How to get started with coaching a new team.
23 Oct 2008
When I meet with a new team of people that I have been asked to coach for the first time there are a number of things to consider and to prepare. Before starting the work I would want to be clear about who the sponsor is for it and who the team leader or team manager is. They may be the same person but usually they are not. I prefer to have the team leader directly involved with the coaching work, briefing their team members, having a view about their objectives and expectations for each person and ideally for them to be a coaching subject as well. The purist approach would be for someone else different to be coaching the team leader and the team members but over time I have come to realise that the benefits of one coach coaching the team leader and also their team members outweigh the drawbacks.
You need to be very careful about confidentiality and not to disclose anything significant that one person tells you at a coaching session that would not want another coachee to know about and so you need to discuss this aspect with each coachee and continually be aware of the significance of the information that you are given. Obviously you cannot forget what you have heard from each person and block it out of your consciousness but you can use it to inform your questions and the options for each coachee in the light of their own goals and objectives.
Virtually all of the people that I have coached in teams including their managers like the fact that I have these extended relationships and the broader understanding and perspective that it gives me, to help them with their agenda.
I like to brief the whole team together, including the manager, at the outset of the coaching assignment to ensure that they all understand the process, approach and our respective roles, responsibilities and possibilities for this coaching work.
I use a high level 6 page “idiots guide” to explain what coaching is all about, what I am doing, the process I am using, what I expect of the coachee and the mechanics of the sessions.
This team briefing helps to place this coaching work in the context of the overall organisation and its performance challenges, objectives and it allows the team members to hear about and raise any questions about the confidentiality feedback relationship with their manager, the organisation and their peers.
I answer any questions or points raised by the team and then after this briefing session has finished I then meet with each individual coachee to start the process of getting to know them as individuals, their issues, goals and objectives.
It also gives them a chance to get to know me and to establish a sense of trust in me and credibility for the process.
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