Contextual Background - ufhrd.co.uk Web viewKemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (Eds) (1988b) The Action...

Refereed Paper

UFHRD 2015 Conference

Cork, Ireland

Team Coaching – Passion, Purpose and Sustainability

Dr Julia ClaxtonPrincipal Lecturer, Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University, UK

([email protected])

Dean HorsmanSenior Lecturer, Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University, UK

Dr Crystal ZhangPrincipal Lecturer, Coventry University, UK

mailto:[email protected]

Abstract

Purpose

To understand the organisational learning from introducing team coaching into a healthcare organisation. Team coaching in this project is where the team coach is separate to the team leader.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology is using grounded theory to find emergent themes from qualitative data derived from focus groups and interviews. Participants were team coaches, team leaders and the leader sponsoring the initiative.

Findings

Team coaching benefitted teams in terms of their relationship dynamics, their team behaviours and skills, their thinking and their decision-making.

Research limitations/implications

This relates to only one organisation specific to healthcare.

Practical implications

This research will help organisations to consider if team coaching is something they want to pursue and if so what to expect when introducing it.

Social implications

Team coaching can be used in any context where there are teams and this paper helps to develop the concept of team coaching where the team coach is separate to the team leader.

Originality/value

Practitioner and consultancy theories and models for team coaching abound but there has been very little collection of evidence for the impact of team coaching. This paper contributes to understanding how an organisation experiences using team coaching and how it impacts organisational learning.

Keywords (between 3-6 keywords)

Team coaching, healthcare, organisational learning

Claxton, Horsman and Zhang

Contextual Background

In recent times the UK has been challenged to consider large failings in delivery of an effective

health service (Francis Report 2013) and it is suggested the focus was on the 'hard' human resource

systems such as change, pay, pensions, terms and conditions and redundancy instead of on the 'soft’

human resource systems of culture, leadership and values (Royles 2014). The response to the

Francis Report, from the UK Government, highlighted the importance of effective teamwork, staff

contributions, engaging and empowering staff, and creating a supportive culture where staff feel

able to speak up, challenge and take forward changes for the benefit of patients. This is seen by

many senior people within the NHS as the way forward to ensure an effective health service

provision.

For a number of years now the national health service (NHS) of the UK has invested heavily in

many organisational development (OD) initiatives around organisational change, organisational

culture, employee engagement, employee empowerment and effective teamwork. In developing

these organisational changes, a lot of time and resource has been given to developing individuals,

managers and future leaders through initiatives like action learning sets, internal coaching cultures,

leadership frameworks and development. Linked to the development of individuals and teams is a

real grounded commitment within the NHS to develop future leaders and managers who have

authentic and distributed leadership capability and capacity. Indeed, the NHS Leadership

Academy, UK, have recently developed a new Healthcare Leadership Model (2013) which shows

nine dimensions of leadership behaviour with self-evaluations and 360 degree feedback tools to

help staff who work in health and care to become better leaders. Its purpose is to help all NHS

employees understand how their leadership behaviours, in a distributed leadership sense (West et

al., 2014a & b; Bennett et al, 2003) affect the culture and climate in which they and their colleagues


work. Whether they work directly with patients or not; what they do and how they do it affects the

organisation, the quality of care and service provided and the reputation of the organisation itself.

Aim of Paper

In this changing context and with particular focus on team development, team dynamics and team

effectiveness, team coaching was introduced into some organisations within the NHS as an

organisational learning experience. The aim was to find out what benefits team coaching could

offer towards better working teams. Team coaching in this research is where the team coach is

separate to the team leader.

The concept team coaching is a relatively new concept which has developed from coaching and

from team development but which is different to both of these. However, “it seems that team

coaching is being used to describe a wide variety of interventions that include facilitiation,

consultancy, team-building and counselling” (Clutterbuck 2014). There is not yet an established

academic literature or theoretical framework for this concept, although this is developing through

the writings of Hawkins (2014), Clutterbuck (2009, 2013), Woodhead (2011), Hackman and

Wageman (2005), Hackman (2002), West (2014), Kets de Vries (2005) and others. The main

limitation of the work on team coaching is that there is a differing role of the team coach,

sometimes the team leader, sometimes the team members and sometimes an external person. Along

with the clarity of differentiation of the type of team coaching there is also only a small amount of

empirical evidence to show the experience of using team coaching and the impact it has. The

research, described in this paper, contributes to the limited empirical work in that it examines in

detail the experience of team coaches, team leaders and the organisational leader of introducing

team coaching into one of the organisations in asking the question:

What has been the learning experience from introducing team coaching into an organisation of

the NHS?


