What is Team Coaching And How Is It Different from Individual Coaching?

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how your team could benefit from developing collective behaviours—behaviours that will develop the capability for sustained performance beyond individual performance? This is a common question for leaders and managers when their teams struggle with performance, communication, or collaboration. The coaching world offers a range of solutions, but understanding the differences between team coaching and individual coaching is key to making the right decision.

In this article, we'll break down the concept of team coaching, show how it differs from individual coaching, and highlight the benefits of each. You'll learn when to apply each method, how they work together, and the specific outcomes you can expect. By the end, you'll have the clarity to decide on the best approach for your team's development.

Key Takeaways

• Team coaching focuses on achieving collective performance, where the whole is more than merely the sum of the parts. In this case, the client is the whole team. 

• Individual coaching addresses personal goals, progress and personal development.

• Team coaching focuses on interdependent team goals and challenges, while individual coaching focuses on the individual's personal goals and professional development.

• A blended approach using team and individual coaching for team members can work well.

Understanding Team Coaching: A Comprehensive Guide

What Is Team Coaching?

Defining Team Coaching

At its core, team coaching is an iterative process that helps a group work better together. Team coaching is focused on improving how the entire team functions as a cohesive unit to achieve collective goals and create a sustainable team.

Team coaching goes beyond problem-solving by helping teams uncover patterns that stifle their potential and move toward higher performance. Coaches support the team by focusing on the dynamics between team members and their stakeholders, the systems in which the team operates, and how the team learns together. They create a shared collective awareness and challenge behaviours and thinking, making the team self-sustaining. Team coaching promotes openness, trust, shared responsibility, and a collective view of how the team will make a difference.

The Purpose and Scope of Team Coaching

The main purpose of team coaching is to help teams become more effective, cohesive, and capable of achieving their collective goals. This focuses on critical aspects like communication, accountability, power dynamics, trust and interdependence. Team coaching creates a space for team members to reflect on their behaviour patterns, identify areas for improvement and co-create strategies for working better together.

This approach benefits teams undergoing transitions, such as leadership changes, remote working, team changes, or strategic realignments. Team coaching helps by aligning the team's purpose and objectives.

The Core Differences Between Team and Individual Coaching

Goals and Focus: Team vs Individual

One key distinction between team coaching and individual coaching lies in the focus of each approach. Team coaching aims to improve the collective performance of the team. It focuses on how team members interact with each other, communicate, and collaborate to reach shared goals. Individual members are not just encouraged but empowered to take responsibility for their contributions and their relationships within the team, fostering a sense of confidence and capability.

Individual coaching focuses on personal development. It's tailored to an individual's needs, often focusing on leadership skills, self-awareness, and personal growth. While individual coaching can benefit teams indirectly by improving team members' leadership capabilities, it doesn't address team dynamics or the systemic challenges that surface when working with the whole team.

Coaching Methods: Group Dynamics vs Personal Development

Working with group dynamics is integral to the team coaching approach—the team's processes for interacting with itself and stakeholders. Sessions often focus on communication, trust-building, and alignment of team goals. These sessions can incorporate many different tools and techniques including for example, role-playing scenarios, feedback loops, and collaborative problem-solving exercises. The objective is to improve how the team works together rather than focusing on one individual's strengths. 

The sessions focus on the team's specific business challenges, so collectively, the team learns how to improve team problem-solving and decision-making processes. Team coaching aims to help the team learn improved ways of working together and delivering outcomes.   

Conversely, individual coaching uses methods tailored to personal growth and self-improvement. The focus is on the individual's goals, and the coach helps them create actions that lead to progress. The emphasis on personal growth and self-improvement in individual coaching can be inspiring and motivating, helping individuals realize their full potential professionally or personally.

Benefits of Team Coaching for Modern Organisations

Enhancing Team Cohesion and Collaboration

One of the greatest strengths of team coaching is its ability to build cohesion—a shared motivation to achieve a common goal—and collaboration—leveraging the different skills to work together. The aim of team coaching is to raise awareness of what's working and what's not, and every team member feels confident to contribute, leading to better collective decision-making and problem-solving.

Improving Communication and Trust

Trust is a cornerstone of effective teams. Team coaching creates a space where trust can be built and sustained by encouraging open communication. Team members learn to express themselves honestly and listen to each other with empathy, creating a more positive, inclusive environment. This leads to improved team self-reliance, stronger relationships within the group, and a better team process for sustaining performance and growth.

Supporting Team Accountability and Performance

Team coaching also fosters a sense of accountability and self-direction. By collectively agreeing and committing to clear expectations and providing regular feedback, coaches help teams take responsibility for their own success and understand how their performance impacts and is impacted by their stakeholders.

Accountability is one of the key outcomes organisations seek.  Team coaching helps teams improves performance and ensures the team can articulate organisational goals and identify how they will support these and each other. Helping the team gain clarity on how to do this for themselves is perhaps one of the most powerful benefits of the team coaching process.   

