From One-to-One to Team Coaching

Sponsored post by Mary Morand, PCC and John McKay, PCC

Coaching skills can be utilized across countless life situations. We notice them in how we listen and how we share our voice, in our presence, and certainly in the way we ask questions. While we aren’t coaching across all our roles – community member, co-worker, family member - we do embody the inquiry skills that can aid our own self-awareness and enable us to be curious with others. In team coaching, we bring presence and curious inquiry into our work.

In so many ways, team coaching is an extension of one-to-one coaching. We leverage the same core skills but apply them to a team of people. Instead of a single person client, we have a group of people who are the client team. The entire team becomes the client – no single member, including the leader holds greater importance than the collective team.  

As we reflect on the foundations for effective team coaching, we recognize the absolute necessity of creating the container for the work at hand. Together with the team we:

· create connection

· identify the body of work in front of us

· co-create how we move into the exploration of what’s possible.

Sound familiar? It’s what we do in our one-to-one coaching too. We build an alliance with the client and work in relationship with them. Just as in one-to-one, the work belongs to the client, and we come alongside to help create the conditions for the team’s development.

Each team is like all teams in that there are common issues and situations that happen. And each team is like no other team because all teams have their own unique challenges and cultures, as well as the broader systems in which all teams operate. Therefore, entering a team coaching engagement can be altogether familiar and brand new at the same time. This is similar to our one-to-one coaching. No matter how many executives we have coached through a promotional transition, even in the same industry, the client needs vary. The bespoke nature of a coaching approach - that each client is both unique and capable – makes the engagement successful. Again, it’s our presence, use-of-self, and the active experiments that create the catalyst for awareness and change.

For example, we often help a team slow down to notice their experience together. Our constant opportunity as team coaches is to help the team see itself. By slowing the action down, team members can see the patterns offer support as well as those that get in their way. When we as coaches see how the team’s dialogue flows, we can be in choice for how we create that awareness in the client. We might ask them what they notice, or we might hold up the mirror for them to see what we see. And then of course, does it matter to the team? Is it something to change? Is it something to be mindful of for now? What would be gained if there was a shift in the pattern? You know how this goes…

So, how to start with a team? We recognize the importance of dialogue as a key to communicating effectively. Psychological safety is key to building trust. Beginning with our first client conversations we practice good dialogue:

· listening for meaning and intent

· sharing our voice

· suspending judgment

· respecting the rich history of the person in front of us.

When we are present to what has been and what is now, we’re able to make meaning together of what could be. Together with the client team, we name what’s important and how we might address that.

In our mind’s eye, team coaching is a natural way for all team members to develop and for the organization to benefit well beyond the engagement. Each person learns about themselves and how they can be a contributing team member. They experience how a team can be more effective together and take that learning into the teams they lead, the teams they work with, and the teams they will join in the future.

The future of our world depends on people working effectively together. Please join us in the team coaching work!

Mary Morand and John McKay are partners in team coaching through their firm, Morand McKay, as well as team coaching educators at Team Coaching Studio. They are offering an in-person Certificate in Team Coaching program in Bethesda, MD on April 2-4, 2025. Learn more and register here, and reach out to us at admin@icfmetrodc.org to receive a 10% discount code (for active ICF Metro DC members only).