Ever since I started to develop and strengthen my approach to consulting and team coaching, I have been experimenting with how to explain it. So, I was extra happy to read the following description by Prof. David Clutterbuck, who has written tens of books about Team Coaching and knows his stuff. Best of all, he does academic research into team coaching.
In his words:
There are many definitions of team coaching, but here are two of the most widely used:
• Clutterbuck: (2009) “Helping the team improve performance, and the processes, by which performance is achieved, through reflection and dialogue”
• Hawkins & Smith (2006): “Enabling a team to function at more than the sum of its parts, by clarifying its mission and improving its external and internal relationships” (systemic perspective).
At its core, an intervention is only team coaching if it:
• Involves coaching behaviours and approaches – and especially is a non-directive manner of helping people with the quality of their thinking
• Works with an intact team together on issues of shared significance, in which all have a stake
• Has an agreed outcome relating to some aspect of the collective performance or achievement of the collective purpose.
Team coaching, therefore, is not coaching the members of a team individually, although this might be an additional role for the team coach or his/her colleagues. Nor is it team building, consulting or group therapy.
Please, please, do re-read that last line. And ask yourself, what do you think team coaching is? How would you talk about it in your organization?
