Hoping to turn department dysfunction into dynamism?
Merging with or acquiring a company?
Buying or selling a business?

Team coaching can help smooth the transition from now to wow!

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 executives now work or have worked with an executive coach. Studies indicate that more than 93 percent of them would recommend coaching to others, especially in relationship to its return on investment.

What is an executive coach?
An executive coach is a highly trained professional and entrepreneur who offers extensive leadership and business experience in strategic planning, career transition, organizational development and more.

What is team coaching?
While the majority of executive coaching takes place one-on-one, many coaches offer team-coaching services designed to create sustainable, inspired, high-performing team relationships that get results.

Team coaches work from the understanding that a team is a living, dynamic system. It has a unique personality and temperament, moods and vision. It’s a culture with spoken and unspoken rules and values; a system that exerts tremendous influence on what gets done and how. Positive or negative, a team’s members know instinctively “how things are done around here.” For a team to be effective — to have leverage — it must be coached as a system, a living entity that has a life apart from the individual personalities and their interrelationships.

How does team coaching work?
Using a variety of skills — many based on systems theory and the research of the Center for Right Relationship — team coaches create a mindset, which takes the focus off the individual team members’ relationships and creates a new perspective on a team as a third entity.

The coach establishes a skill set that shifts the associates from acting as individuals to a fully engaged, sustainable team. The outcome is open communication, an inspiring vision and a tangible synchronicity and sense of flow: the collective, generative power of many people working as one unit.

Who can benefit from team coaching?
Dysfunctional departments
If you’ve been in a corporate setting for any length of time, you may have encountered – or had the displeasure of being part of — a department with a reputation for criticism, blame and cynicism. This type of environment can be toxic for everyone involved and result in individuals who feel overwhelmed, fearful for their jobs, and who ultimately engage in endless turf protection. Not exactly an atmosphere where customer service can thrive!

If you’ve inherited this type of department, a team coach can help transform low positivity and productivity into high performance through constructive interaction, open communication and a focus that values diversity. The result is trust, respect, camaraderie and optimism that allows the team entity to set goals, define strategies, identify resources and make proactive decisions aligned with the corporate philosophy and culture.

Buyers and sellers
A common example of team coaching also occurs in a corporate setting when one company purchases another. Here’s a specific example:

The owner of a small advertising agency that employs 15 people makes the decision to retire and sells her business to a larger firm. During the transition period when the sale is being finalized, the new owner hires a team coach to help his new employees better understand his firm’s rules and regulations — as well as embrace the firm’s culture and vision. By doing this, he hopes to build an innovative team that meshes the new with the old in a way that’s dynamic, fresh and inspiring for him, his people and his combined client base.

Meanwhile, the seller also employs the services of a team coach as she and her husband transition into retirement. Their goal is to define retirement on their own terms as a couple, with the team coach lending expertise in the area of strengthening their relationship and helping them discover a satisfying retirement vision.

Companies that are impacted by mergers and acquisitions
The same benefits described in the buyers and sellers example also ring true for companies that are merging with other companies or have been acquired by a competitor.

The team-coaching ideal is to help new employees embrace and value the acquiring company’s corporate philosophy and culture, and ultimately see themselves as part of a larger, cohesive unit with the common goal of continuous improvement.

The power of a positive team
Research proves that if a team performs well, the result is high productivity. Why not consider the services of a team coach who will help you harness the power of a cohesive group of people with a common focus? Your business — and peace of mind — demand it.

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As you work to establish and sustain a positive team — particularly in a dysfunctional department setting — consider these six relationship competencies:

1. Listen for the voice of the system. Move from “Who is doing what to whom?” to “What is trying to happen?”
   
   
2. Look at the three levels of reality, including essence, dreaming and consensus.
   
   
3. Practice deep democracy. All voices must be heard, even the marginalized and unpopular ones. When issues recycle, chances are this hasn’t happened.
   
   
4. Celebrate diversity. Think along the lines of “my land,” “your land” and “our land.” (See Coaching Nuggets of Learning that follows.)
   
   
5. Commit to move beyond what Team Coaching International™ (TCI™) refers to as the “4 Horseman:” blame or criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.
   
   
6. Create positivity. If you’re successful at this competency, you will increase productivity, which is linked to sustainable results for your organization.
   

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An important part of building a successful business team is encouraging each individual member to understand other members’ perspectives, especially how people’s cultures shape and influence the way they act act, think and feel. This is the fourth relationship competency mentioned previously: Celebrate diversity.

An exercise that can help you step into another person’s world is called “your land” and was developed by NAME TO COME of the ORGANIZATION TO COME. In it, you work with a partner to learn:

• How the partner’s perspective is influenced by his or her upbringing.
• Why it’s important for the individual to hold his or her viewpoint (from the other person’s perspective, not yours).
• The values and beliefs the person is championing.
• What you respect or honor about his or her beliefs and values.
• The beauty you can find in the individual’s word that is different from you’re your own.

By embracing the metaphor of each of us living in our own world, we can bypass the question of what is true and move toward respecting the validity of other people’s experiences. By being curious about and respectful of other cultures, we can learn to better appreciate people’s differences, including how the differences bring new perspectives and creative solutions to business challenges.

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In a recent survey to measure the organizational impact of coaching, the authors found that those organizations making greater use of external coaches for senior executives report improved alignment among the leadership team, the team's ability to execute strategy and leadership behaviors.

SOUCE: "What Coaching Can and Cannot Do for Your Organization" by Mike McDermott, Alec Levenson, Suzanne Newton, Human Resource Planning, Volume 30, Issue 2, 2007.

Additional resource copy to come on books/articles/e-zines.

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Embrace a new leadership role. Inspire and motivate your people. Transition into a new career. Shift into a meaningful retirement. Our goal at Reach the Top is to help you design and implement the next stage of your life successfully and joyously — including enjoying all the advantages of team coaching.

Donna Billings, Founder and PCC

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