There’s a surfeit of services and products out there that claim to improve your team morale, productivity, and performance – team coaching might be the one thing that actually delivers on this promise.
Similar to individual coaching, team coaching can lead to a number of positive transformations – especially if you view your team as a singular leading entity. Because teams are made up of individuals, they have a greater impact than the sum of the individual’s contributions.
That is to say, team members have a mutually supportive relationship that helps them achieve common goals, complete tasks, and unite towards the company vision.
Team coaching allows your team to see this mutually supportive relationship, the strengths, obstacles, and underlying potentials of the team when it works in harmony to find its own answers.
7 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Team Coaching
1. Great teams are crafted. They don’t happen by accident
Team coaching is for all teams that can get their answers right. This process will help reinforce trust with one another and improve alignment and accountability.
Obviously, executives too can benefit from this coaching type, but teams that are experiencing serious collaborative issues can benefit the most. These could be individuals who plan on upskilling their collective leadership and becoming a more united, less siloed leadership team. Team coaching, after all, is a developmental process, just like executive coaching.
2. The value of being part of an excellent team
Being part of a great team creates positive changes in individuals, including a solid connection to his or her team’s identity.
For example, being a part of an extraordinary team encourages individuals to be more confident in their work. They’re able to value their work, be content in what they’re doing and engage in various colorful debates about their work and priorities. But that’s not all.
Recent findings show that an effective team’s single most important ingredient for success is psychological safety. More precisely, psychological safety is a shared belief held by team members that the team will not reject, shame, or punish anyone for speaking freely. The ability to feel safe when sharing their authentic selves gives team members.
That said, when employees have a sense of belonging, feel supported and competent, there are bottom-line benefits and human benefits as well. Some of which include:
3. Empowering individuals
Team coaching empowers, supports, and validates teams within an organization. It gives different individuals a neutral ground to confront fears about professional development, as well as a safe space to practice having difficult conversations.
4. Improving employee engagement
More often than not, people feel like they have to hide a part of their identity or life in the workplace which can have a negative impact on both engagement and belonging.
With that in mind, when employees are motivated to bring their whole selves to work, they’re more likely to be productive, engaged, and satisfied with their professional life.
5. Boosting individual performance
Even the most dedicated executives don’t have infinite time to spend coaching their teams. In most cases, managers and executives only take time to address aspects of exceptionally poor – or exceptionally good – performance. Lean training, for instance, offers an extra growth-focused touchpoint for the team throughout the week, which increases both individual and team performance.
6. Expanding the level of learning
Not for nothing, people are fed up with the corporate level of training. They learn better – and absorb more knowledge – when they’re personally invested in the learning process. Team coaching appeals to a wide array of learning styles.
What’s more, combining the new skills to existing goals and real applications makes it easier to apply the new learnings.
7. Improving employee commitment
When team leaders and executives show genuine commitment to their team’s well-being, people tend to respond positively. Collaborating with a coach improves job satisfaction, retention, engagement, and motivation.
When To Use Team Coaching
Often business leaders want to invest in team coaching when they hire new people and new team forms. They hire professional coaches in order to build teams that thrive, teams that have great potential for creativity, conflict, and immediate impacts on the business.
It’s hard not to see how healthy teams evolve when a coach enters the scene. The progress moves over time from building, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
However, team development stages are often prolonged by a lack of proper communication, trust, or ineffective processes. And that’s because change, regardless of its nature, can be difficult for a team that has been rooted in their experiences together. Thus, creating a positive working environment through team coaching can be difficult, vulnerable, and uncomfortable at times.
To ensure your team’s readiness for coaching, ask the following questions:
- What’s the impact of having high-performing teams?
- How would you measure effective team coaching?
- What benefits can be gained from team coaching?
The goal of these queries is to clarify the goals and purpose of your team coaching while ensuring an aligned identity. And while it would be nice if there was an overnight fix to our professional growth, coaching isn’t a secret fix.
It’s a process based on scientific results and an incredibly powerful tool that helps promote a more productive and engaging work environment. The advantages of team coaching are profound, both professionally and personally, for both individuals and teams.
Read Also:
- How Business Leaders Can Stop Micromanaging their Team
- 4 Reasons Why You Need To Hire A Dedicated Software Development Team
- How To Effectively Manage A Remote Sales Team
Author: Bogdan Butoi
