In the latest Talking Teams column, Allard de Jong examines team coaching competency 12: Generating results
Generating Results is the 12th competency and focuses on the team coach’s ability to co-create with the team ongoing learning and change that will support them in achieving desired coaching outcomes. This is possible when the coach does the following:
- Co-creates an effective team coaching plan, leaving responsibility with the team for action and performance. I remember how early on in my work, Sir John Whitmore instilled in me the belief that building awareness and responsibility is the essence of good coaching. Twenty years later I still hold these words as self-evident: my job as a team coach is to help the team raise awareness and (therefore) responsibility for their own action and performance. If I take on that responsibility, I’m likely to engage in facilitation rather than team coaching and am potentially robbing the team of the ownership of its future performance.
- Is responsible for the coaching process only and supports the team to stay on track, in a way that has been contracted for. It is important to unpack the notion of process further in this context. My job is to design and offer an approach to team coaching that is coherent and congruent with coaching beliefs and behaviours, and to keep contracting with the team to ensure this approach serves them as the coaching assignment unfolds.
At the same time, the team’s ‘processes’ (ie, how they do the things they do as a team) clearly belong to the team: if I manage the team’s processes for them, I may be contributing to their results but NOT to their self-directed learning nor their long-term ability to generate results for themselves. This last point should further illustrate the difference between team coaching and facilitation alluded to above.
- Co-creatively explores specific concerns and opportunities that are central to the team’s desired coaching outcomes. Generating results requires the coach to repeatedly invite the team to focus on what matters most in the here and now. Teams usually live in complex and volatile systems, responding to multiple stakeholders and juggling myriad (possibly contradicting) priorities. In that context, the lines between what is important and what is merely urgent may blur. Once the coaching outcomes (‘coaching agreement’) are contracted for, a large part of the coach’s job will be to track growth and process along the journey to the accomplishment of those outcomes, regularly checking in with the team’s protean context and re-contracting as necessary.
- Enables the team to integrate learning, access different resources and celebrate success for future growth. Without this integration, results are short-lived. We all have examples of team building activities that generated high levels of inspiration and excitement only to vanish as real life reappeared. Results happen over time, in and between team coaching sessions, not in one-off events. The team coach invites the team to experiment with new ideas and behaviours in the coaching session to help assess what is likely to work and what isn’t as it moves towards its goals.
Last but not least, I invite you to count the number of times the word ‘co-create’ is used in this short article. Team coaching is coaching first and foremost. By reading the ICF literature, we may safely assume that team coaching means “partnering with teams in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their collective potential.” Results spawn in the relationship between the team and their coach and bloom in this co-creative field.
- Allard de Jong is a director at the Team Coaching Studio.
- Allard de Jong is a director at the Team Coaching Studio. Its founder, Georgina Woudstra, is an executive coach specialising in coaching chief executives and senior leadership teams. She is founder and principal of the Executive Coach Studio (now Team Coaching Studio)
- www.georginawoudstra.com
- https://teamcoachingstudio.com