By Mary Laniyan
In a global study to assist business leaders in identifying factors and key drivers that enable high performing teams, Dale Carnegie and associate researchers indicate that just 30% of workplace teams are high-performing. Given that organisations are made up of units of teams, this statistic is of huge concern, and one that needs to be addressed as a matter of strategic importance.
Google invested greatly in Project Aristotle, a study to better understand the conditions that enable high performing teams, and Toyota, an organisation renowned for success and longevity in its sector, has communicated and demonstrated over the years that they build people before they build cars.There’s a lot to learn from organisations built on the foundations of a people first strategy.
What differentiates these organisations and sets them apart as they continue to win and innovate in a VUCA (Volatile- Uncertain- Complex – Ambiguous) world, is the work conditions they have created and continue to review for their people. They have succeeded in shifting their organisations from a transactional work-place to a transformational growth-place, where people bring their full and best selves to work as a team player for quality thinking and interactions.
While It is perhaps easy to see and calculate the losses from the flow of value along our crude oil value chain, an even bigger intangible loss that isn’t so easy to see or quantify is the unrealised value from our human capital, as we continue to operate in environments that fail to harness the best that our people have to offer, both in the private and public sector.
Organisations traditionally have invested and continue to invest in Learning & Development (L&D), mostly through training and re-training with a focus on individual learning and development. While this is important so people can better perform their functional roles, it does not help to create and sustain the conditions for the day-to-day quality interactions that is required for operational excellence and innovation. After all the investment in training and people come back to the same environment that is perhaps toxic, devoid of psychological safety and counterproductive to the flow and delivery of value, as they hold on to cultures, procedures and practices that are no longer serving their vision. The courageous question we must now ask is – are we getting the best return on investment (ROI) possible, year-on-year with our current L&D strategies?
What else can be done to create the right working conditions and improve our qualitative and quantitative outcomes? This compelling question is the motivation behind this article, to create awareness about coaching, team coaching in particular,as a developmental and competitive strategy – which will be the differentiator between organisations that continue to thrive and weather the storms in their industry and those that merely survive or even fade into oblivion for lack of adaptability and responsiveness.
Coaching is still an emerging field, we have some ways to go still in creating awareness about the coaching mindset and coaching as a developmental strategy for individuals, teams and organisations at large. However, curious and forward looking organisations are already embracing team coaching and accruing the results.
What is Team Coaching ?
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines Team Coaching as partnering in a co-creative and reflective process with a team on its dynamics and relationships in a way that inspires them to maximize their abilities and potential in order to reach their common purpose and shared goals.
What truly makes team coaching a game changer is the partnership with the team as an entity with its own needs, as coaches operate from a stance that shows respect for human potential and resourcefulness to find their own solutions.
Change has been the only constant and happening at a speed that seems challenging to keep up with, leading to a gap in the critical skills needed in the ever changing complex business landscape of the 21st century. Unlike the industrial era when people were paid for their hands, in the knowledge economy, people are paid to think, it is therefore important that the right conditions for thinking and innovation exists. Team coaching will help teams see themselves as cultural architects, thereby enabling the creation and ownership of the culture that will serve their collective vision and purpose as a team, while harnessing the collective intelligence, experience and wisdom required to solve complex problems and achieve operational excellence to add value today and creatively investing time to innovate to add value tomorrow and stay competitive.
Some of the benefits of team based coaching include: Creating high performing and future proof teams that can navigate a VUCA world, shifting from a work-place to a growth-place for operational excellence and innovative thinking, team members going beyond what they know intellectually and into a transformative arena of who they are,and how they can better show up for productive interactions to add value in a safe space.
Coaching becomes integrated into leadership and management approaches, allowing for the creation of a safe space with their presence. Over time, a coaching culture emerges, as people start to demonstrate and take a coaching stance in everyday situation, interaction and becoming more intentional about relationship building. In particular, we see a fundamental shift in performance management review, from a once a year tick box activity, to a more proactive ongoing support using coaching conversations. A study by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) found that coaching leads to a 33% increase in productivity.
The million dollar question I hear you ask is, If team coaching is so paramount to creating high performing teams for value delivery, then, why is it a struggle to embrace? Some of the challenges to embracing team coaching is cost and the commitment of time as well as leadership buy-in. Team coaching, unlike training is not an event, it is a journey, comes at a premium, requires the presence of every member of the team and takes time. An intervention can be anything from three months as a minimum, to a year’s engagement. While team coaching is a slow burner, it allows for long term benefits and sustained change and it works out cheaper in the long run.
If you are investing in training alone year on year and you are not achieving the qualitative and quantitative outcomes you desire – then, perhaps you might want to consider team coaching as part of your developmental strategy for L&D. It is also important to note that team based coaching is not limited to the shop floor teams alone, but one that’s needed right from the board level, which will demonstrate leading by example, as well as cultural alignment and commitment.
Teaming from a systems perspective is a win-win for the employer and employee, and for our families as we go home less stressed, and for the larger society, as organisations large and small experience exponential growth, thereby contributing to the sustainable development goals (SDG) and ultimately to Nation building. If you desire highly engaged employees with a strong coaching culture and a significant increase in productivity over the long term, you might want to consider coaching as a developmental strategy.
Mary Laniyan is an enterprise transformation consultant and coach working with fortune 100 organisations internationally. She writes from Abuja. She can be reached via email: [email protected]/Tel: 0803 746 9055