It is hoped that this paper will be helpful to organisations wishing to embark on the journey of

introducing team coaching.

Literature

One-to-one coaching

There is an established and increasing academic literature base on one-to-one coaching from which

team coaching has come and it is useful to look at work on coaching. Passmore and Fillery-Travis

(2011, p.74) define coaching as

“a Socratic based future focused dialogue between a facilitator (coach) and a participant

(coachee/client), where the facilitator uses open questions, active listening, summaries and

reflections which are aimed at stimulating the self-awareness and personal responsibility of

the participant.”

In this definition, it is suggested that the term ‘Socratic dialogue’ refers to the belief held by the

coach that the coachee already has within them the answer to the question or is able to identify a

route to discover the answer. Thus the role of the coach is not socio-educational, but is more guided

discovery, with the skill of the coach in shaping questions and focusing attention on the next step of

the journey. Coaching within the workplace, taken from a psychological perspective, may be

defined as


“…a solution-focussed, result-oriented systematic process in which the coach facilitates the

enhancement of work performance and self-directed learning and personal growth of the

coachee” (Grant 2001, p.8).

These two definitions of coaching reflect the more common work around one-to-one dialogue

between coach and coachee and the challenge is how this work can be used for group and team

coaching.

Team coaching

Although one-to-one coaching is a well discussed and defined concept in the academic and

practitioner literature, the concept of TEAM coaching is relatively new (Wild, 2001; Ascentia, 2005;

Hackman and Wageman, 2005; Field, 2007; Clutterbuck, 2009, 2013; Hicks, 2010, Woodhead

(2011). The term team coaching is used frequently in the context of athletic coaching (Beattie et

al., 2014), but has been recently extended to hi-tech industries (Anderson et al., 2008; Rezania &

Lingham, 2007; Liu et al., 2009, 2010) and to health care professions (Rowland, 2010; Woodhead,

2011; Godfrey et al., 2014; Godfrey & Oliver, 2014). Woodhead’s (2011: 103) paper sought to

contribute to the literature on team coaching by utilizing it as an intervention to support and

enhance team working.

Most of the development work around team coaching has been through practitioners and

consultancy firms offering corporate and executive coaching on an individual and team basis. One

UK-based company, TPC (The Performance Coach), who offer team coaching to organisations and

who were very involved in this NHS initiative, state:


‘Team Coaching is a powerful development intervention that brings individuals together to

develop their own skills, awareness and learning as a team, helping them to learn how to

become more effective, efficient and focused in reaching agreed performance objectives.’

Passmore and Fillery-Travis (2011) suggested that group or team coaching is too close a concept to

Action Learning Sets and group facilitation to usefully distinguish between them, whereas the

coaching programme that Woodhead (2011) undertook was a symbiotic intervention of team

coaching and facilitation. Passmore and Fillery-Travis (2011) also found that the use of such

methodologies has been actively explored and described in the team coaching context such as

Vaartjes (2005, p3) who suggests that:

“Executive coaching may be one-to-one or one-to-group based, usually occurs over time and

often over many months, and seeks to achieve both tangible and intangible outcomes. Such

coaching also recognises that the personal qualities, knowledge, experience and skills of the

coach are essential to the creation of the collaborative, developmentally focussed, client-

centred relationship that is assumed to be critical to outcome generation.”

Woodhead (2011) concluded that her research gave insights into the particular attributes of team

coaching that may enhance team working by:

Providing a forum for dialogue and thereby improving communication; Giving focus and clarity for shared goals; Increasing trust and collaboration that allows participants to see beyond each other’s

professional image, and Enabling a systemic understanding and approach to problem solving, decision making

and commitment to achieving collective outcomes; Helping to develop personal and interpersonal relationships and dynamics; Breaking down barriers, creating a sense of belonging and a deep, empathetic

understanding of each other.


Clutterbruck in his foreward to Hawkins latest book Leadership Team Coaching (2104) describes

the role of the team coach to include:

Helping the team to discover its identity Helping the team clarify what it wants to achieve and why Helping the team come to terms with what it can’t or shouldn’t do, as well as understand

its ‘potential to achieve’ Helping the team understand its critical processes (how it makes decision, communicates

etc) Helping the team access its suppressed creativity Helping the team develop collective resilience Helping the team monitor its own progress

Team leader as coach

The work of Hackman and Wageman (2005) in their theory of team coaching provides a model to

consider the functions that coaching serves for a team. It is not intended to consider specific leader

behaviours or leadership styles. It identified the specific times in the performance process when

coaching interventions are most likely to have their intended effects and reviewed the conditions

under which team-focused coaching is or is not likely to facilitate performance. The focus of this

theory, like Clutterbuck (2009, 2013), is that of the manager or supervisor being the coach of a team

that they have direct responsibility for.

