A team-building event can create a powerful, memorable experience, but if the learning from the experience isn’t integrated into new behavior on the team, the effect fades quickly when people go back to work. The transfer from the experience to relevance for team interaction is missing. Team coaching may sometimes include team building or other experiential activities. The difference is that team coaching them provides the necessary structure to integrate the learning and make the learning sustainable by providing accountability to keep the new awareness and process on track.

The change that one team experiences ripples out through the stakeholder connections and sets new standards of how teams in the organization work together. This is the infectious effect of doing team coaching, and the impact that’s possible within the organization simply by starting with one team and engaging that one team in team coaching.

These days, team members are often on more than one team and what a team member learns about higher-performing teams on one team becomes a new standard of expectation for all teams. There is a viral, contagious effect as the learning spreads to other teams. A new level of understanding and higher expectations infect other teams in the organization.

We align with the research on team dynamics and effectiveness; what matters is less about who is on the team and more about how the team works together. Our coaches co-create a development agenda with the leader and team with the following elements:

• Psychological safety: Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk-taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive. In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
• Dependability: On dependable teams, members reliably complete quality work on time (vs the opposite - shirking responsibilities).
• Structure and clarity: An individual’s understanding of job expectations, the process for fulfilling these expectations, and the consequences of one’s performance are important for team effectiveness. Goals can be set at the individual or group level and must be specific, challenging, and attainable. We recommend using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help set and communicate short and long-term goals.
• Meaning: Finding a sense of purpose in either the work itself or the output is important for team effectiveness. The meaning of work is personal and can vary: financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, or self-expression for each individual, for example.
• Impact: The results of one’s work, the subjective judgment that your work is making a difference, is important for teams. Seeing that one’s work is contributing to the organization’s goals can help reveal impact.

Our Coaches serve teams in two ways; 1) Team Offsites 2) Coach in Residence™ Program.

Team Offsites

Let’s face it. Team offsite meetings are expensive and time-consuming. While these events can provide a great environment for team building and alignment, such benefits can be short-lived and easily lost when team members move back into their day-to-day operations.

For the past 30 years, my team and I have worked closely with global leaders to plan and facilitate offsites for their teams. With facilitating these meetings, comes the responsibility to drive sustained results. We’ve learned what it takes to make offsites “sticky” — meaning that the outcomes team members walk away with have an ongoing impact on their business.

Offsites for teams are fully customizable and range from one to two days. To schedule a consultation, please inquire now.

Coach in Residence™ Program

Do you have a process in place to ensure that your team is consistently growing, and not declining? The CKI Coach in Residence™ program facilitates putting key processes in place to grow a high-value creation team to the pinnacle of its performance capacity. Our Coaches use a comprehensive approach and look at your organizational structure as a system. 

It is imperative to focus on your organization as a system to effectively account for interdependencies to effectively implement any necessary changes. Our Coaches measure the health of your system by looking at three factors: Capacity, Capabilities, and Culture. We assess your team members individually and collectively to determine if they are operating optimally in each of these three areas. If there are gaps, we work with the appropriate individuals and teams to maximize their performance to the benefit of your whole organizational system.

The CKI Coach in Residence™ program for teams is typically a 9 to 12-month term. To schedule a consultation, please inquire now.