Team Coaching: What is going on when I am coaching a team?
Author
Joanne James, Director of CPD and Collaborative Programmes
Supervisor Dr Jane Turner Associate Dean Business and Engagement
Northumbria University
Newcastle Business School, City Campus East
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE18ST
Stream 8. Scholarly Practitioner
Working paper
Word count: 4408 without references
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to further our understanding of team coaching as a distinct form of team intervention. By asking the question, “what is going on when I am coaching the team?” I hope to provide conceptual clarity for those who may want to commission or design developmental interventions with teams. By having clarity about what is going on between coach and team members we can become more sophisticated about why we might select a specific intervention in a particular team context.
Approach
I adopt an autoethnographic approach; bringing tacit knowledge into conscious awareness; exploring how my practice may be explained through underpinning theory and, co-constructing my understanding with my operational teams and with other professionals engaged in team coaching.
Implications for Practice
There is significant evidence that whilst teams are prevalent in the majority of organisations, they often significantly underperform (Coutu & Kauffman, 2009) and I have noticed in my work with internal coaches they increasingly describe being called upon to work with teams at all levels. However, the team coaching literature is sparse (Peters and Carr, 2013) and there is disagreement about what constitutes the purpose, philosophy or outcomes of team coaching assignments.
Originality/ Value of this work
It is my intention, through this research; to offer a new framework of team coaching that enables coaches to develop their practice and HRD professionals to make informed choices about how they can support organisational teams. It is original in that perspectives from team coaching practice are integrated with theories from small group research, team effectiveness, and action modalities (Raelin, 2009) such as action learning and action science.
Key words
Team coaching, autoethnography, team effectiveness, coaching practice
Introduction
In this article I outline the research project that aims to contribute to the completion of my professional doctorate. At the time of writing I have completed 14 months of a three-year process and seek to share my research objectives and approach with HRD professionals who can provide useful feedback on the relevance of my work from their own professional contexts. First I describe the drivers that brought me to my research question and explore the literature on team coaching highlighting where it resonates with my practice and where it leaves questions still unanswered. I also draw from wider research perspectives to bring a greater theoretical context.
The investigation of the literature in relation to my own practice derives from my research approach of autoethnography; writing (graphy) about the self (auto) whilst embedded in a particular culture (ethno), in my case the culture of team coaching with a view to creating insights of relevance to this cultural or social phenomenon that has relevance to a wider audience. (Adams, Holman-Jones & Ellis, 2015).
I explain how I plan to explore the research question and analyse the empirical data to answer the questions:
- What is the purpose of team coaching; what outcomes are we seeking?
- What is going on in a team coaching intervention?
- Is team coaching distinctive from other team-based interventions?
- How does the experience of 1:1 coaching inform my team-coaching practice?
Why research team coaching?
I lead Executive Education Programmes at the Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, providing a range of interventions to professional managers seeking to develop themselves, their teams and the overall performance of their organisations. As an academic I bring theory and practice together to help my clients solve real-world problems through their personal and professional development. Coaching plays a key role. I coach leaders as they take on the challenges of more strategic senior roles and I lead a coach development programme for those wanting to integrate coaching in to their own practice in a range of sectors and contexts.
With dyadic coaching I have confidence, skills and underpinning theory to explain my approach. However, when I am asked to deliver team coaching or provide support to managers who want to work in a team context I notice a feeling of vulnerability often creeps in. I am intrigued by my reaction as teams have played a significant role in my 20-year professional career within a large American multi-national corporation. From my initial role as a team manager through to an OD role enabling the creation of cross-functional customer teams within a pan European high performance organisation, I have built a significant library of theory, experience and know-how about teams.
Reflecting on practice, I became aware that I was bolting together a background in team building or team facilitation with the philosophies and principles of dyadic coaching. This creates cognitive dissonance and whilst I get by applying instinct, experience and a range of tools and techniques I lack a clear process, conceptual clarity and at times, confidence. My motivation for this project is to develop mastery as a team coach underpinned by a robust theoretical framework that I can articulate for others and myself.