Hackman and Wageman (2005, p.269) describe team coaching through the manager as:

“direct interaction with a team intended to help members in the co-ordinated and task-appropriate use of their collective resources in accomplishing the team’s work.”

Also with the same emphasis of coach within team, Clutterbuck (2009, p.19) sees team coaching as:

“a learning intervention designed to increase collective capability and performance of a group or team, through application of the coaching principles of assisted reflection, analysis and motivation for change.”

Team coach as separate role


There is limited academic writing in the field of business and management on the team coach

having a separate role to the team leader. This separate role is one where the team coach uses the

Socratic based future focused dialogue for the whole team as an entity. To support this research

Kets de Vries (2005), cited in Ward et al, (2014), carried out leadership development at a well-

known international business school. Their participants went through a process that consisted of an

initial day of group coaching, in groups of four or five, and then a follow-up hour of individual

coaching the following day. Each group was assigned a leadership coach with psychodynamic

training and experience in facilitating groups. For this project the Team Coach is not normally the

manager or leader of the team and is normally separate from the team contracted to work with the

team over several group sessions. A definition for the team coaching carried out in this project was

not sought or established but it is useful to see where team coaching, using a separate team coach,

has been used elsewhere.

Also, of this type of team coaching Anderson et al (2008, p.41) carried out work at Caterpillar, and

define their team coaching approach as:

“team coaching is a holistic approach for creating meaningful and lasting change for individual team members, the team as a whole, and the organization that the team serves. It is a multidimensional change process that utilizes the core principles of individual coaching in a team setting.”

There is also some research using this method in the NHS (Woodhead 2011) where a small case

study explored how coaching a small team of three team leaders within a Radiology team (from the

main disciplines of medicine, nursing and radiology) supported team working. The team were

asked to reflect on and describe their experiences of being coached and how this supported them in

working as a team. It substantiated team coaching as an intervention in enhancing team working

and highlighted some of the elements that contributed to this.


Team coaching and leadership

‘Team coaching is an act of leadership’ (Hackman and Wageman, 2005, p269). It is an act of

leadership which is part of distributed leadership. Distributed leadership in this capacity according

to Bennett et al. (2003, p.3) is an

“emergent property of a group or network of individuals in which group members pool their expertise.”

Increasingly in today’s corporate environment, according to De Meuse “…it appears it is the team –

not the individual – who holds the key to business success.” (2008, p.1). In the health care sector,

staff must work together across professional boundaries to deliver high quality care, particularly as

the complexity of health care increases and co-morbidity becomes more common (West et al.,

2014b). According to West et al. (2014a: 2) The King’s Fund has argued that “we need to move on

from a concept of heroic leaders who turn around organisational performance to seeing leadership

as shared and distributed throughout the NHS.” This report goes on to make it clear that it is the

NHS Boards’ responsibility for developing a collective leadership strategy to ensure that is

understands the leadership capabilities required in the future, how these are going to be developed

and acquired, and what organisational and leadership interventions will enable them to be delivered.

This requires organisations to develop individuals and teams able to work collaboratively for the

greater good of the population they serve.

Team conditions

Hackman (2002) earlier suggested that a team is most likely to be effective when the following

conditions are satisfied:

a) It is a real team rather than in name onlyb) The team has a compelling direction for its workc) It has an enabling structure that facilitates team workd) The team operates within a supportive organisational context , ande) It has ample expert coaching in teamwork available

Element e) is a direct link to having someone in the team who is seen as an expert coach.


Team effectiveness

There is a developing literature within the realm of team effectiveness (see Mathieu et al., 2008; Liu

et al., 2010) and group dynamics (see Ward et al.,, 2014) with a notable contribution from

Wageman (1997, 2001).

Some work has also been done on the relationship between team coaching and innovation

(Rousseau et al 2013) and all of these provide some contribution to the thinking about this relatively

new construct.

