More, Better, Faster!

The Business Case for Team Coaching

This article was written by Phillip Sandahl, MCC, CTPC, CPCC, ORSCC and originally appeared in choice, the magazine of professional coaching. Click here to receive a FREE digital issue.

More. Better. Faster. That’s what organizations are looking for when they consider investing in a team development process: improved team results; better team performance; at a speed that will keep up with the demands of their market.

Organizations are focused on outcome, not process. There is a persuasive case to be made for team coaching as a viable way to deliver improved team performance. It’s a business case that needs to make sense to the organization’s everyday needs and priorities.

TEAM COACHING: AN IDEAL FIT

Coaching provides the structure, support, and empowerment that allows teams to learn, practice, and integrate new behavior. That’s the inherent power of coaching at its core. As coaches, we know that it’s not new knowledge that will make a difference to team performance. New awareness is important, but it’s new behavior that creates sustainable change.

To become a more effective, more collaborative team and improve a team’s ability to deliver results is a change process. Change, as we all know from personal experience, takes time and practice. Homeostasis is a powerful force of nature, which is why coaching is an ideal fit.

Coaching works because it actively, intentionally, and consciously helps teams and team members integrate new practices over time. Coaching works because it works on the underlying abilities that deliver the visible results. The ultimate goal is improved team performance, in whatever way that improvement is measured by the team or organization. But from the coach’s point of view, the focus of the coaching is not on the results themselves, but a more resourceful team – a team that can deal effectively with a broad range of challenges successfully, and adapt to new challenges with agility.

COACHING IS A CHANGE TECHNOLOGY

Coaching is a change technology that, properly delivered, is a catalyst for achieving goals and developing new competencies. There are other options for short term impact, but if the goal is sustainable, adaptable, resilient, higher-performing teams, coaching is the ideal fit.

A team-building event can create a powerful, memorable experience, but if the learning from the experience isn’t integrated into new behavior on the team, the effect fades quickly when people go back to work. The transfer from the experience to relevance for team interaction is missing.

Team coaching may sometimes include team building or experiential activities. The difference is that team coaching then provides the necessary structure to integrate the learning and make the learning sustainable by providing accountability to keep the new awareness and process on track.

Training is a valuable option for improving team member skills. For example, some teams will greatly benefit from training around decision-making models, or how to handle difficult conversations. But again, unless there is a way to adapt the training to new practices on the team, too often there is little visible long-term impact. Team coaching helps teams identify the particular skills the team needs to develop; supports the team in learning; focuses on creating action steps; and holds the team accountable for practice.

For specific issues a team is facing, quality facilitation can be enormously effective at helping a team define the problem, brainstorm alternative process steps, and settle on a course of action. The focus of this approach is on resolving a particular issue. That may be the only guidance the team needs for that issue.

Team coaching helps teams learn to be more effective and more collaborative in addressing issues as they arise. The goal of team coaching is a more engaged, competent and resourceful team.

BENEFITS OF TEAM COACHING

The benefits start with improved performance for that initial client team, of course. And that benefit to the initial client team is actually on two levels. On one level teams deliver better business results. That’s the ROI justification for the investment in team coaching.

The second level is equally important: a more effective, resilient, and sustainable team. In fact, our ultimate purpose is to help the team become more capable and more resourceful, so that the team is able to face new challenges from expanded strengths and not dependent on the team coaching process for continued success. As teams incorporate those new practices, they become more and more self-sufficient. That’s the point.

There are clear benefits from team coaching for the individual team members as well. Team members develop a new understanding of how effective teams operate. They learn new skills and practices. They develop confidence and they raise their expectations for teams in general.

These days, team members are often on more than one team and what a team member learns about higher performing teams on one team becomes a new standard of expectation for all teams. There is a viral, contagious effect as the learning spreads to other teams. A new level of understanding and higher expectations infects other teams in the organization.

Raising the bar shows up at the team level, too. No team is an island; all teams exist within an ecosystem of teams in the organization; all depend on each other for organizational results. The cross-fertilization that happens as higher-performing teams interact will have impact on the performance ecology of the organization. Improvement in one team’s culture almost inevitably results in improved relationships with existing stakeholders.

The change that one team experiences ripples out through the stakeholder connections and sets new standards of how teams in the organization work together. This is the infectious effect of doing team coaching, and the impact that’s possible within the organization simply by starting with one team and engaging that one team in team coaching.

For organizations that focus on teams and have a need for improved team results, team coaching offers clear business benefits. A coaching methodology is an ideal fit for delivering improved business results, and more importantly for the long run, developing more effective teams. The impact ripples through the interconnections and affects team members, teams, stakeholders and the organization itself.

How have your clients benefited from team coaching? What questions do you have about this process? Share with us today by commenting on this article on our LinkedIn page.

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