team Coaching & Development

Team Coaching: What Is It And Why Do Teams Need It?

“It’s not the team with the best players that wins but the players with the best team.” ~ Anonymous

Teams matter. They exist to create value beyond the sum of their individual parts, and powerful teams are needed now more than ever. We NEED them. Teams that are trusting, connected, and engaged towards a shared purpose and goal, building relationships between each other that can overcome any obstacle or challenge in front of them.

This coaching is for teams that want to be the best version of themselves as a collective, sharing and using their diverse backgrounds and experiences to build unbreakable cohesion. If you’re a team looking to increase your effectiveness together and within your organization, this is for you.

With Team Coaching, you have a dedicated and objective “awareness partner”, someone who is actively noticing and bringing greater awareness to how the team operates, communicates, decides, and relates to one another. A Team Coach helps bring what’s lurking beneath the surface, to the team’s attention, bringing greater awareness for the team to act on. As your Team Coach, our focus is on the team as a whole and it’s dynamic. This work can be done in-person and remotely with excellent results.

How Do Teams Benefit From Team Coaching And Development?

A shift is needed: from teams being nothing more than a group of people that report to the same leader, to a real team with interdependence and focus on a shared purpose and goals.

Depending on what stage your team is in, either Team Coaching or Team Development brings a number of benefits:

  • Newly formed teams benefit from Team Development, beginning the work of creating connection, helping the team get to know each other better and begin to trust
    • Examples: developing a Team Working Agreement, sharing and learning strengths of individuals using Strengthsfinder, appreciating and honoring diversity through a team Lifeline exercise
  • The immense benefits of Team Coaching come from the team being observed on “the playing field”, in action:
    • Team Coaching brings observations from how your team communicates, how they make decisions, and how they meet
    • Team Coaching raises awareness to tension, conflict, and lack of clarity that the team may not be addressing

What Does Jason Bring To Your Team?

Jason knows how tough it can be to lead a team and be part of a team that’s building a better dynamic. Teams are complex, and he believes in the power of coaching so much that he’s immersed himself in team education and certification, such as:   

  • Completing Team Coaching Studio’s Diploma program, with distinction
  • Learning and practicing the Immunity to Change for Teams framework
  • Deep learning in areas such as Dialogue & Communication, and Psychological Safety.

One client recently shared:

“I worked with Jason as a member of a newly forming leadership team charged with transformational organizational change. Under Jason’s guidance, our team quickly became more vulnerable with each other, allowing us to more quickly build trust and cohesion. Jason coached us to establish our guiding principles for how we wanted to engage with each other and with our peers. Leveraging the framework we built together, we were able to disagree, have hard conversations, and cheer on each other’s accomplishments. This work would have taken years without Jason’s ability to supercharge and maximize the team conversations early on.” ~ Director, Boulder, CO

The Team Coaching Process: How We Get Results

“Teams can no longer be passive receptacles of the leader’s decisions.” ~ Georgina Woudstra

The process of Team Coaching helps a team shift from many-to-one, or from “I to We”. This shift takes time, and lots of observation, experimentation, and practice. It’s not an understatement to say that a team will transform from a passive group requiring direction from a leader, towards an actively connected and motivated team willing and capable of solving their own problems as they arise. 

1

Assess and identify the team’s needs

  • What is the team currently experiencing?
  • What are they challenged by?
  • How does the leader play a role in those challenges?
2

Meet with each team member to understand their unique team perspective, and what they would like to get out of the Team Coaching work

3

Understand the leader’s perspective, and what the inspired future for the team looks like

4

Begin Team Coaching sessions at a frequency that makes sense for the stage the team is in; at the midway point in the work, we gather feedback to understand if the team is progressing towards the change that they want, or if an adjustment is needed

5

One-on-one Leadership Coaching sessions are available to all team members, to work through their individual challenges and those related to the team

6

A final review session is held to reflect on the Team Coaching work, what the team wants to continue to practice and work on, and support that might be needed

Our Team Coaching & Development Services

Team Coaching Engagements

Our work with teams ranges from 3 to 6 months, which includes extensive work to assess the stage the team is currently in, discover team purpose, examine shared goals, and have regular Team Coaching sessions. 

A sample 6-month engagement includes:

  • Initial discovery and assessment of the team’s current state and maturity
  • Bi-weekly or monthly Team Coaching sessions, typically 60-90 minutes in length
  • Scheduled syncs with the Team Leader, to review progress and any adjustments to consider
  • Individual 1:1 Leadership Coaching sessions with team members, at a frequency the leader prefers
  • Observation of a regular team meeting, to see how the team is using what they’ve committed or agreed to in Team Coaching sessions
  • Resources shared in the form of articles, videos, and podcasts related to topics that have come up in Team Coaching or individual Leadership Coaching sessions

Team Development Workshops

Workshops can be customized to a length that your team needs, and either held in person or remotely over video. Examples include:

  • Examining team strengths with Strengthsfinder
  • Discovering and utilizing Native Genius of each team member, using the Multipliers Leadership Development curriculum
  • Developing a Team Working Agreement, along with understanding Obstacles & Challenges to the Agreement, and Interventions created by the team
  • 1 or 2-day Team Building workshops designed to accelerate the connectedness within the team, building relationships, and working through challenges together
find out more

Clients Include Leaders & Teams From

Explore Team Coaching & Development Related Resources

Want More Resources To Help Your Team?

Things That Others Have Created, Which I Admire:

  • Eight Behaviors for Smarter Teams: What are 8 specific things that great teams practice? Spoiler: it’s not sending status reports to each other. (15 min read)
  • Making a Case for the Humble Check-In Round: Some think it’s a simple icebreaker, but the check-in is a small, brief practice that can fundamentally change how your team comes together to meet, and the focus they have with each other. (5 min read)
  • Team Number One: A classic from Patrick Lencioni on the importance on focusing on the right team, which many mistake for something completely different. (3 min video)

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! On top of the team being coached, it’s important that the members have an opportunity for private coaching to help them with challenges that might come up with the team, and their own professional growth as a more effective team member. Every Team Coaching engagement includes 1:1 coaching available to every member of the team, including the leader.

Absolutely, in fact, that’s become the norm. With distributed teams, the Team Coaching is often done over video (e.g. Zoom, Teams) and in person at times when the team can come together physically.

Any change or growth experience can be difficult, and Team Coaching is no different. Learning how to become a real team can feel foreign at first, sometimes met with resistance, but it gradually gets easier with deliberate practice.

Although both involve multiple people, Group Coaching is for individuals who want individual coaching in a group setting, where everyone views the coaching happening and learns together. More often, the members in a Group Coaching experience don’t belong to the same team and don’t have shared goals. Team Coaching is coaching directed at the team; a team that was built for a unique and worthy purpose. The client in Team Coaching is the collective team, as a unit, versus the individuals separately. We like the metaphor, “the hand versus the fingers”. We offer both Team Coaching and Group (Leadership) Coaching and are happy to explore which service would best fit what you’re looking for.

  • In Team Coaching, the agenda for coaching is directed by the team, and the Team Coach is observing the team “on the playing field”, working through a challenge together. Team Coaching builds greater awareness within the team that can help them operate more effectively on their own.
  • Team Facilitation or Development, or sometimes known as “Team Building” is driven from an agenda that’s guided by the facilitator. Sometimes that facilitator is a Team Coach that’s helping a team develop a specific skill, and in those moments, the facilitator is taking a lead role, versus the team taking a lead role.
  • Both are valuable at certain stages of a team’s growth and maturity.