Hackman (2002) suggests that team effectiveness can be measured by providing products or

services that exceed customer expectations, growing team capabilities over time, and satisfying

team member needs. These elements are illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Conditions for Team Effectiveness Model (Hackman, 2005)

(Source: http://www.team-diagnostics.com/the-model.php)

Hackman and Wageman (2005) refined their definition of team effectiveness into a three-

dimensional concept, including i) the level of effort team members collectively expend on carrying

out the task; ii) the appropriateness of the strategy to perform the task; and iii) the amount of

knowledge and skills contributed by the team members. In order to maximize the effective team

performance, team coaching should be i) ‘motivational’ to encourage the efforts from team


members; ii) ‘consultative’ to generate appropriate strategies; and iii) ‘educational’ to optimize

talents of team members (Hackman and Wageman, 2005, p273).

For effective teamwork in health care, Lyubovnikova and West (2013) detail five characteristics

required which are: i) team objectives, ii) participation, iii) conflict management, iv) reflexivity and

v) team leadership. Woodhead’s (2011) research into team coaching adopted the approach that the

participants were a team who had shared goals and were mutually accountable for achieving them.

The conclusion of many researchers in this field is that teams are more likely to be effective where

team coaching is available (Hackman 2002).

Methodological Approach

The research was designed around the aim of discovery, looking for new insights into the initiative

of team coaching. Rather than the more traditional approach of establishing a theoretical

framework and fitting the data to it, an inductive, grounded theory methodology was used (Glaser

and Strauss (1967), Charmaz 2014).

The researchers do have prior knowledge of coaching, mentoring and team development but in

order to provide theoretical sensitivity to the data did not establish a theoretical framework before

data was collected. This ensured the data could speak for itself without confining it to already

established theory.

The data was qualitative and extracted from interactive mediums of group discussions, feedback

sessions, telephone calls, support sessions, in-depth interviews, focus groups and supportive

documentation.


All participants in this study are volunteers and have given their permission to be involved in this

research. Participants were: team coaches who were provided with training in team coaching; team

leaders of teams who had experienced team coaching; and the leader supporting the initiative.

Tentative categories/themes were developed with an iterative process whereby all data was

captured and applied to the themes, reformulating, refining, strengthening, challenging and

focussing them.

Findings

Four key themes emerged from the data:

- The passion and sensemaking of team coaching

- The purpose and impact of team coaching

- The sustainability of team coaching

The passion and sensemaking of team coaching

Recruitment and Selection of Team Coaches

The team coaches were members of the organisational development and improvement learning

(ODIL) team of the organisation who were all trained coaches and they attended a training

programme in team coaching. They volunteered themselves to be trained as team coaches. One

team coach expressed “I have wanted to do team coaching for years” and having attended an

external course on organization systems was able to see where coaching would fit in. Because of

changes in terms of restructuring and turnover team coaching was seen as a possible way to help

teams cope with this.


Strategic Alignment

In the words of the leader “I do have a coaching strategy and team coaching is one of the elements

that fits within it. In terms of organisation coaching ethos we are well ahead of a lot of other

organisations because it is something I believe in.”

The ODIL team felt that there was a “need to focus less on individual development and more on

team development. We need our organisation to learn and respond quickly”. Also that “the world

changes so fast and the way we perceive it. We perceive it very differently now. I suspect team

coaching will be the future.”

The team felt strongly that team coaching needed to “sit with us first and then we can work on the

team issues strategically”.

From the team coach perspective “Team Coaching is part of OD, not a separate thing”. This is

clearly aligned to the leader’s view that “team coaching fits alongside a named intervention with the

OD strategy. [The person] who leads the bespoke OD interventions might diagnose Team

Coaching as the right intervention when she is scoping up a piece of work. Team Coaching would

be one of the offers that is put to different teams as part of a suite of OD interventions.”

There was a passion in that the “coaching skills can adapt to the team setting.”

The ODIL team made efforts to promote the team coaching programme at every possibility with

teams and to try to plan it into the new strategy. This organisation has its own definition of team

coaching which is “A coach (or coaches) works with a team towards the collective goal and helps

the team to understand how they can improve this.”


Agreeing terms (Contracting) with Teams

The leader has been building, since taking up post six years ago, an internal coaching culture.

“Team coaching was a natural extension to the existing coaching culture and helps us to look at

how we create capability within the organisation”.

The role of the team leader was firstly to decide if they wanted to take up the offer of team coaching

for their team. Then they and their team contracted with the team coach as to how team coaching

would take place. In most cases the team leaders sat in the room with the team coach but not in all

cases. The team leaders may or may not have had any development in one-to-one coaching skills

but did not take part in the development programme for team coaches or any other training around

team coaching.

