What if every leader on your team had a coach, and so did the team?

A great alignment day can reset a team. Team coaching keeps it going. It's for leadership teams who want to keep growing together over months, with someone alongside them the whole way.

How does team coaching work?

There are three parts, and they work together.

• One-to-one coaching for every member of the leadership team, including the leader. This is where people get honest about what's getting in their way, and work on their own leadership.
• Team sessions to work through what's coming up, as a team. Real decisions, real tension, real priorities.
• Your team charter as the thread through all of it. The team writes it early, and we keep coming back to it.

The one-to-ones are where people get honest. The team sessions are where they sort it out with each other. Because I'm in both rooms, I can see where the team is getting stuck and help them get it unstuck.

Who is team coaching for?

Team coaching suits leadership teams who are in it for the longer haul. Usually one of these is going on:

• A new or changed team that needs to become one team, fast. A new leader, a restructure, a merger.
• A team that keeps sliding back. You've had the offsite, it was great, and then it got busy and the old patterns came back.
• A team where decision-making is slow or discussions lose focus, and nobody really pushes back in the room anymore.
• A high-performing team that's already aligned and delivering and wants to be better across the board.

If you're the leader, you're part of it too. Some of the biggest shifts I see come from the leader working on how they show up with their own team.

How is it different from a one-off alignment day?

A team alignment day is a concentrated half or full day. The team gets a shared language, has the honest conversation and writes its charter. It's a strong reset and it's often where team coaching starts.

Team coaching keeps going after that. Each leader is working on their own growth every week or fortnight, and the team comes back together regularly to practise what they agreed. That rhythm is what turns a good day into how the team actually works.

If you're weighing up whether to coach one leader or the whole team, I've written about the difference between team coaching and executive coaching.

What does it look like over time?

We usually start with Everything DiSC profiles for everyone, so the team has a shared language for how each person works. Then an alignment session to build the team charter. From there, the one-to-ones run alongside regular team sessions, and the charter becomes the thing the team measures itself against. Here's more on writing a team charter that sticks.

One executive team I worked with for 18 months had a chairman who was, in his words, initially sceptical about the softer side of management. By the end, again in his words, the team had built trust and mutual respect, more dynamic and productive discussions, and a healthy level of challenge and rigorous debate.

What does the team get?

• Every leader growing in their own right, with a coach in their corner.
• A team that knows how it works, where it's strong and where it gets stuck.
• A charter the team wrote and actually uses.
• Faster, better decisions, and more honest conversations in the room.

Want to talk about coaching your whole leadership team?

Tell me about your team and where it's at, and I'll tell you whether team coaching is the right fit or whether something lighter would do the job. Send me a message and I'll reply within 24 hours.