Coaching for Team Performance
Team coaching
Here I help people understand how to work better with others. It’s an effective method for showing teams how to reduce conflict and improve their working relationships. The team can then focus on its real work, and achieve its objectives.
To coach your team
Here my focus is on interpersonal skills and interactions instead of on individual development (as I tend to do with individually-focused coaching). The way people act with their teammates, and the way they communicate with one another – these are important drivers of effective team performance. After all, you can put a lot of high-performing individuals on a team and still have performance problems.
People must learn to work together and understand how to relate to one another – otherwise the team’s output will be less than it could be.
Understand Team Dynamics
A great place for me to start team coaching is by understanding the dynamics (use of MBTI dynamics) of the team. This is the process of figuring out how team members relate to one another. We all have different styles of working and communicating, and when we encounter a person with a style that’s different from our own, we can often get frustrated with that person, and fail to recognize his or her unique strengths.
Some people can be “pushier” than others. A pushy person may think everything is going great – however, her teammates might have a different perspective. If one person walks away from conflict, and another speaks his mind and doesn’t back down from an argument, this can lead to poor decision-making and unproductive work.
Personality and behavior assessments are great tools for improving a team’s understanding of its own dynamics, and they give team members a better understanding of why they react to their colleagues in certain ways. This new understanding helps them think about how they can relate to one another more effectively, at the same time that it breeds tolerance by helping people understand that different approaches may be valid in different situations.
As a coach
My role is to bring team members together to discuss their individual profiles and help them find ways to work together. For example, if Sally knows that George is shy, she’ll have a better appreciation for why he prefers to do tasks independently. Rather than assume he’s just not interested in working with her, Evelyn can focus instead on finding ways to relate to Luc on his terms. Likewise, when Luc realizes that social acceptance is important to Evelyn, he can make an effort to be more friendly and interested in what she’s doing.
With a greater level of understanding, team members begin to see one another differently. This allows them to adjust their own behavior for better results, and they’re able to interpret others’ behavior with more insight and empathy.