To find teams to coach, an advertisement we sent out by the ODIL team asking teams if they

wanted team coaching and some teams came forward but not many at first “There was a low

response to this initial approach, but once we began to offer team coaching to teams with whom we

met to scope out a potential ODIL intervention, the numbers increased.”

One team coach expressed that they actively approached directors and the directors wanted the team

coaching for their teams but the team leaders were not very keen so there were a few mixed

messages and for the team coach “it is embarrassing to talk to the team leaders if they are not

keen”.

For those team leaders that did want team coaching the team coaches contracted with them around

the practicalities such as the frequency of meetings and the length of the team coaching work and

how people would be able to have time off to come to meetings. “I start the team coaching by

contracting with the team leader and using my professional judgment and we come to an agreement

around the process we will use – I don’t have any process already in mind.”


There was a view from the team coaches that contracting for team coaching was quite a different

process from contracting for other OD work. It is quite a complex task.

The team coaches tried out different ways of arranging the layout of the room and different ways of

interacting with the team. One of the ways they tried was what they called the ‘standing out’

practice. “That is how you can see the whole entity. It is difficult to see the process of learning

when you sit in the team or at the front but when you stand physically outside of the team it is easier

to see how they interact and learn. It is a process of awareness from a different angle.”

Having the fluidity of using the team coaching in different ways was seen as a benefit. “I feel there

is a freedom to try different things as the coach and this helped the team members to develop

ownership of their team.”

The contracting was done with the team leader but also with the team itself. In one case the team

leader was not involved in the team coaching “the team coach and was happy either way, with me

being involved or not, but the staff decided to have the team coaching sessions without me. I found

this difficult at first but got my head around it. Although I was not in the TC session, I checked with

my team and we talked about what they did in the sessions – it was clear they respected me but felt

the way they could do the best for me was to be team coached separately”. This team had six

sessions of team coaching and it benefitted the team enormously and the team leader felt it had

drawn them closer as a team and that whereas in the past the team members were more likely to

email her than go and talk to her, that they now approached her more often which she was pleased

about.

For one team coach “in my teams the team leaders were all present” and for another “my group was

mixed. Sometimes the team leader was in the room, sometimes not” so a variety of models were

used dependent on the team needs.


From the leader’s point of view “The crucial thing was to have the team leader’s agreement” and

“we wouldn’t put the support in without the sign-up of the team leader. You cannot put the support

in unless the individual who has responsibility for leading that team isn’t aligned with it.”

Where there were teams with no obvious leader then in addition to team coaching “we might put in

one-to-one coaching support for individuals”.

Also the make-up of the teams themselves was not always the same “one group had different

members in each session so I met different staff every time”.

Return on Investment

It was expected that there would be a return on investment in terms of the demand placed on the

small ODIL team that served 8,500 staff at 10 different sites. There was an expectation that

difficult team dynamics would be managed at an earlier stage because there is more capability to do

this. There was an expectation that although this organisation was already ahead of others in terms

of a coaching ethos, that team coaching would help a shift in culture to a coaching culture.

There is already some evidence of a different ethos in terms of resilience of the team which has

enabled the team to cope better with structural change. “There is some tangible benefit to working

with teams – they are change ready and change able.”

The Sensemaking of team coaching

The concept of one-to-one coaching was well understood by team coaches but the concept of

coaching with a team of people was seen as “very different”. It was felt important to help people

understand what team coaching was and what it could offer. “It was important to get the message


across as there were lots of problems of the awareness of team coaching at the start. For example,

is it a profession? People are not sure about what team coaching is.”

Team coaches were clear that “the principle of coaching is that we are not there to judge, but to

listen to the team” and that team coaching was about “making a safe environment”.

At first there was a limited awareness amongst the coaches as to what team coaching would bring;

“we were not sure what we would or could get out of this team coaching initially, we just didn’t

know, we were a little apprehensive”. Although the seminars on team coaching and the role

playing exercises gave some sensemaking to the team coaches it was not until they actually coached

a team that they could see the real impact of the team coaching and began to understand it more and

realise they could use it in different ways. The sensemaking developed as the team coaches

discussed how they could articulate team coaching better once they had experienced it. “It is about

working out solutions without waiting for permission, it is about changing people’s behaviour, it is

myth busting”.

For the teams themselves there was mixed feelings about having team coaching. Some team

members were skeptical as this came from a belief that coaching was the same as counselling and

that it was about helping dysfunctional teams rather than about making good teams better. There

were perceptions and anxieties to overcome. Team coaches were asked by team leaders and team

members “what are we going to get out of it?” and despite team coaches trying to explain what it

entailed “they just didn’t understand it as it was a new thing”. Some team members were very

open-minded, especially those having just completed apprenticeships and other team members were

rather anxious and apprehensive. However, afterwards the team members said they found it helpful

and they felt more empowered “people realized that they wouldn’t be fired for speaking up and

giving their opinion”. The perception of team coaching changed once people began to experience it.


