Reasons to call upon a team coach?

Before we start, let’s be clear: Team coaches are not (only) conflict or crisis managers.
A team coach isn’t there to “fix a problem” in your team.

A team coach is there to help everyone see what works when you’re working together, and what doesn’t – and then guide you through the process to make sense of that, to evolve with that knowledge, and to become a higher-value creating team.

So what might be some of these situations when partnering with a team coach that may make sense?

• You have a bunch of people that want and need to become a team

• You are new to a group of people and want to figure out how to make them (more of a) team
  You are part of a team and a new leader is incoming

• You have been working together brilliantly and want to figure out how to level up again

• You want to take time to invest in individual and team development and growth

• You are facing big changes in the organization, impacting the department / team you’re working with

• You sense some tension in the team and want to find constructive ways to address and overcome it as a team

• You feel that parts of the culture inside or around the team are changing, requiring all of you to adapt

And some situations when reaching out to a team coach may not bring you what you are looking for:

• You hope they will solve every conflict without you needing to step up

• You want something done that nobody in the team wants to do

• You need a process description of what everybody in the team is doing

Not that any of these are bad. It’s just that you might be better of with a different approach, before you can work on what you really want to be working on.

For instance, if you sense conflict in the team, sometimes the first step is to work individually or in subsets. Or the first step is to hire a process consultant, or rather, not work on the process before everyone on the team has understood what their expected contribution is.

That’s where the team coach will help the team and – if present – their team lead, guiding them to the point when the team has learned enough and the team coach can move on.