Team coaches grasp the complexity and demands of the process and the skills they need, and believe supervision, including group supervision, is vital to help them stand back from the team they’re supporting, according to research.
Both team coaches and team coaching supervisors are acutely aware of the need to be able to work with group process and dynamics, and to manage the complexity of organisational systems and culture, finds a survey of team coaches and supervisors by Clutterbuck Partnership.
Team coaches believe supervision is of paramount importance because it helps them develop awareness of self and of the potential impact of groups on them, and because they value being able to stand back and disentangle from the client team to gain fresh insights and ways to move forward, particularly when any party seems to be stuck.
The survey was part of research carried out for the first Handbook of Team Coaching, which revealed a lack of literature on the topic of supervising team coaches. Even in France, which has at least a decade longer history of team coaching and team coach supervision, research has been limited, according to David Clutterbuck.
The survey attracted 55 respondents from a range of countries. Only three had a formal qualification (ie, had attended specific training) as a team coach. However, four had designed or delivered team coach education and others had qualifications from related disciplines such as team building, team facilitation and systemic coaching. This is congruent with an emerging discipline, said Clutterbuck.
The survey confirmed anecdotal evidence suggesting team coaches are mostly employed to work with senior executive teams. The reasons for team coaching varied widely, the most common being helping the team achieve its potential, aligning team members around a common purpose and conflict resolution.
Other interventions were to help the team build its collective intelligence, improve communications, restructure and ‘right-size’, improve performance, manage change and work better with external stakeholders.