Coaching Model Assessment Name: Arvind Agrawal Date: July 272012 Student ID: Arvind Agrawal Email: arvind@rpg.

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Team Coaching Model

Arvind Agrawal Distinct from individual and group coaching, focus of team coaching is the entire working team. Team coaching is aimed toward helping the team achieve better cohesion and commitment to the team goals, improve quality of interaction, improve ability to surface differences and deal with them, (Hackman & Wageman, 2005). Organizations function through teams which are set up to accomplish certain objectives. These objectives may be development of new products, managing new product launches, reviewing business performance and working out corrective actions for future, development of strategic direction for the business, reducing cost of manpower, enhancing performance orientation in the organization etc. For each of these objectives, a team is appointed. These teams typically consist of talents drawn from different parts of the organization. They are expected to pool in their resources and work collaboratively to accomplish the desired objectives. In reality however, quite often teams do not function with great deal of productivity. Quite often, the team meetings are battle grounds for members to settle their individual scores, assert superiority by attacking the other members. Members tend to hijack the meeting toward own agenda and meet personal objectives rather than contributing to accomplishing team goals. Many remain fixated in their own functional groove rather than look at bigger picture and address the issue in hand. There are gaps in sharing by deliberate withholding of information. Instead of meaningful dialogue and conversations, there are tendencies to dominate, attack or withdraw by silence during these team meetings. Instead of collaboration, team members end up having unhealthy competition with each other. The outcomes of such dysfunctional meetings are far from satisfactory and they do not serve the organization purpose. David Rock (2007) echoes this when he says, most teams by nature are disjointed, chaotic systems with people pulling in many different directions. These dysfunctionalities erode effectiveness of the team and quite often the teams miss to achieve their goals. Purpose of team coaching is to help teams realize their capabilities. Team coach does so by helping teams - Understand and commit to the goals for which the team has been constituted.
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Recognize and remove the dysfunctionalities that exist in the team. Discover and adopt new ways of working free from the dysfunctionalities.

Like in the individual coaching scenario, in the team coaching situation as well, coach is to observe, listen and ask powerful questions which helps the teams in this journey. This paper outlines the team coaching model which may be very useful for coaching teams. The Team Coaching Model The proposed team coaching model ACCED consists of 5 steps as under
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A Aims and objectives of the team C Current work culture in the team C Culture desired in the team E Explore enablers for transiting into desired culture D Develop action plan for institutionalizing the new way of working in the team

A Aims and objectives

C Current work culture

C Culture desired

E Explore enablers

D Develop Action Plan

Step 1. A - Aims and objectives of the team Every team is constituted with certain aim and specific objectives in mind. Purpose of this first step is to help team members discover the team objectives, develop common understanding and gain acceptance. At this stage, it is equally important to understand the difference between aim and objective although people tend to use these two words quite interchangeably. Example below explains the differences between these two words :
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Example New product development team this team comprises of talents drawn from R & D, testing, marketing, finance, materials and manufacturing. Assuming one person from each of the functions, this will be a 6 person team. Aim for this team develop new products which ensure continued market leadership of the company. Objective develop a car which gives lowest cost of ownership to its customers in India by June 2014. Through this example, it becomes clear that aim of the team broadly defines the purpose while objective is very specific in terms of time, cost and market which is intended to be served as under : Time by June 2014 Cost lowest cost of ownership for the customers Market Indian customers The first step of the team coaching process helps team clearly understand and accept the aims as well as objectives for which the team has been set up. Step 2. C - Current work culture of the team Purpose of this step is to help the members understand the current culture of the team. Current culture of the team means the way team currently works. How the information is exchanged and processed in the team. How are the differences handled in the team? How are the differences shared? Are the differences welcome or ridiculed? How are the decisions made? Is there culture of team members voicing new ideas or do they shy away from doing so for fear of being ridiculed? Who speaks and how much? Do all concerned get opportunity to voice their opinions? Or few members dominate the discussions and others keep quite. What is the level of collaboration in the team? What are the overtly stated as well as underlying norms of behavior in the team? The team coach observes the team in actual working session and then facilitates conversation within the team regarding the way they work today. Coach also helps the team understand the consequences of the current way of working. This may take more than one working session of the team. The team coach may use variety of different interventions to help team become
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fully aware of their current ways of working and its implications. To accomplish this, coach may facilitate freewheeling conversation, use some questionnaire through which everyone give their opinions, or share own observations. Coach can adopt any or all of these means to achieve the purpose of helping team develop shared understanding of their current culture. Step 3.C - Culture desired In this step, coach helps the team articulate the desired culture necessary to meet their aims and objectives. Coach helps the team develop norms of behavior necessary for meeting agreed aims and objectives. Coach may facilitate freewheeling conversation within the team to arrive this. Alternatively, each team member may be asked to put their thoughts on a sheet of paper. Coach then captures all of these on flip chart paper. Either way, all the ideas of the team members are up on the flip chart paper. Now comes the need for filtering these ideas. One good way to do this is impact analysis of each idea. That is, the level of impact the particular idea has on achievement of team objectives. The ones with H (High Impact) is retained and the ones with L (low impact) are dropped. The ones with M (medium impact) are discussed and decided if some of them are to be retained. At the end of this step, the team will have clear understanding and acceptance of the desired culture, i.e. the way they need to function in the team, hereafter. Step 4.E - Explore enablers for transiting into desired culture By the time team reaches this step, they would have clear understanding and acceptance of aims and objectives of the team current culture the way team works and its implications culture desired the way team needs to wok to meet their aims and objectives

In this step 4, coach helps the team to explore ways and means to transit from current to desired way of working so that the team achieves its aims and objectives. Like in case of coaching an individual client, here also the team coach does not advice any solution but helps the team by asking powerful questions to find answers for itself. As the coach is facing the entire team not just one individual, team coach can help team do brain storming to come up with ideas on how to transition toward desired culture. Once the ideas are on the flip chart, they can be
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filtered by doing impact analysis much the same way as suggested in step 3 above. This step 4 in the team coaching process concludes with concrete ideas on how to transition to desired culture for the team. Step 5 D Develop action plan for institutionalizing the new way of working in the team In this step 5, coach helps the team in institutionalizing the new way of working in the team. Like in case of coaching individual client, this involves helping the team build commitment and accountability. The team coach can use wide variety of intervention to accomplish this. Some of these may be Visualization by asking the team to visualize the outcome of their working in new way hereafter. By asking the team to build in some measures which is going to tell them if they are working in new way. If not, it should send them alert. By helping team intermittently take a pause and reflect what is going as per new culture and what is not going as per new culture. By remaining in the team as observer and giving in-the-moment feedback to help team stay on course. Summary In team coach model ACCED, understanding and acceptance of

team

coach

helps

team

with

Aims and objectives of the team. Current culture in the way

team

functions

and

its

dysfunctionalities. Culture desired the new way in which team needs to function. Exploring enablers to transit to desired culture. Developing action plan for building commitment and accountability. In each step, the team coach helps the team by his or her basic skill of observing, listening and asking powerful questions. References

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Hackman, J.R. & Wageman, R. (2005). Theory of Team Coaching. Academy of Management Review, vol. 30, No2, 269-287. Rock David (2007). Quiet Leadership, New York: Harper Collins _______________________________________________________________________

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