In the latest article for this column, we explore team coaching from the perspective of the team coach. Gill Graves reports
Despite the surge of interest in team coaching in recent years there remain a plethora of definitions of the process including arguments that its primary purpose is ‘developmental’, ‘relational’, ‘systemic’ or focusing on ‘performance’.
In summary, while team coaching is well established in the world of sport, in the workplace it is a relatively recent concept, with a distinct lack of consistency of definition and practice.
As a practising team coach I was aware that the experience of team coaching was invariably presented through theoretical models or from the perspective of team members in case studies. What happens between the coach and the team, from the perspective of team coaches, was largely absent. I set out to uncover the ‘essential’ elements of team coaching – those aspects of team coaching that were deemed absolutely necessary and not demanding the same level of importance in other team interventions. I believed this knowledge would add to the understanding of team coaching and provide insight into how these elements are created and experienced by team coaches.
I employed a methodology called heuristic inquiry in this research (Moustakas, 1990). I worked with practising team coaches interested in exploring their personal experiences of team coaching, individually and collectively, using focus groups, in-depth interviews and reflective logs, over an 11-month period.
Here I focus on some of the key findings and their implications for practice.
Universal elements of team coaching
The study highlighted that team coaching is a process that comprises three distinct stages: preparation, intervention and evaluation, with particular importance placed ongiving time and attention to the preparation phase.
The preparation phase has a dual purpose: providing insight for the assignment via interviews and surveys as well as an opportunity for the team coach to begin creating a safe environment, the latter being regarded as essential for the success of a team coaching intervention.
There is some universality of experience relating to elements of team coaching that are present in all types, genres and approaches to team coaching.
These common factors include:
- It’s a process that takes place over a number of sessions, spread out over a period of time
- It involves individuals in a team learning together while completing a task/carrying out their business
- It’s holistic, focusing on the whole team
- It involves work that necessitates the use of a coach (ie, it is not simply team building)
- It focuses on the health of the team and long-term change
- It utilises the behaviours and skills of one-to-one coaching (Graves, 2021)
Divergent practices
There are, however, some clear differences in approaches to team coaching. These can be summarised as:
- Theoretical/philosophical perspectives underpinning coaches’ approaches with some traditions minimising the role of the coach’s personal engagement (eg, person-centred) while others favour interventions heightening awareness of the here-and-now (eg, Gestalt).
- Psychological differences, particularly in relation to preferences for favouring a planned or more fluid approach and how team coaches describe themselves in relation to their practice. For example, ‘I’m provocative’ or ‘I’m not a challenging coach’. The style of delivery of team coaching would appear to vary dependent on the psychological preferences of the team coach. This is consistent with research in both one-to-one coaching and in counselling (de Haan & Gannon, 2017).
- Differences in team coaching continuous professional development Additional team coaching CPD appears to provide a greater recognition of the ethical issues and complexity surrounding team coaching (eg, working with a co-coach or providing one-to-one coaching for the leader and other team members) but not necessarily ready solutions and the emergence of more effective team coaches.
While these findings might challenge any desire to have a neat conceptualisation of team coaching, they do offer an array of choice for users of team coaching and opportunities for team coaches to develop their own brand of team coaching.
The team coach’s role
The study illustrates that the role of team coach is a complex one. It necessitates effective use of coaching skills but also the ability to effectively perform and move in and out of other roles including those of facilitator, mentor and trainer. It’s important that team coaches recognise why they’re moving into a particular role, for example, to share a model they believe provides relevant insight for the team. However, it is also important that they also recognise when they’re becoming too comfortable and overplaying another role.
In addition to the above roles that the team coach might consciously adopt, the study identifies a number of roles that they may be inadvertently drawn into including those relating to group contagion (becoming the leader/a team member) and those stemming from transference and countertransference (critical or nurturing parent). Insight into these roles is in its infancy and coaches are often only aware of being drawn into a role in hindsight, during reflective practice or supervision.
Self-care and supervision
Team coaches typically enter team coaching with a background in one-to-one coaching. A significant consideration for those wanting to extend their one-to-one coaching practice into team coaching is that coaches experience the latter as more challenging than the former and undergo more extreme emotions: the highs are higher and the lows are lower. The complexities of team coaching compared to one-to-one coaching suggest that team coaches have greater need of supervision, however, the nature of supervision currently provided is highly variable (Clutterbuck & Graves, 2023).
The demands of team versus individual coaching underscores the importance of making use of reflective practice and supervision, throughout an assignment. It also highlights the importance of working with a supervisor who understands the dynamic complexity of groups and how the team coach’s own background and needs, family and professional, may influence their team coaching. This insight is important for team coaches as well as having particular significance for coach supervisors whose focus is currently on individual coaching practice and who may need to review their practice to provide effective supervisory support to team coaches.
About the author
- Dr Gill Graves completed her professional doctorate in coaching and mentoring at Oxford Brookes University. Coaching with Impact: A Handbook for Team Coaches will be published in
spring 2024.
References
- Clutterbuck, D., & Graves, G. (2023). Team Coaching. In E. Cox, T. Bachkirova and D. Clutterbuck, The Complete Handbook of Coaching (pp.281-299), SAGE.
- De Haan, E. & Gannon, J. (2017). The Coaching Relationship. In T Bachkirova, G Spence, and D Drake (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Coaching, SAGE.
- Graves, G. (2021). What do the experiences of team coaches tell us about the essential elements of team coaching? In The International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, S15, pp229-245.
- Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic Research Design, Methodology and Applications. SAGE.