“There was also a perception that some held that the team coaching would expose their personal

life and more than just their work. But whilst team coaching is about getting to know each other at

a personal level it is not about revealing personal life.” Once people understood this difference

and experienced getting to know each other on a personal level, the perception changed.

Sensemaking was an important part of the learning experience for team coaches, team leaders and

team members as no-one was clear about what the term team coaching comprised. Once they

understood it, from experiencing it in practice, they began to make sense of it for themselves and be

able to share the experience with others thereby helping develop positive perceptions and allay

anxieties and develop the sensemaking around it.

The purpose and impact of team coaching

This organisation’s approach to team coaching is that, “the reality is we don’t live in a perfect world

and the NHS is particularly messy at the moment so anything that can give people a sense of

resource, confidence, capability and ability to work through situations in a more positive way is

going to help”.

Team disciplines

One team leader expressed the need for team coaching “We had just got a new team, I could sense

there were difficulties. We seemed to have different working styles but wanted to work together.”

Some teams were struggling with structural changes and turnover of staff and the leader valued

coaching as a way to “enable individuals to share their experience and legitimise it”.


The team coaching enabled people could be as creative as they wanted to be. One team coach

commented “the beauty of team coaching for me is developing the different perspectives of the

team” and one way in which this was developed was to share ideas on tools, processes and

techniques that team members had found useful in other forums. An example was an exercise in

not talking over each other that a team member had used in a university course.

From the team leaders there was a real desire to use the team coaching principles in their meetings

beyond the team coaching sessions – to embed the good practice they had learned. “Team coaching

contributes more to the agenda of our meetings now”.

Language

Raising the awareness of the team dynamics really helped the team to consider the language it was

using and the processes it followed. The team coaches found that the team members started to take

up the coaching language that they were using and repeat it back. “Language is hugely important!

The team members started to think about the impact of language”. The team coaches saw

themselves “role-modelling and educating different ways of communicating”.

Team identity

The team created an identity because the team coaches did not refer to individuals but to the team as

a whole and they did not inquire about individuals but about the team. A strong team identity

enabled the team coach to challenge the team but without threatening the individuals. Team leaders

commented on the importance of team identity “I don't want us to lose the team identity that we


have built up through the team coaching sessions. We try to make sure we have some time

together.”

Relationship building

Relationship building was seen as a key way of building and rebuilding teams. One team work

“worked on broken down relationship and came up with a different way to do things. We can’t fix

the relationships, but team coaching is about accepting the ‘elephant’ and working around it.”

Relationship building was also seen as contributing to the sustainability of keeping the team able to

work effectively. “As a team coach we talk about this in the team coaching session – asking the

team how it will be able to sustain its effectiveness”. It was recognised that “team members grow

together”.

From the team coach perspective “team coaching looks like facilitation, but team coaching is

different from facilitation. The leader’s view of this is that “team coaching involves the team coach

in the background whilst facilitation involves some planning – those with more experience can

flex.” This will also depend on the contracting arrangement with the team and team leaders as

sometimes the team coach will have a session with the team and without the team leader.

Reflection

Team coaching involves teams in the skills of reflection. Team coaches already used this skill and

said “the team coaching evolves as we reflected on how we can use it next time, we think about

how else we can use it, in what different scenarios as it has many uses.” This enabling of reflection

was brought into the team and the team leaders reported “we are operational and work in crisis

management. We found it very strange to sit down for 2 hours to reflect. It is a luxury. It is a bit of

‘you time’ which we don’t normally have. Reflection is really useful!” There was a real


appreciation of the value of reflection, with one team saying “we reflect collectively now” and

another team “we will use our block time to reflect more, collectively”.

Learning together was also a key factor. “The beauty of team coaching is to learn from each other.”

The team coaches were learning about team coaching alongside team members and they were also

“role-modelling how you can learn”.

When coaching the teams the team coaches were unstructured in their approach and they found that

the team would often “start with a structure then shake off the structure and trust people to find

their own solutions” and it was reported that as teams were coached they were able to become more

flexible in their structure and it was evident in this that trust had grown.

