Background:
An internal team of coaches sought to upskill in team coaching so that they could offer greater value to their organisational stakeholders.
Connecting:
We initially connected with the leader of the team to understand what the need was and what difference they cared to make.
What we did
Coaching Team Leader Program
Where
Pharmaceuticals
When
Jun – Aug 21
How
EDTs, Internal Coaching Team
Background
An internal team of coaches sought to upskill in team coaching so that they could offer greater value to their organisational stakeholders.
Connecting
We initially connected with the leader of the team to understand what the need was and what difference they cared to make.
Consideration
As we considered the team it emerged that seven out of nine of the team were coaches. The remaining two members provided support and coordination. They were invited to join the program. They initially joined a full team “connecting” call, which helped the whole team to appreciate the program, what was involved and what the outcomes would be. The two coordinators declined to join and so the program was run with all seven participants being coaches within the same team. The leader was one of them.
Change
The Coaching Team Leader is six half-day modules over 2 months, aimed at experiencing team coaching in a supported environment. Participants experience the dynamics of extra-dependency as they learn together and share their practice. During the 2 months, participants are encouraged to work with a team to try out their learning. This learning then turns into real-life opportunities for team coaching as later modules become practice grounds for participants to coach each other on their real challenges. In this particular case, the team had stakeholders that were resistant to them offering team coaching and we used the opportunities to explore these tensions together, live in the room. It made for many powerful experiences.
Close
All the coaches confirmed that they had massively increased their awareness of teams, team coaching, team dynamics and the part they can play. They recognised that the team is the client, rather than the team leader. They were “inspired” with creative ways to stimulate discussion and emergence of issues within teams. And because we covered Inter-Dependent and Extra-Dependent Teams they could understand their own dynamics as different from many of the teams they planned to coach.
