“A team becomes a team when everyone shares responsibility for each others’s performance, well-being and learning.”                                                                                                     David Clutterbuck

The art of effective teamwork is not always recognized as a separate or even important discipline. The saying that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ is often heard though. The role of teams is to solve problems, generate synergies and efficiencies and make decisions or execute strategies – in short: to add value.

In today’s interconnected world, in times of global pandemics and real-time connections, it is imperative that we recognize the strengths that a team can provide. Having said that, it’s not easy to create or be a high-performing and value adding team; a team that is constructive and collaborates effectively.

• Has the team a common language that everybody knows, understands and uses?
• Are there protocols in place for how we interact with each other, how we constructively disagree and how do we deal with setbacks?
• What about ‘trust’? How strong is our psychological safety with each other?
• How do we deal with changes, a new team member or working remotely?

Is your team ready to face the ‘new work environment’ or could it do with some fine tuning?

In 2022 Kai Taylor graduated from the Global Team Coaching Institute as a certified Systemic Team Coach. The tutors, Professors Dr Peter Hawkins and Dr David Cluttberbuck from Henley Business School in the UK are world leading experts in the relatively new field of coaching entire teams – together! This enables the team to learn and grow jointly, at the same time – for the benefit of the members individually, the team itself and the relevant organisation – as well as all stakeholders and the surrounding community: the entire system!

A specific discipline of coaching, Systemic Team Coaching requires a specialised and honed set of skills, which the coach applies to enable teams to adapt to the demands of our fast changing world.  This groundbreaking coaching approach assists teams to break down the dreaded ‘silo’ thinking, enhances a systemic way of inclusivity and ensures the team becomes more than high performing: value adding!

TurboCoach is qualified and accredited in a wide variety of other tools to assist with team development: Group Styles Inventory (GSI) from Human Synergistics and the use of the Problem Solving Circles; Marshall Goldsmith’s team facilitation; the application of ‘Conversational Intelligence’ from Marcia Reynolds as well as Craig Weber’s Conversational Capacity to name a few.

The effectiveness and efficiency of the team and how it works together is crucial. The way to achieve this varies, depending on the relevant ‘business need’: the US military experience of General Stanley McCrystal led him to adopt to use of ‘Teams of teams’; Craig Weber recommends the use of Building Conversational Capacity and ensuring the team remains in the ‘sweet spot’ to communicate effectively and constructively.

The process TurboCoach applies for Team Coaching is varied and tailored specifically to the teams we work with.

• An initial discussion with the team manager or leader to identify the desired outcomes and specific challenges is the starting point.
• Meeting with all team members one-on-one is the first step of getting to know the client, which is the team!
• Note: this is NOT a single one-off facilitated intervention with a specific problem related focus (Communication, Collaboration, Listening or effective Problem Solving etc.). Systemic Team Coaching is neither facilitation nor consultancy. It is several sessions of in-the-moment on-going team coaching, with a tailored approach that is unique to each team and the relevant goals being confirmed and re-confirmed as the team grows and develops.
• The coach attends team meetings and encourages identification of patterns and behaviours that might benefit from being addressed.
• Analysis tools may be required and the right tool for the job is at hand, eg. LSI (Human Synergistics) DiSC, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator), Learning Styles, Belbin Team Roles etc.

The time frame for each team depends on the time and availability that the team is ready to dedicate to achieving the expected outcomes. Generally, a twelve-month programme is recommended, while shorter interventions are possible.