Nowadays, coaching is a challenging job. There is a lot to say about coaching, but it is still an unknown area. Furthermore, for most coaches, team coaching isn’t so well-known. A good coach, through a structured and defined process, can extract a lot more values from the team, than through workshops or action plans. But, first things first.
Ever since the prehistoric times, people have tended to organize themselves into groups. A group is stronger, safer and it is easier to survive in a hostile environment. Individuals in the group live the key value of modern humanity – belonging. On the other hand, within a group, we can always find those „more equal“ among equals. They always find a way to rule, first using the strength and poverty, later intelligence and communication skills. There are many words for those people: the boss, the manager, and lately, the leader. There are a lot of articles written about leading teams, as well as the techniques used to achieve the best results. The myth about an ideal leader exists in everyday communication, both in large international companies and also more and more often in our business environment.
Team management has always been an enigma for managers. They trusted their instinct, used some universal justice, or just copied the way their boss treated them. They had no role model to follow. They simply believed that a good leader must be a good person. If the team was lead by someone with strong moral principles, the team was consistent and achieved good results motivated by a good team environment.
On the other hand, when the team was managed by a person with no sense for understanding other people, there could be a very unhealthy environment within the team. Those kinds of relationships can affect productivity badly. When someone becomes a leader and has no experience, he can make a lot of mistakes at the beginning. At that initial stage, the leader starts to learn basic management skills, mostly through training. It takes time to use the acquired skills to make them measurable and effective. The dynamic business environment today is very demanding, and there is simply not much time to develop leaders and teams. That is why team coaching is one of the best and most sustainable solutions. It provides a modern paradox, speed, and durability.
Team coaching is a complex and structured process of extracting the values and competencies of all team members individually and then sublimating the key values and beliefs of the team. The purpose of team coaching is to unite members of the team and clarify the differences in understanding of one and the same value. There lies the essence, to see things with „common eyes“. For example, not every member of the team has equal experience in a pleasant working environment. For one member, this can be one behind a large glass window, pleasant silence and plenty of space. For another member of the same team, it can be a room full of colleagues, music, sandwiches, and coffee at your fingertips. Solomon’s judgment isn’t a sandwich and music next to a big glass window, but the fact that diversity means adapting to a team and its values.
Finally, we get to the question from the title, do you need team coaching? You can live without it, that is a fact. However, if you want a more efficient team at work, better interpersonal relationships, which will result in the creation of great work environment and increased revenue for the company, team coaching can be very useful.
To paraphrase Henry Ford: „Even if you feel that team coaching can or cannot help, you are probably right.“
Do you want to be right?
