Team Coaching: Toolkit to Help Organizations Thrive

In any organization, results rely on relationships. Whatever the business or change strategy, its success depends on people working together effectively. Companies rely on team, peer, and supervisor-subordinate relationships to generate ideas, develop and share knowledge, and deliver sustainably strong performance.

Good working relationships require awareness and skill. Team coaching is the art and science of building awareness and developing skill, helping teams create and maintain strong, strategic and flexible working relationships. It is different than coaching a group of individuals who happen to work together, and different than “team building” events. Team coaching provides a sound container that holds up a mirror to how the team is functioning, unveils its potential, helps it choose direction, and provides support for change.

In this one-day course, participants will learn the basics of effective team coaching.

• The team as a system

• Holding the system as an inherently intelligent and generative client

• Revealing the system to itself

• Articulating and working with the emotional field

• Designing the alliances: team, leader-team, and coaching

• Creating alignment during conflict

• Identifying and shifting toxic behavior

• Team decision-making

The content in this course is based on several key areas of research, as described by Anne Rod and Marita Fridjohn in their book Creating Intelligent Teams (2016).

• “Research has conclusively found that, while IQ is the best indicator for educational status, Emotional Social Intelligence or Relationship Intelligence (the basis of team coaching) seems to be the best determinant of one’s level of achievement and success in most professions and in marriage; (Goleman 2006, Shoda, Mishel, & Peake 1990, Durlak & Weissberg 2007, Gottman 2002).

• Fortunately, research indicates that Relationship Intelligence can be learned (Durlak & Weissberg 2007).

• It has long been established that high levels of positivity and low levels of toxicity create high performance teams a host of studies linking positive cultures and work performance see Primal Leadership

• Teams with high social/emotional intelligence create empathetic positive cultures, which in turn increase performance. Toxic teams experience much higher levels of poor performance, and employee turnover.For this reason it important to evaluate the toxic communication “load” teams may be carrying and to help them find more constructive ways to

• A compelling study that looks at the relationships among team performance, positivity, and connectivity provides empirical support for the use of team coaching tools (Losada & Heaphy, 2004). It explores the positive performance effects on teams of flexible and spacious use of the polarities of positivity-negativity, inquiry-advocacy, and self-other, leading to enhanced emotional space and connectivity within the team.”

The practices that will be taught are based on general systems theory, process work, emotional and social intelligence, organizational development, psychology, empirical research, interest-based bargaining, and co-active coaching.

Team coaching is a broad and deep area of study and practice. This one-day course will provide participants with an overview, and teach basic tools that trained coaches can easily begin using. However, there is much more to learn and experience in order to be an effective team coach. Participants with no previous training in coaching, psychology, organizational systems, or team leadership should treat this course as an introduction to one of the many applications that make coaching an important tool for professional and organizational development.

Having said this, there is little potential risk involved in using the basic ideas and tools that will be introduced, provided that they are used in reasonably high-functioning systems such as most corporate and nonprofit organizations.

Learning objectives:

Upon completion of this course, participants will:

• Understand what a human system is and how it functions in an organizational context;

• Know what the role of a coach is in interacting with teams as human systems;

• Understand the differences and similarities between working with individuals and working with systems;

• Have developed basic skills that will enable them to do core coaching work with teams.

Upon completion of the program the student will be able to:

• Facilitate designed-alliance conversations among team members, between the team and leader, and between themselves as coach and the team system;

• Notice and articulate what is happening in the team, both in the moment and in general, in a way that team members can understand, relate to, and take action on;

• Read the emotional field in a team and help team members work with it;

• Identify toxic behavior, raise the team’s awareness of it, and help the team diffuse or “antidote” it, as well as make agreements about how to handle it in the future;

• Work with polarities of opinion or emotion to create alignment in the team;

• Help teams use a productive method to efficiently make good decisions together.               

Program Code: TC60

6 CE Credits

Fee: $250

Beth Shapiro, MPA, is the Co-Founder and principal of Power in the Middle which specializes in improving performance and creating sustainable change for mid-level managers, leaders, teams, and organizations. Her work focuses on building capacity to create and maintain strong, strategic, effective relationships. Beth holds a Master in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School and is a Certified Professional and Relationship Systems Coach (PCC, ORSC). Her background includes 20+ years of management and leadership in both the private and non-profit sectors. She has provided coaching and training in a variety of settings including federal and state government, higher education, nonprofits, and a number of private sector industries.