Work Better, Together
Team coaching is a non-directive approach to building and maintaining innovative, high performing teams.
How It Works
Before working with Andi and Donna, we were an overworked, reactive executive team. Through learning and iterating on our leadership styles, we’ve pivoted to being intentional about how we lead.
Slowing down has helped us get more done. It’s a much better work atmosphere for everyone across the board. We smile more. And we see more engagement across our company.
– CEO & Founder
Think of your team as a dynamic system. Team coaching works at the level of the system to uncover what is working well and what is getting in the way (or missing).
This way of working pays attention to patterns of communication, behavior, and decision making that the team has developed. As a coach, I have one foot inside the system, and one foot outside. My work is to help you see the invisible committments and agreements that drive team behavior, and with that awareness support the system to shift into ways of working that are more aligned with what the team needs to accomplish.
Where trainings focus on skill transfer, and consulting is oriented around solutions, team coaching builds capacity through direct experience. As you go about your regular work as a team, we pay attention to your patterns of interaction and experiment with new ways of working together. Over the course of our work you’ll come to a deeper appreciation of your team and what it is already good at, as well as expand your ability to work in different ways in order to achieve the results you want.
How it works:
1. What Does the System See?
I like to start by having conversations with each member of the team to understand what they see from their perspective. Is there a shared understanding of what is getting in the way? Is everyone generally aligned with the purview and goals of the team? What does each person think is needed to get to where you want to go?
2. Synthesis and Scope
I synthesize these conversations and share my assessment with the team, along with a proposal for coaching. Sometimes I might also recommend additional trainings or workshops, depending on what I am seeing. Common trainings cover communication, psychological safety, and difficult conversations.
3. Working Together
Getting a leadership team together can be like herding cats. While your regular standing meetings will be important for me to observe, there isn’t enough time to fit in coaching as well. When working with teams, I find the best approach is to schedule quarterly half-day or full-day sessions to give us enough time and space to do meaningful work.
4. Between Sessions
Between sessions you’ll take what we learned and put it into practice. We’ll design specific experiments and approaches for you to use whenever the team is together. At a regular cadence I will attend your team meetings to observe and share feedback, and am available for additional support if a sticky situation comes up.
5. Wrapping Up
At the close of our work together we’ll reflect on the journey the team has been on, what has changed, and how you will continue forward together. Appreciations, commitments, offers, and promises are all part of the conversation.