What's the difference between team coaching and executive coaching?

Executive coaching is one to one. It works with a single leader on their thinking, their decisions and how they lead. Team coaching works with the leadership team as a group, on how they decide, disagree and work together as peers. The best results usually come from doing both, so each leader grows and the team grows with them.

Leaders ask me this a lot, usually because they're trying to work out where to spend the budget. So here's how I explain it.

What is executive coaching?

Executive coaching is you and a coach, working on you. It's where a senior leader gets to think out loud, prepare for the big conversations, debrief afterwards and keep sharpening how they lead.

I coach weekly, online, and fortnightly at a stretch, never monthly. The conversations are about whatever's real that week. A tricky peer relationship. A board paper. A decision about a restructure. A bigger role you want and how to get it. It's private, it's tailored, and it moves at your pace.

Executive coaching is the right fit when the thing you want to work on is mostly about you. Your confidence in a new role, how you show up with the Chair or CEO, your next career step, or how to lead through something hard.

What is team coaching?

Team coaching works on the team itself, on the relationships between the people in it and the way the team operates.

The questions in team coaching sound different. How do we make decisions? What happens when we disagree? Are we leading the layer below us as one team, or as six separate functions? What did we commit to, and are we keeping it?

Team coaching is the right fit when the thing getting in the way sits between people. You've got capable leaders who all work hard, but the team isn't pulling in the same direction, or it's pulling well and wants to be even better across the board.

How do the two work together?

This is how I like to run it. I coach every member of the leadership team one to one, and I bring them together as a team.

The one-to-one sessions give each leader a safe place to work on their own stuff. What's frustrating them, what they're worried about, what they want to get better at. The team sessions give them a place to work on it together, out loud, with the people it actually involves.

When you do both, something good happens. Each leader grows as a leader, and they also grow as peers. They start to understand why the person across the table thinks the way they do. The issues that would have stayed private in a one-to-one get raised constructively in the team room. And the commitments the team makes together get followed up in each person's coaching, so they don't drift.

So the one-to-one work lifts each leader, and the team work makes sure all that growth is pointed in the same direction.

Where does a team alignment day fit in?

A team alignment day is often where team coaching starts. It's a half day or full day, in person, where the team gets a shared language for how each person is wired, talks honestly about how the team really operates, and writes a team charter about how they'll communicate, decide, disagree and hold each other to account.

That day is a strong start. Team coaching is what keeps it going. Without follow-up, even a great day can fade by the next busy month. With regular team coaching and one-to-one coaching around it, the charter becomes how the team works, week in and week out.

What should I ask before choosing?

Before you decide, it's worth sitting with a few honest questions:

1. Where does the problem live? If it's mostly about one person's role, confidence or career, start with executive coaching. If it's about how people work together, look at team coaching.
2. Is the team new, stuck or already strong? Each needs something different, and I've written about the three kinds of team I see. All three benefit from team coaching, in different ways.
3. Will the team keep it going? If you're spending on an offsite, ask what happens on Monday. Team coaching is the answer to that question.
4. Does each leader have someone to think out loud with? If not, adding one-to-one coaching for the team often lifts the whole group faster than you'd expect.

And ask any coach you're considering how they'd combine the two. If they only do one, that tells you something.

Where do I start?

If you're not sure which one you need, start with where your team is at. The free Leadership Impact Scorecard is a quick way to get an honest read on your own leadership and a few things to work on.

Coaching individual leaders and their teams together is the work I love most. If this sounds like you or your team, send me a message and we'll work out what fits.