Executive team coaching accelerates the team development process, i.e. forming, storming, norming, performing, and in so doing accelerates the company’s performance and culture development. The executive team sets the strategic direction for the company, and the executive team’s behavior sets the culture. High growth venture capital and private equity backed companies attract leaders who are at the peak of their careers. These leaders experience significant pressure to grow their companies quickly, often in highly dynamic and uncertain environments. Executive team coaching helps high performing individuals become a high performing team.
Our approach to team coaching parallels our well proven executive coaching methodology. We start by carefully gathering 360 feedback through interviews with the team itself, the company’s Board, and others having broad exposure to the leadership team. We also perform a quantitative assessment of the team’s performance and dynamics. We deliver a Team 360 assessment, discuss the strengths and opportunities for development, and collaboratively set development goals for the team. Team coaching happens in the context of ongoing work. Individual and team development goals are coached in weekly staff meetings, offsites, and occasional pair and trio working sessions.
Team coaching brings numerous benefits to the team and organization. First, it helps pinpoint where the team needs to develop. Coached teams learn to better self-observe, deepen the habits of identifying opportunities for improvement, and effect needed changes in interpersonal and team behaviors. Trust, goal clarity, alignment, and esprit de corps, and improved organizational culture and health are all common outcomes of team coaching. Most importantly, team coaching delivers quantifiably higher team effectiveness and improves the team’s ability to achieve key strategic outcomes.