As the popularity of team coaching grows, we take a closer look at the progress and potential of the ICF’s TC Competencies framework
The field of team coaching is gaining traction and we’re sure you’ve noticed a growing number of articles, webinars, and conference sessions on the subject. This is fantastic news, as we passionately believe that we need to access our collective wisdom and learn to collaborate to meet the massive challenges we’re facing in the world today.
One of the drivers for the increasing attention on team coaching, is the progress that the two largest global professional bodies for coaching, the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Association for Coaching (AC), have been making in developing competency frameworks to guide best practice in team coaching. While it’ll take a lot more time and effort for the coaching profession to fully gear up around team coaching, the process is well underway and, like a snowball hurtling down a mountain, it’s growing at a pace.
Over the past ten years, we’ve been developing the Team Coaching Studio (TCS) Team Coaching Wheel, long before the professional bodies even recognised the need for team coaching competencies. The wheel goes beyond competencies, to higher order meta-skills that serve as a methodology for change. At the heart of the wheel is the team coaching mindset – our philosophy, or set of principles, and our stance, which is how we act on these beliefs.
In each issue of Coaching at Work for the past two years, we’ve been writing about the wheel, the three meta-skills and the 12 team coaching competencies. In this article, we spotlight the ICF Team Coaching Competencies introduced in 2020 and look at how they align with the TCS competencies.
One of this column’s authors, Georgina, started talking with the ICF and AC about the need for team coaching competencies around six years ago. It was clear that many coaches were practising as team coaches, but not trained or accredited as team coaches, and that while they might have been selling ‘team coaching’ they were actually providing training or facilitation without realising it!
While the core coaching competencies are a great foundation, more advanced and different skills are required for team coaching, which is generally much more challenging. By way of example, if you ask a client a question, you’re only listening to the response from the single client. If you ask a question of a team, you’ll find yourself listening to an array of responses. The skills required lie in listening to the voice of the team, as an entity.
It took approximately three years from the first team coaching working party established in 2017, for the ICF to develop its competency framework. The body took a comprehensive and rigorous approach, including activities such as a literature review, workshops to understand how team coaching differs from one-to-one coaching, interviews with experienced team coaches and a global survey. The ensuing November 2020 paper describing the ICF Team Coaching Competencies says, “team coaching exists under the umbrella of team development, along with the following modalities: team building, team training, team consulting, team mentoring, team facilitation, and team coaching”. It then says, “Caution should be applied when considering integrating team coaching with team training, consulting, or mentoring.” This is because each modality is a distinct role, and that the three are quite directive, and coaching is not. Each modality has a specific and clear purpose. Just as a chef carries a bundle of cooking knives, selecting the right knife for each task, practitioners also need to be clear on the purpose of each modality.
What’s missing?
Table 1 below lays out each team development modality, the process involved, the growth area and the impact of each on team dynamics and where ownership lies. We believe what’s missing in the articulation of this table is the coaches – how we see our role. Our mindset guides and influences every question we ask as coaches, every comment we make, and every action we take. We tend to have one underpinning mindset that informs our coaching and, while we might tell ourselves that we’re flexible and adaptable, one true mindset prevails. For example, if we believe that it’s our role to provide solutions, or that we’re responsible for getting the team to perform better, that’ll shape our actions. If you’re an instructor, teacher or trainer, your role is to bring a curriculum to life, and you’re the expert in the room. In coaching, the client is the expert and your role is to be a catalyst for learning!
So, our guidance is to:
- a) be clear what team coaching is – and what it isn’t
- b) understand the purpose, value and consequences of each modality
- c) contract with the team when you switch between modalities
We also need to be honest with ourselves about why we’ve slipped into another role. Is it because the situation really commands it, or because we’re simply doing what we’ve seen others do, or because of our own performance anxiety or the need to feel in control? One of the hardest things to learn as a coach, even in one-to-one coaching, is to trust the process, following the client’s agenda and letting go of our need to know. This is amplified tenfold when working with teams.
If we now take a closer look at the ICF team coaching competencies, we notice a close alignment with our Competencies Wheel, as summarised in Table 2 below.
Exhibiting a sense of Presence takes confidence; being able to ‘dance in the moment’, not fixed on outcomes and expectations. The coach adopts a range of ways of being, shifting fluidly and appropriately to the situations as they arise. The coach sees many perspectives and experiments creatively with new possibilities.
Finally, presence requires the self-awareness to work with strong emotions. The coach is able to self-manage and not be overpowered by emotions or the team’s dynamics, maintaining their own presence under pressure. Being ‘pulled into’ the team’s dramas will lead to an unhealthy, unhelpful and ultimately ineffective team coaching relationship.
CONCLUSION
The TCS Team Coaching Wheel and the meta-skills and competencies are described more fully in Georgina’s book, Mastering the Art of Team Coaching (2021) and in the white paper, Your Journey to Team Coaching Mastery (2021). As illustrated above, there’s a large overlap between the two approaches (hence our team coaching training courses award a high number of ICF CCE – Continuing Coach Education – units). In the spirit of continuous improvement, we’d love to see the ICF framework include what we call “Working with Systems and Dynamics” comprised of TCS Competencies 8. Focus on Relationships in the System, 9. Engaging with the Wider Context and Stakeholders, and 10. Working with Power and Authority. All are essential skills for team coaches.
Though the work around team coaching competencies and accreditation is still very much an ongoing endeavour, we celebrate the work done by the ICF, we’re proud of our contribution to the organisation and are sincere advocates for its framework. We’re convinced that with this much rigorous work taking place, the future of team coaching has never looked brighter.
Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong, Senior Faculty, Team Coaching Studio Ltd
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References
- G Woudstra, Mastering the Art of Team Coaching: A Comprehensive Guide to Unleashing the Power, Purpose and Potential in Any Team, 2021
- G Woudstra, WHITE PAPER: Your Journey to Team Coaching Mastery, 2021 https://teamcoachingstudio.com/the-journey-to-team-coaching-mastery/
- See the ICF website for the page: “Introducing the ICF Team Coaching Competencies” which includes a downloadable handout: Team Coaching Competencies – International Coaching Federation (www.coachfederation.org)
- Georgina Woudstra is an executive coach specialising in coaching chief executives and senior leadership teams. She is founder and principal of the Executive Coach Studio (now Team Coaching Studio)
- www.georginawoudstra.com
- https://teamcoachingstudio.com