TEAM & GROUP COACHING

Team coaching is used to create high performance teams.  Using the same approach as individual coaching, team coaching involves questioning and reflection to gain new insights, perspectives to common problems. It creates a shared team purpose and vision, which the team owns and everyone feel responsible for delivering.

Many teams I have worked with have displayed what Patrick Lencioni calls “superficial harmony” – on the surface, relationships are polite, but team members are not open, not offering their ideas or thoughts, often operating in silos. This means that not everyone contributes, good ideas are overlooked and innovation can be stifled. Occasionally, there have been outright team conflicts to resolve, but often these reflect hidden and underlying dynamics which need to be surfaced before they can be addressed.

“Gayl has worked for me on coaching assignments and has done a great job. Gayl takes time to fully understand what the underlying issues are and then she finds ways to overcome the problems. She knows her areas of expertise and is always thorough. Gayl has integrity and I trust her to do a good job.”

Gary Bothe
Compensation and Benefits Analyst EMEA and APAC STERIS

“A great day with Gayl completing a section of work on team alignment. My team have come along way, thanks to Gayl we have some positive results to show for it. Very well planned, organised and executed. Thank you.”

James Crawford
Head of Marketing, Vet4Pets

“Gayl has the ability to work with you to create a program that will engage with a team, open up a topic and then facilitate that in a team coaching environment. She guides you /the team through a process of understanding and enables them to see the challenge that they are trying to address. This is done in a challenging but open way and then enables the team to draw out the conclusion(s) themselves. Very creative, very pragmatic and delivers.”

Martin Beaver
former Head of IT Bayer UK/Ireland

“Gayl worked with us with on leadership and team development, introducing both theoretical and practical elements. She helped us understand both our individual styles and preferences, as well as our team strengths and dynamics and made us think about our leadership roles. I enjoyed Gayl’s thorough and professional approach, finding the sessions interesting, challenging and enjoyable, and we came away with some tangible actions. As a result, we are more focussed on leading rather than managing, coaching & developing our reports, and using our individual strengths more cohesively to achieve team goals and the business strategy.”

Isobel Davies
Senior HR Business Partner at Micro Focus

“As a team coach, Gayl’s work has had a highly beneficial impact, helping the team to improve trust, communications and effectiveness. Her skill and experience as a facilitator and coach, combined with her friendly and engaging style, really helped us to achieve our desired outcomes.”

Steve Painter
Owner at Painter Public Relations (formerly Head of Bayer Corporate Communications)

“I had the distinct pleasure to work numerous times with Gayl between 2013 and 2018, inviting her skilful and highly flexible approach to individual, team and group coaching.

Her attention to intent and outcomes and her courage to use more novel approaches allowed for exciting and rich team discussions and developments – including open feedback between individuals and leaders alike – enabling the development of true trust and purpose.

I admire Gayl for her courage hidden behind a calm and empathic professional approach. I have seldom worked with coaches who moved the needle on teamwork as much as Gayl.”

Ute Bockstegers
Former Chair and CEO, Bayer South East Europe

Benefits of team coaching are:

  • Increased clarity and alignment of team to purpose, vision and goals
  • Improved team psychological safety, trust, relationships, engagement and motivation
  • Increased ownership and responsibility to deliver team goals and objectives
  • Increased mutual and supportive team feedback
  • Improved productivity team results

Team and group coaching is an extremely cost-effective way to significantly extend the impact of coaching. As more employees experience a coaching approach, the skills migrate to peer to peer relationships further reinforcing new behaviours. The effect is like a pebble being thrown into a pond, the ripples can be felt throughout the whole organisation, laying the foundations for a coaching culture to develop and thrive.

Typical Team Coaching Assignment includes:

  1. Creating an owned and shared bespoke coaching agenda:
  • Working with the leader to identify key outcomes and focus.
  • Short interviews with each team member to identify team coaching agenda; hold up a team mirror, understand existing team dynamics and what could be better.
  1. Kick Off Team Event – agreeing agenda, understanding different personality and working styles; developing a “team charter”; creating a joint vision of the ideal future; planning next steps and measures of progress.
  2. Team Coaching Sessions – following the agreed agenda of topics, tuning into what is most important and pressing for each session.
  3. Final completion session to review overall progress, harvest team learning and create plans to sustain the improvements.

Tools and Techniques:

Working intuitively and in the moment, my style is interactive and inclusive,  gathering teams in circles, without desks or tables so they can have a more open conversation. Everyone is invited but not forced to participate in turn ensuring that every voice is heard.  Exercises are fun, highly interactive done as individual, in pairs, small groups and the whole team.

Psychometric profiling  is offered to help team members to be able to understand themselves and their team members better. These range from  the in depth Birkman to lighter touch tools such as Disc.

 

What is the difference between team and group coaching?

Team coaching is primarily aimed at teams who are or will be working together on common goals in the long term, they have to achieve results together to be successful.

Group coaching is for individuals who are temporarily drawn together for a specific purpose – for example – to consolidate learning from and development activity, to work together on a project or to provide a forum for a common interest group. Groups may be cross functional and/or geographically disparate.

CONTACT ME TO FIND OUT MORE