COACHING BY DAVE ROBY 

SEVEN STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY OF A TOP TEAM

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Stage 1. Clarify the team’s purpose
This stage involves working with the team leader and his/her team to understand what the team needs to achieve together that no individual or other team in the organization could achieve — the team’s purpose. As part of this effort, the coach will work with the team leader to agree on what type of team is needed to deliver on its purpose. This will enable real clarity regarding having the right people in the right seats on the bus and provide clarity about who should compose the team rather than inheriting a team with no clear sense of purpose.

Stage 2: Working “inside-out”
Here the work is focused on articulating the gap between the current and required team performance achieved through an “inside-out” assessment of the entire team. Structured feedback is given by individuals to the coach around a given framework of high team performance. In addition, psychometric tools are used to understand the impact of the team profile on how it was working. Making meaning of such “inside-out” data with the team is critical, and the team and the coach will revisit the data at several points to understand and interrupt unhelpful dynamics in the team and improve the way the team handles conflict, communication, accountability, learning, and leadership.

Stage 3: Working “outside-in”
Team performance does not improve just by working better together. The team only makes a difference through how it collectively and individually connects and engages with all its critical stakeholders. A team can only do this if its members understand how their stakeholders see them. The semi-structured interview format is used by the coach to gather stakeholder feedback — an“outside-in” assessment. In this way, the coach is able to hold up a mirror to the team and share with it the stakeholders’ perceptions of the team’s performance, as well as feedback about its interactions with others in the business. This gives the team the insight and power needed to influence stakeholders far more effectively.

Stage 4: Individual coaching for team members
Your coach is available for each of the team members, including the leader. Each team member is able to access the coach virtually via WhatsApp or other digital means. Built into the process is a three-way meeting between each team member, his or her coach, and the team leader to share action plans, gain the team leader’s input, and agree on the way forward for the coaching. This helps align the individuals’ personal work with the work of the team.

Stage 5: Working on the team as a team
A series of forum meetings are held that are focused on both the “soft stuff” of improving trust, collaboration, the ability to have constructive conflict and productive levels of support and challenge (a perennial challenge for all teams), along with the “hard stuff” of handling high-stake business issues. In addition, the team will complete fieldwork in between the forum sessions to help ensure that the insights, outcomes, and new skills and behaviors from these meetings are practiced and applied in the team’s day-to-day work. Real-time observation and coaching of the leadership team in action during its regular meetings help provide additional feedback. Finally, training sessions are developed to build specific, critically needed skills among all team members — for example, influencing skills to help team members better manage their stakeholders and engage their own staff.

Stage 6: Connecting with stakeholders
To be successful, the team members need to be able to effectively manage their key stakeholders. We work to develop a deep understanding of the answers to the following questions: Who are the most important stakeholders? Who are expected to be blockers or critics? Who are likely to be advocates and supporters? The coach will work alongside the team to prioritize and build plans around how each stakeholder would be actively managed by the team to achieve targeted business outcomes.

Stage 7: Transferring the coaching role to the team leader
The coach works with the team to focus on ​how​ they learned as well as on ​what​ they learned. In this way, the team can figure out what support is needed for its ongoing development. Transferring team coaching skills to the leader means the team’s eventual independence from the coach and self-sufficiency in taking its performance to higher levels.

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