There are many benefits of Team Coaching, both short and long term. As an executive coach, highly focussed on results, Sarah Parr reflects on some of these.

A team coach, especially if they are from outside the organisation, can create a safe space, where a specific group of people, with a common purpose, will open up to each other and discover for themselves how they can best work together, and deliver value to other stakeholders. This can deliver extraordinary results as trust and accountability starts to develop within the team.

As an executive coach I am highly focused on results. From the outset, I aim to establish a baseline in terms of what an organisation wants to achieve out of the process, so we can measure the outputs against that. You can read more about the process in my blog entitled, How does executive team coaching work? However, I summarise the benefits of team coaching as follows.

Benefits of Team Coaching

• Improved team performance - this might be seen in better productivity or other key performance indicators, but might also be some of the softer measures, such as a better perception of the team from others.

• Higher levels of staff retention, as you nurture long term players and find that individuals are more motivated.

• Stronger relationships with customers, or with other parts of the organisation, and a better understanding of their needs

• Increased morale. You would expect to see better team cohesion, better retention rates and happier people!

• Lower absences, in terms of sickness or people taking time out due to stress.

• Greater team effectiveness across the board.

These factors are the results of investing in team coaching. They don’t just happen on their own. I think it’s crucial to create space for teams to open up and talk to each other in a way that the team defines how they will interact, taking ownership of the process. So one of my key goals as a team coach is to get all team members to develop their working alliances.  

Some may describe this as ‘a team charter’. However, in simple terms, the team needs to consciously establish their own rules and boundaries of the ways in which they work together, and their expectations of each other. How are they going to make sure that they are communicating well, as well as deal with any issues or any disputes?

A team coach can help create that space, and facilitate the conversation in a way that gives everyone a voice, and ensures that the team own the change themselves. Team Coaching is not about a team leader saying, “this is how we're going to work here”, it’s a team saying, “this is how we want to work and this is how it's going to benefit us”.

Team Coaching can facilitate the building of trust and collective accountability within a team. This might be with a new team who have just come together or assisting an organisation that has just been restructured, but could also involve working with an existing team where trust has broken down and the team is in some sort of crisis. Whatever the specific scenario, it’s clear why companies should be taking advantage of the benefits of team coaching.

If this sounds like something that your team could benefit from, then please get in touch for a chat.

Sarah

Sirise Coaching specialise in the benefits of team coaching. Please email Sarah Parr at sarah.parr@sirise.co.uk to discuss your particular coaching needs.