BlueApricot

In my previous blog, I wrote about team coaching and why I think such coaching should be more pervasive in the business world. Though many companies are starting to use team coaching, according to one study (Henley University of Reading, UK), while 51% of organizations surveyed reported using individual coaching, only 4% use team coaching.

Having been a team coach for several years, I have some idea of the obstacles to seeing more team coaching. Many leaders, managers and HR Directors are unclear what team coaching is. Some of them fear it may involve some kind of fuzzy, kumbaya soul searching by teams without any business outcome. Many of these same people have had no exposure to team coaching and feel uncomfortable with the idea. In some cases, there’s a fear what team coaching may unleash. In a recent case, I had one CEO who feared the team’s morale was so low that the coaching would reveal serious cracks in his team! His team, I knew, was suffering from low morale and was not achieving its best. Why wouldn’t the CEO want to tackle this head on with the help of a trained team coach? We tend to fear what we don’t understand or are unfamilar with.

In short, team coaching will become more widely accepted when the benefits of team coaching become more publicized: Team Coaching International has invested in researching teams who embark on team coaching following a baseline diagnostic that is taken 6 – 9 months later. Remarkably, productivity and positivity (akin to morale) typically improve by about 25 percent: now, that’s a heck of a good reason to take team coaching seriously.