Team Development
Teamwork takes work, and a lot of it. Winning sports teams or memorable theatrical productions happened with planning, practice and coaching.
Teams move to high performance by establishing trust, having open dialogue, making commitments and holding each team member accountable for delivering on promises. The executive coach facilitates a process to allow the team leader to assume his or her rightful place as the true coach of the team. Sometimes, however, that team leader needs some help in diagnosing team dysfunction and assisting the team to establish a process to elevate its effectiveness and move to high performance.
Ken’s approach combines both real-world corporate experience leading teams for which he was accountable along with proven techniques assisting teams in numerous client engagements. He has honed a unique approach to lifting team and, ultimately organizational performance.
“Ken’s grasp of our business and engagement with our leadership team are more indicative of a respected and trusted teammate rather than that of a third-party, external advisor.”
“Ken serves as a leadership coach to the Accuray executive leadership team, both as an executive coach where he works privately with individual leaders and as a facilitator of our regular leadership development sessions. He pushes the team members to think outside their comfort zone and develop new approaches that challenge the status quo. With Ken’s tools and training, I am confident our leadership team will soar to new heights.”
A typical team coaching arrangement will include the following steps, usually over a six-month period with periodic check-ins over a longer period of time.
STEP 1.
Goal Setting
In the early stages of the coaching process, we set goals with the team leader. Similar to individual coaching, the client’s goals may range from incremental to transformative change and, similarly, we set both team performance goals and business improvement goals.
STEP 2.
Diagnosing the Team Dynamic
The coach will meet with each team member to understand individual perspectives on the team dynamic. Often a written, diagnostic tool is used. Other tools may be used to assess conflict triggers, derailers, interpersonal needs and leadership preferences of each individual and then applied to a team profile.
STEP 3.
Action Planning
The team convenes to receive assessment results, explore the results with one another and diagnose the team’s challenges and opportunities. Once root causes are identified, the team compiles a plan of action with deliverables, milestones and accountabilities.
STEP 4.
Sustaining Change
The coach monitors the team’s progress with regular check-in meetings with the leader and the team members. We discuss real challenges faced by the team and explore how the team is advancing new approaches as agreed in the action planning stage.
STEP 5.
Evaluating Personal & Business Performance
We measure the team’s progress by using the written, team diagnostic tool to determine improvement against desired outcomes. We also look at the team’s business results to assess performance improvement realizing that turnaround may lag for a period of time before improvement is apparent.