Decision-making

From the team coaches perspective “the positive thing about team coaching is the building of

awareness of how the team makes decisions, rather than making decisions for them”. It was felt

that “team coaching is there to challenge the decision making of the team” and “I coached a group

at senior level in the organisation and it focussed on their decision making process”. A team

leader, after the team coaching sessions, said that they were “not as frightened as before to make

decisions” and another commented “it is an opportunity to find solutions”.

Transfer of learning

There was evidence that the learning gained from the team coaching was being transferred into

other areas of work. “The real benefits can be seen when you come back into the office and work

better together” and “we realised we are more productive now, even when we are outside the


office”. A team leader expressed “the team coach commented that she noticed we were more

positive in our outlook and behaviours after the first team coaching session”.

Empowerment

Team coaching empowered the teams. One example was a team that “hoped to engage other sisters

in our support network from other hospitals” but they found it was “hard to communicate with

them due to the distance and nature of our shift focus job” so the team coach helped them consider

options and a suggestion was “why not go and see them?” and the team thought “oh yes, why not

go to Scarborough?”. They took a day to visit other sisters in Scarborough and “it went really well.

It was seen as a really good initiative and gained a lot of commitment from people. We felt that we

had been given the permission to do it from the team coaching session which made us think outside

of what we thought we could and couldn’t do.”

Challenging Processes

Teams found that the “team coaches asked challenging questions” and had a “way to help you think

differently! It is not about giving you the answer”. Team leaders felt they could challenge and

speak up more “the previous regime was difficult, but things have changed significantly. The

permission from team coaching is that it is ok to say something if you are not happy about. It has

given me the confidence to speak up for health care quality.” Another team leader expressed “the

language of team coaching gave me the legitimate power to develop and challenge” and another “I

feel that now I can challenge processes more.”


Team Well-Being

One team coach said “team coaching is about holding people in a team when they may not be able

to hold themselves”. The team coaching supported the well-being of the team leaders “I came out

of the team coaching session and felt good about myself. There were a lot of affirmation and

support from the Team coaches.” The team coaching helped team members support one another

“in the following session, people would start to say things like ‘I can give you information this way

as I know you prefer it like this’. People changed their behaviour towards each other in a positive

thoughtful way, but not in a patronising way.”

Exploring Assumptions

It has already been mentioned that “team coaching has a way to help you think differently!” which

is the experience of a team leader. From the perspective of another team leader, team coaching

was useful for “challenging assumptions, and my assumptions as a leader, by asking ‘why do you

think you can’t do that?’” Team coaching provided opportunities to explore options. One team

leader said “team coaching is a supportive system, we come to solutions by exploring different

opportunities, not by being given the answer”. Assumptions could be challenged because of the

careful language that was used “the team coaches used coaching language and the team coaching

process was bringing this type of language more into the team and guiding others as to how to use

this to value, support and challenge the team.”


The Sustainability of team coaching

One team coach explained that she asked the team how they would sustain the benefits of their team

coaching and they said they were “rebuilding their relationships and working together to rebuild

the team”. Relationships take time to develop but serve for sustainability.

Team coaching as part of a system

For one team coach “For me, team coaching is about working with systems rather than with

individuals, it is a practical tool”. There is an “appreciation of each others’ different ways of

working” and team members would say things like “I can really see why you like to do things that

way – I understand why that way is helpful.” The team coaches were quite clear that team coaching

was a part of a system. “The way to do OD is system thinking. Team coaching is one tool of it – it

is not a separate system – it is part of it – we don’t talk about it separately.” Being part of a system

means that “team coaching should be more integrated into the normal working life of the team” and

that the team is seen as a whole “the power of team coaching is that you coach the whole team. The

Francis report is often quoted as being about leadership, but it is not really – it is about team

effectiveness”.

Wider systems

Wider systems were considered as important “we can bring team experiences to other teams and

encourage cross learning” and there was a desire for team coaching to be spread across the

organisation.

“As a team coach, you get to experience the system of team coaching and hold onto the dream for

future teams to be part of it.” The team leaders said “we can learn from the team coaching sessions


and share that learning”. There was also a view that “for the future improvement of team

coaching, we should use it in different organisations and different sectors” to explore different

approaches to gain the most benefits.

Challenge of time

The challenge that was articulated most throughout the research period was the challenge of finding

time for teams to meet to have team coaching. Therefore, to sustain team coaching, this remains the

biggest challenge. For team coaching to be sustainable time was needed for the team coaches to

become trained in team coaching. Although they were all trained coaches they wanted to learn how

their “coaching skills can adapt to the team setting.” It was ‘quite pressurized’ for the team

coaches to undertake the initial team coaching training; “sometimes we just couldn’t make it.

