processes
- Improved relationships with internal and external stakeholders
- Cleaner and more honest communication with less defensiveness, blame, turf wars and game-playing
- Increased self-leadership and accountability
Common areas that are often addressed during our team coaching workshops include: improving working relationships; developing a more open and honest team climate; resolving issues that are creating obstacles for people to perform at their best; giving and receiving feedback to each other; identifying and working more effectively with different styles; understanding the team’s dynamics, and working creatively with current work issues. Workshops combine theoretical input with practical exercises and discussions. We use various frameworks, methods and approaches that help teams to identify, explore, prioritise and solve areas of concern.
When facilitating or leading workshops, we role model the behaviours leaders want to see demonstrated by their team members. We take risks; are open and honest; challenge people especially around their being accountable; uncover limiting hidden agendas and assumptions; and we sit comfortably with difficulties in a team and ‘not knowing’ what is happening at different points in time. We find that this encourages the teams we work with to do the same. Then the team progresses to a higher level of functioning that it’s not been to before and this translates back into the workplace into higher levels of teamwork and results.