Team Leadership Coaching

Leadership teams are increasingly turning to team coaching when they need to lead a major organizational transformation. Team leadership coaching is also being sought to primarily focus on developing a leadership team's capabilities, enhancing communication, and improving team dynamics. Team coaching involves helping the leaders to grow individually and collectively, addressing any interpersonal challenges, self-awareness, and self-regulation in real time. Team coaching is often more extended and ongoing process spanning weeks or months. Team coaching supports the team's growth over time.

Background

The mid-level leadership team, consists of new and established leaders, looking after inpatient and outpatient services in a hospital and community setting. Despite being highly skilled professionals, the leaders are struggling to communicate effectively, often leading to misunderstandings. They lack role clarity and accountability, and there are delays in decision making and decreased team cohesion. Recognizing that the leadership team will have limited positive impact on the teams they lead without first resolving their leadership team challenges, their organization decided to invest in a team leadership coaching program to address the challenges.

Objectives

The healthcare and community team defined the following objectives for the team leadership coaching program:

1. Identify the root causes of communication breakdown in the team.

2. Clarify roles, responsibility, and accountability.

3. Improve communication skills amongst team members, including active listening, clear articulation of ideas, and delivering and receiving feedback.

4. Cultivate a culture of safe, open, and respectful communication, trust, and collaboration within the leadership team.

5. Enhance team dynamics and decision-making processes through improved communication.

6. Design and implement strategies and techniques to sustainably maintain and improve communication within the leadership team beyond the coaching program.

7. Understand and change the unhelpful thinking and emotional patterns that are increasing self-doubt and reducing her confidence.

8. The Coaching Process

9. The team leadership program consists of a series of group coaching sessions facilitated by me as a professional leadership coach. The coaching process follows a structured approach tailored to the needs and the dynamics of the leadership team.

During the coaching sessions, I as the coach sense the themes, dynamics, and thought, language, and behavioral patterns of the team as they collectively explore the communication challenges they face. We explore the current and future state individual and team outcomes. We make moves and identify the themes and patterns and co-create strategies for improvement. I facilitate discussions, provide feedback, and offer practical tools and techniques to help the team enhance their communication skills to overcome barriers to effective communication.

In addition to group coaching sessions, the team participated in team-building exercises, and experiential learning activities designed to reinforce key communication concepts and develop stronger relationships.

Outcomes

Several positive outcomes were observed and reported:

1. Improved Communication
   The team became more adept at communicating openly, transparently, and effectively with each other. They developed communication norms and expectations, leading to fewer misunderstandings and improved alignment on goals and priorities.

2. Role Clarity as Individuals and a Team
   By clarifying roles, and all members being clear on this, there was less confusion, less frustration, and less duplication. This led to greater accountability and team cohesion.

3. Enhanced Team Dynamics
   The coaching program helped to build trust and strengthen relationships amongst team members. Leaders were observed to feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions, leading to increased collaboration, creativity, and problem-solving within the team.

4. Streamlined Decision-Making
   With clearer communication and improved team dynamics, the leadership team is able to make decisions more efficiently and effectively. They developed processes for sharing information, gathering input from all members, and for reaching consensus on important decisions.

5. Sustainable Change
   The team leadership coaching program instills lasting changes in communication habits and behaviors within the team. The team members continue to hold each other accountable for applying the skills and knowledge learned, as new communication and team norms have been adopted and consistently implemented.

Conclusion

The team leadership coaching program was instrumental in helping the leadership team at the hospital and community service to overcome their communication challenges and improve their performance. The leaders are now approaching similar communication challenges with their own teams, applying what they have learned. The leadership team was able to enhance their communication skills, build stronger relationships, and increase cohesion and performance.