Pressures come randomly; such as workload; sometimes other deadlines/projects take over.” It

was also important for the team coaches to find time to be together and support each other, “for us,

to survive and flourish in team coaching, we need to learn in a team”. Once the team coaches were

ready to start their coaching it was the setting up of the team time which was difficult. Teams

would sometimes cancel at the last minute. The team coaches expressed this: “sometimes it was,

‘we just can’t do learning today’ which is understandable”; “we presume people try their best to

come to learning activities. It is part of accepting that this is the norm”; “most people are really

committed. And they have a feeling of guilt if they can’t make it.”

“You need the time to make coaching effective. Time is the biggest barrier. It is easier to do it by

planning it ahead, embedding it into meetings and then it will develop the culture further”. One

team leader commented “we had a lot of time pressures on us because our work is shifts focused.”

Another said “we are fortunately not very operational so we are more able to take time out to


attend team coaching meetings”. One idea, the development of a support network, already

mentioned earlier, which “seen as a really good initiative and gained a lot of commitment from

people” could not be sustained as “there was just no time to do it.”

Integration of team coaching

Integrating team coaching into team life was another challenge. The team leaders were clear in

their desire to continue with team coaching and it was felt that “team coaching should be more

integrated into the normal working life of the team” and that “the objectives for the team would

change over time. This is one of the benefits of such a flexible, team-owned approach.”

“We hope people will ask for team coaching in the future and discuss this in their regular

meetings”.

“Most people feel more comfortable to contribute to the team and its decisions but there are always

some individuals who are not confident and may stay that way.” This may remain a challenge but at

least team coaching gives team members an opportunity to develop confidence in the team setting.

Conclusion

The introduction of team coaching into this organisation has brought about many benefits even at an

early stage. Teams are working together better and are more change able.

From the experience of a team coach “it took a lot of talking for it to get started but team coaching

is a potentially hugely powerful tool” and from a team leader “I have been advocating team


coaching by promoting it and helping people see the benefits.” There is a passion for it “it reminds

me of when we first started coaching in NHS – exciting, powerful, difficult” and for its impact “the

important thing is not to lose what we have achieved”. It was felt that although the message of

team coaching was not an easy one to get across that “if people can experience team coaching, then

they will become enthusiastic”.

As team coaches “the concept of team coaching is always evolving with us practising it. For

example, we reflected on how we can use it next time, we think about how else we can use it, in

what different scenarios. It is the same as one-to-one coaching in that it has many uses.”nIt may

even open up more career opportunities “For people who want to have a career in HR, potentially

this will be a good opportunity for them to develop”. Only members of the ODIL team were able to

become team coaches sometimes working in pairs to develop and apply the new team coaching

skills.

It was a firm belief at this organisation that “the core of team coaching is understanding team” and

that “team coaching has far greater potential for damage (than a one-to-one coaching relationship)

as dynamics increase” including “passive aggression and power”. “There are risks associated with

team coaching. As soon as you open up, through questions, what sits behind the veneer, you have

to have the set of skills that enable you to manage that in a safe manner”. It was mentioned that

Lencione is a popular NHS model for dysfuntional process but from the OD it should be seen “as

the other way round – results are a by-product of the people not the process”.

The future is about teams sustaining themselves “If teams are developed then they can sustain

themselves after the team coaches leave”. For one team coach “my vision is that team coaching


will be available for all managers in their training. We want to build on what we have got but also

for managers to take over to sustain it.”

“The dynamics of the NHS are such that change is a constant, it’s difficult, it’s messy and very

chaotic” therefore “taking a team approach” was seen by the leader as a way to the spread the

benefit of development work. “The team coaching was a natural extension to the existing coaching

culture and to look at how you create capability within the organisation. You do it by giving people

the skills to manage their own challenges and coaching is probably the best way to do that in a non-

judgemental way”.

William Bridges (2003) talks about helping teams to change in times of constant change. He

suggests a variety of practices most of which: making change the norm; planning contingencies;

rebuilding trust; healing old wounds; selling the problem rather than the solution; and challenging &

responding; have been shown to be developed through this team coaching venture.

From this research, and in this context, the authors offer a working definition of team coaching.

Team coaching is when a team coach, in agreement with the leader of the team, leads the team as a

single unit through a process of enablement towards open and honest problem-approached dialogue

aimed at enhancing team reflection and learning, developing team behaviours and skills, developing

better processes and strategies for improvement and a systems approach to thinking.


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