Developing High-Impact Teams

Coaching business teams is gaining
momentum as the new way to improve
the performance of individuals who
must achieve results working together.

Team building is not a new concept.
However, a major weakness of many
team building programs is that they rely
on simulations, role playing, case studies,
and lectures, but tend to ignore the
actual context in which the teams operate.
These kinds of programs, therefore,
become "just in case" training events
that seldom bring about visible change
because they simply lack the adrenaline
of daily business challenges.

So, why not bring team coaching into
the actual workplace? Why not make
the coaching relevant to, and a part of,
the team’s realities? In so doing, the
team coach should include a learning
dimension by explicitly ensuring that
team members extract lessons from
working on their business challenge so
that they can transfer these insights to
their own teams.

Institutionalizing the learning is essential,
and the team coach’s goal should be
to build a team’s capability for learning
that translates into new behaviors.

A team coach can play many roles,
including co-designing team meetings;
facilitating individual sessions where
appropriate; teaching concepts, tools, and
techniques; and coaching individuals and
the team to apply these new skills.