Team coaching: the research base
When I explore the literature to resolve my curiosities I find that team coaching is not well understood, research is sparse (Peters and Carr, 2013) and there is ‘conceptual confusion’ (Brown and Grant, 2010, p. 36) as to how team coaching is distinctive from other team-based interventions, such as team consultation, team building and team facilitation. Team coaching research is some way behind the general body of 1:1 coaching research and understanding team coaching is reminiscent of the debate about the differences in coaching, counselling and mentoring prevalent in the early coaching literature. (Hawkins, 2011)
In the academic literature, “A Theory of Team Coaching” (Hackman & Wageman, 2005) is highly influential (cited 512 times in Google Scholar, March 2015). It is based on empirical findings (Gersick, 1998) of natural team performance cycles leading Hackman and Wageman to introduce the concept of ‘readiness for coaching’ (p275) and recommend that any coaching offered is a fit with the performance stage: i.e. motivational type coaching aimed at achieving maximum collective effort towards shared goals at the beginning of the process; consultative type coaching aimed at providing feedback on action strategies around mid-process and educational type coaching aimed at extracting learning from experience at the end of a performance cycle.
Whilst I relate to the idea of coaching readiness in relation to what’s going on for the team, the article failed to connect with my experience of working with real teams with its specific emphasis on ‘task performance processes” (2005, p.273) and a rejection of coaches who place too great a focus on interpersonal relationships. I am not convinced by the positivist assumptions of the research that aims to create laboratory conditions with undergraduate students in an attempt to prove or disprove the role of relationships. In one experiment cited, (Wooley, 1998) a generalised discussion about the importance of relationships on team work was tested as an intervention with teams of students working together for one hour, building a Lego house and compared to a tactical discussion about the effectiveness of the building approaches. Not surprisingly the students, seeking a prize for the best house within a one-hour time frame, favoured the task-focussed discussion.
Putting my epistemological preferences aside for one moment, the equally positivist team effectiveness literature suggests there is significant empirical evidence that interpersonal relationships are critical to a number of mediating states shown to have an impact on team performance (Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp and Gilson, 2008). For example, cohesion, (Beal, Cohen, Burke and McLendon, 2003); cooperation (Lubatkin, Simsek, Ling and Viega, 2006) and learning (Edmondson, 1999) all have empirical evidence linking them to team performance outcomes. Cacioppe and Stace (2009) argue for an integrated approach to team development that considers individual wellbeing, relationships and team culture along with task accomplishment and efficient team processes. This data supports the idea that a coach may need to explore the inter-relational.
The second area of disconnect in the Hackman &Wageman (2005) paper is the limited use of coaching literature (Komaki, 1986 and Schein, 1988) that is almost 30 years old, excluding more contemporary theory. The fundamental assertion is that coaching is aligned primarily to training and skill acquisition (Hackman and Wageman, 2005 p. 289) and assumes the functions of coaching are focussed on task-based behaviours such as process consultation, Schein (1988) and behavioural feedback type approaches (Komaki, 1986). In both cases the coach plays the role of expert, which contravenes the identity and role of the coach.
Practitioners such as Brown and Grant, (2010); Clutterbuck, (2007, 2014); Hawkins, (2014) and Thornton, (2010) write about team coaching from the perspective of real world team experience that resonates with my own. However, this literature typically includes limited empirical evidence or explicit theoretical underpinning. Practitioners agree that team coaching is about reflective dialogue and learning with a focus on building long term sustainable development which has resonance with the products of 1:1 coaching described by Flaherty (2005, p.3). That is; ‘long term excellent performance’, ‘self correction’ and ‘self generation’. Thornton (2010) emphasizes the coach’s role in enabling individuals in the team to feel safe and to be able to challenge their thinking to take on new perspectives through collaboration, dialogue, reflection, and constructive disagreement as well as focus on the goals themselves, and the skills required to carry out key tasks.
