Executive Team Coaching

Team effectiveness is a skill developed over time; mastery requires practice.

Serving on an executive team can simultaneously be one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences in a leader’s career—often simultaneously. An executive team coach can help navigate both ends of that spectrum.

While our processes for coaching individual leaders and executive teams are compatible and are often used in concert, they are distinct offerings, targeting the unique needs of each situation: executive coaching is aimed at improving individual performance, while executive team coaching is aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of a leadership team to work together in driving an organization’s success.

For most executive teams, we have found that conducting coaching in the course of work on an organization-wide objective (strategic planning, organization design, etc.) presents many advantages:

• It does not add to already busy executive schedules.  By weaving coaching into the work, members are simultaneously strengthening the organization and the team.
• Developing the team this way feels less contrived than more conventional approaches.  Particularly at the executive level, the more development feels like a natural extension of the team’s work together, the more likely it is that a strong team will result.
• Trust is built primarily on the basis of competence and character; by giving executives the opportunity to see each other’s performance first-hand, you allow them to develop an appreciation for each team member’s skills.
• Team members gain a tangible appreciation for the advantages of working as a team.

Coaches are typically embedded with a team for 4-6 months, observing meetings, providing feedback, facilitating key conversations, and working with individual members, as needed.

Team effectiveness is a skill developed over time; mastery requires practice.  Providing teams with tools for self-management and ongoing opportunities for development will allow them to sustain performance over the long-term, and to become models for team performance throughout the organization.