The New Frontiers in Leadership Development
Individual vs Team Coaching
Individual coaching has become a staple in forward-thinking companies’ Leadership development pathways. It is well documented that a leader sets the tone for a company’s culture. The quality of leadership has a huge impact on organizational culture and success. Therefore, individual coaching is a logical investment to make. Given that a leader has such a significant impact, it is reasonable to wonder what all the fuss is about team coaching and whether it can add more value than coaching each member individually.
Individual Coaching is incredibly valuable and over the years we’ve helped many clients improve their leadership, increase their impact and have more fun while they’re at it! One of the main reasons individual coaching is so impactful is that it is tailored to the context of that individual’s unique wiring, driving purpose and context. It improves the individual leader’s emotional intelligence, which, in turn, improves their decision making, relationships and enables them to stand confident in themselves even when confronted with complex, unknown or tricky situations. Individual coaching is here to stay because it has proven its value.
We live in a ‘celebrity culture’ where we’re taught to look for the one person who made all the difference.
That said, despite our tendency to look for a single hero, individuals don’t make things happen – teams of people do. Those teams are a system and exist within broader systems. If we only equip the leader and ignore the system, we limit the positive impact they can have.
If you’ve been in leadership long enough, you will likely have been on a team, a board or a committee where the individuals are all “top shelf”, excellent individuals but, ‘as a system’, are ineffective. A collection of highly talented, highly skilled individuals, even those with high EQ’s, doesn’t automatically translate to an effective team – there are many other variables within the team system and the broader system in which the team exists that impact its effectiveness. This is where Team Coaching is making a difference and why more and more companies are starting to invest in it.
Individual coaching equips individuals to be their best, which is a valuable investment. This investment yields the best ROI when combined with the recognition that those good leaders work in a system and only through systemic coaching can organizations reap the best from their amazing people.
No one person has ever ‘single-handedly’ built an organization – they did so with a team of people, systems and processes. For those of you who’ve not yet come across Margaret Heffernan ‘s Ted talk based on William Muir’s ‘super chicken’ research
A bad system will beat a good person every time
W. Edwards Deming
If building a high performing team is more than hiring the best performers, what is it that makes some teams obviously more productive than others?
Inspired by Muir’s research, MIT conducted a social experiment with hundreds of volunteers assigned to groups and given very difficult problems to solve. The most successful, high-achieving groups weren’t those with the highest IQs, but those who had 1) high degrees of social sensitivity to each other, 2) gave roughly equal time to each other – no one voice dominated and there were no passengers and 3) had more gender diversity. In other words, the interaction between the individuals has more impact than having superstars in the room. One could call it a culture of helpfulness. Sounds lame? Maybe so, yet a culture of helpfulness routinely outperforms individual intelligence. Put another way, cultures where no one person needs to know everything, but everyone needs to be really good at getting the right help, outperform those that reward individual stars.
What drives helpfulness is people getting to know each other – people need the opportunity to know, like and trust each other. In 2005 HBR published an articlei on unsurprising findings that people prefer to work with likable colleagues than those who are best at the job but also jerks.
So far, we’ve established that individual leaders have a significant impact on effectiveness and that cultures that over emphasize individual contribution undermine team effectiveness. It is this realization that has led companies to invest in teams as well as individuals – both are crucial for organizations to thrive.
Why does Systemic Team Coaching work?
Systemic Team Coaching starts by looking at why the team exists – whom it exists to serve and what value its stakeholders (those it serves) need to create.
Teamwork is more time-consuming than individual work, so a team needs to be clear on the value it can create together which is more than the separate individuals could create if working in parallel.
Team coaching usually occurs over a 6 to 18month period with the team coaches taking the team on
an intentional journey that ends in clarity and deepens relationships through the process.
The coaching focuses on exploring and answering the following:
- Who the team exists to serve (defining the Key Stakeholders)?
- What the present and future value is the team needs to create for those stakeholders that couldn’t be achieved working in parallel
- How the team need to work together to create that value
- How the team needs to connect with the broader system to create that value
- How the team can design continuous learning into its routine?
What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks.
Margaret Heffernan
Team coaching establishes psychological safety that enables levels of candor and openness. This, in turn, build know-like-trust relationships and a culture of helpfulness, grounded in clarity and commitment to a clear purpose with structures that support results.
Our Experience with Team Coaching
We are a boutique leadership development company that is growing fast and in 2022 we formed an operational leadership team. Despite having internal expertise in team coaching, we engaged external team coaches for several months of team coaching to help us start on solid footing.
We were a very new operational team spread across 3 continents and 4 time zones working in a company that’s scale has doubled in the past twelve months. We have language barriers, cultural barriers and logistical barriers that are all important to account for in our daily tasks.
The crucial part of our team coaching experience was to make explicit time where we were all together and focused on improving how we work together, as well as getting to understand our respective strengths, weaknesses, communication styles etc…
Having a designated time where we weren’t focused on the WHAT of the work but rather on the WHO and the HOW has majorly impacted how we are able to communicate, collaborate and achieve as a team. We emerged with improved structures, more effective follow-through, a clear purpose statement and values that shape how we show up each week and more space for all voices to be heard.
Post Covid ‘Hangover’
Many companies are experiencing ‘Covid hangover’ of increased division and decreased trust, questioning if they’re valued by the company. This is often heightened in teams that have moved to remote or hybrid work environments.
Increased stress and burnout: The pandemic has brought about higher stress levels, leading to burnout and decreased productivity.
Adaptation to change: The rapid changes brought on by the pandemic have made it difficult for teams to adapt and maintain productivity.
If you have teams suffering from ‘Post-Covid hangover’, team coaching is something worth considering. Team coaching not only provides tools and strategies for teams to navigate change effectively and maintain momentum, but also helps create a supportive work environment, foster resilience, and improve overall well-being.
Team coaching is an invaluable investment in a post-covid world, offering numerous benefits for remote teams. It is a proactive approach to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the shift to remote work and the rapidly changing environment brought on by the pandemic. By providing tools and strategies for effective teamwork and personal growth, team coaching creates the time and context for building strong working relationships, helping organizations and their teams thrive in today’s world.