This emphasis moves the discussion beyond task to the coach’s role in enabling the team ‘to learn how to learn’ as O’Neil and Marsick, (2014 p. 206) have identified in coaching action-learning teams.
Clutterbuck, (2007) and Brown and Grant (2010) respond to the question of whether team coaching is merely a new name for facilitating. Both argue against this interpretation: Clutterbuck (2007) claiming that a facilitator merely manages the dialogue whereas a coach ‘empowers the team to manage the dialogue for themselves’ (2007, p.101). Brown and Grant (2010) emphasize that goal attainment focus assumed in coaching is more than simply facilitating a process and propose a team based version of Whitmore’s (2005) familiar GROW model: GROUP which incorporates Goals, Reality, Ways forward, Understanding others and Perform. This practical approach aims to combine a goal focussed questioning with a dialogue that considers all team members perspectives.
Developing the theoretical basis of team coaching
To address the limitations of the team coaching literature I have explored the research base relating to groups and teams. Team effectiveness literature can be traced back to its origins in the Hawthorne studies of the 1930s and group dynamics and ‘T groups’ explored by Kurt Lewin in the 1950’s (Adelman, 1993; Levi, 2011). Lewin’s action research approaches led to a number of similar parallel streams of research that Raelin (2009) describes as the ‘action modalities’ including: action learning (Revans, 2011, Brook, Pedlar & Burgoyne, 2013) action science (Argyris and Schön, 1989) and cooperative inquiry (Heron, 1996). This material is often presented in the context of research methods or adult learning and as such would not be the obvious choice of reading for the practical team coach. However, I was struck by the similarities to my own practice and the literature pertaining to team coaching. The emphasis on enabling active dialogue; making tacit knowledge explicit, exploring theories in use and challenging participants to become aware of cultural influences and assumptions has resonance with the dialogical approaches described by team coaches.
There is a significant body of work describing groups and teams that is both multi-disciplinary and multi-contextual and results in numerous definitions depending upon the theoretical perspective (Wheelan, 2005). Whilst not always explicitly stated, these perspectives often inform team research and it is useful to have an overview of the relevant research streams: the functional (managerialist) perspective (Cummings and Ancona, 2005) which focuses on the inputs and processes that predict performance; the developmental perspective (Wheelan, 2005) that emphasises the predictable stages of team development over time; the social identity perspective (Hogg, 2005) that considers how personal identity and social identity may influence factors such as group cohesion and group think; and finally the systems perspective (Agazarian and Gantt, 2005) which characterises teams as open systems within larger systems whose primary goals are around survival, development and transformation.
Often the terms group and team are used interchangeably but it is important for the purpose of clarity to distinguish between them. All teams are groups, but not all groups are teams. A group, identifies as a social entity that comes together for some purpose and exists as a complex, dynamic open system that changes over time (Berdahl and Henry, 2006), teams are a specific type of group that have interdependent tasks and shared responsibility for outcomes. Teams often sit within a wider organisation (Cohen & Bailey, 1997).
I have drawn upon key reviews of the team literature (Burke et al, 2006; Cohen and Bailey, 1997; 2008 Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; Mathieu et al, 2008) to conceptualise my understanding of the dynamic, multi-level nature of teams, by which I mean the ever-changing complexity of three interrelating systems: the individuals who make up the team, the social entity of the team itself and the wider organisational context in which the team is placed. (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006)
Team effectiveness is typically described from the functional perspective as a conceptual framework that incorporates key factors from an individual and team level that are integral to the functioning of a team (Cacioppe and Stace, 2008). Figure 1.0 describes my understanding of this conceptual framework including individual team member characteristics such as personality or competency and team level characteristics such as team design; team processes; and emergent mediating states that are typically designated as cognitive, motivational or affective in nature (Mathieu et al., 2008).
Team performance is generally described as the ‘quantity or quality’ (Mathieu et al., 2008, p412) of team results, and as such is a measure of team effectiveness. Outcomes include tangible products and services as required by stakeholders as well as internal measures defined by the team. (Pina, Martinez and Martinez, 2008; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006).