It helps teams better understand their shared thought patterns, feelings and behaviours and what is happening around them.  This frees them to respond at their best and shape the future.

With systemic team coaching from EOS Consultancy you can expect:

  • To stay responsible for your own development. My role as a coach is to partner with you in the journey, bringing my expertise alongside yours to support and challenge you in your development.
  • A focus on outcomes, which will include stakeholder benefits, as well as team and individual development and growth.
  • To explore things from a systemic perspective, which means I challenge the team to step-up to what your stakeholders need from you in service of your shared purpose.
  • A deeper connection and mutual understanding between members of your team, with an increase in respect and collaboration, to better achieve your goals.
  • More effective communication, decision-making, meeting processes and ways of working between meetings. You are always a team, not just in meetings.

Typical Team Coaching Process

The team and its context are always unique. There is no one right way to work with a team, though there are some good practices to bring to the work. The process is both considered and emergent, depending on the outcomes required. My typical way of working with a team is in a few phases:

Connect

Often this starts with an initial contracting conversation with the Team Lead and/or HRD to set mutual expectations and agree a broad set of outcomes for the work together. The more detailed objectives and work required is not clear until after the Explore – Initial Workshop when we will reset the objectives in agreement with the team as a whole.

Inquire

This usually includes an interview with each team member plus access to the data that offers a view on current team performance e.g. employee survey, customer survey, business results (financial data) etc. We may also add a psychometric, a team 360 or interviews with key stakeholders.

Explore – Initial Workshop

We explore the data together to make sense of it in the context of the team’s business priorities, vision etc. I share the data and we explore it collaboratively, so that the team engages together and we can frame and contract for the development agenda. We will also address some key areas in this session e.g. vision for the business and/or team success; increased openness by sharing more about themselves. We may also agree some ways for the team to start developing itself e.g. agreeing a team learning review process for their usual meetings. This is typically a two-day session.

Continuing Coaching

Generally, the process involves one or more subsequent workshops to address specific areas of development. There are often 3 core areas of focus that need to be worked on:

  • Building better relationships; deepening mutual understanding and trust. We will usually start this in the first workshop and build on it thereafter. This can also surface areas of tension between people and how to address them.
  • Understanding their stakeholders, their view of the team and expectations for the future. This will include their customers, people working for them and others such as regulators and the wider environment.
  • Developing, clarifying and committing to a shared purpose for the business and the role of the team in making it happen. This draws on the stakeholder perspectives and what matters to the team itself.

I will join the team for some of their usual business meetings to observe and hold-up the mirror and identify smarter ways of working together. This can be about agenda setting, ways of structuring discussion and especially establishing good habits to review, learn and adapt the processes for themselves. I may also:

  • Work with the team as they work with a key stakeholder community e.g. preparing for a wider business or leadership group event.
  • Bring together members of the team where there is tension, to explore and address this together.
  • Have some 1-2-1 coaching conversations with team members about how they are contributing to the team.

Step into the Future – Final Workshop

This is a way to mark progress against agreed outcomes, as well as facilitating a commitment to areas for continued work and processes to sustain the effort.

We generally review the outcomes of the team process in terms of 3 areas.

  • The desired impact/difference for the key stakeholders of the team.
  • The progress toward better quality working within the team.
  • Their capacity to continue to grow and develop themselves without me.