Situations Where Team Coaching Is More Effective Than Individual Coaching

Solving Team-Wide Challenges

Team coaching can be the most effective solution when your team is grappling with widespread issues like lack of clarity on roles, trust issues, or conflicts. These challenges are not isolated to one individual but are deeply embedded in the team's overall dynamic system. A team coach can help the team identify the root cause of these challenges, create awareness of what is and isn't within the team's control, and guide them towards lasting solutions.

Addressing Team Conflict and Building Trust

When conflict arises in a team, it can erode trust and damage relationships. Team coaching provides a neutral space where conflicts can be addressed openly, allowing the team to rebuild trust and foster a more collaborative environment. Coaches often use tools such as conflict resolution frameworks and communication exercises to help teams navigate disagreements constructively. They will also help the team co-create ways of navigating conflicts to transfer the learning process for creating sustainable team working practices.

Improving Team Decision-Making and Innovation

Teams that struggle to make decisions or innovate can often benefit from team coaching. A coach can facilitate discussions by encouraging diverse perspectives, helping the team break free from unproductive patterns, and thinking more creatively. This improves decision-making and leads to more innovative solutions to problems.

When to Choose Individual Coaching Over Team Coaching

Addressing Personal Leadership Development

While team coaching effectively improves group dynamics, individual coaching is ideal for personal leadership development. Individual coaching provides one-on-one support to develop specific skills such as strategic thinking, delegation, communication, influencing and other areas the individual wishes to develop. It is focused on the individual's personal development, problem-solving, and innovation skills.

Solving Personal Growth and Self-Awareness Issues

Sometimes, a team's challenges stem from individual struggles. In these cases, individual coaching can help a person identify personal blind spots, develop self-awareness, and improve their leadership abilities. This personal growth can then positively impact the entire team, making it a complementary approach to team coaching.

How Team and Individual Coaching Can Work Together

The Synergy of Combined Approaches

There are situations where both team and individual coaching are beneficial—for example, a team facing communication issues with misunderstandings and conversations at cross purposes. Team coaching could help the team improve how they navigate these situations. The focus of individual coaching could be on developing ways to formulate thoughts and communicate these with others. In this way, individuals can be supported to develop their own communication skills, and the team benefits by developing skills to check for understanding, how they share information, and how they reflect on what works and doesn't.

Conclusion

Making the Right Coaching Choice for Your Business

Choosing between team coaching and individual coaching depends on your specific challenges. Team coaching addresses aligning on purpose, improving communication, developing deeper levels of trust, and  improving performance. On the other hand, individual coaching is best for personal growth, leadership development, and self-awareness.

In some cases, the best approach might be a combination of both. By identifying whether it’s an individual or collective challenge means you can make a better choice.  Both approaches can help, and team coaching helps teams work better together.

FAQs

1. How long does a typical team coaching program last?

• Team coaching programmes can vary in length depending on the team's needs. They typically last between six weeks and eight months and include ongoing check-ins and support.

2. Can individual and team coaching be done simultaneously?

• Yes, many organisations benefit from combining both methods. Team coaching addresses group dynamics and collective goals, while individual coaching helps individual team members develop personal skills.

3. What results can I expect from team coaching?

• You can expect improved communication, higher team cohesion, increased trust, and better overall performance.  During the team coaching journey, the team starts to practice accountability as a collective which in turn means there is clarity over roles and responsibilities.  Teams also tend to feel more confident in their decision-making process and develop ways of assessing decisions for effectiveness after completing a coaching programme.

4. How do I know if my team needs coaching?

• If your team struggles with communication, trust, or performance issues or has difficulty achieving their goals, team coaching could be the right solution. Team coaching is also great for teams that want to maintain consistency in performance and leverage their team skills with other teams.

References

1. Hawkins, P. (2024). Systemic Team Coaching

2. Hinkelmann, H., O’Connor, S. & Passmore, J. (2024) Coaching entrepreneurs towards growth: An experimental design study of coaching effectiveness for business leaders’ psychological capabilities, Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research & Practice,

3. Passmore, J. Tee, D. Gold, R. (2024) Team coaching using LSP and team facilitation: a randomized control trial study measuring team cohesion and psychological safety

 About Us:

At the core of 'Working Better Together' lies our unparalleled expertise and holistic approach to team coaching. Ro Gorell and Nadja Cramer, industry innovators with hands-on experience in corporate settings equipping them to tackle complex challenges, which allows them to truly empathise with their clients' business. Their unique blend of pragmatism, systems thinking, lean-agile mindset and entrepreneurial spirit ensures that your organisation receives tailored solutions that deliver tangible results.

Ro has worked with a range of blue-chip organisations in the UK as well as medium sized entrepreneurial business and not for profits. She has over 3 decades' worth of experience working in business change and transformation and is both a team coach and multiple published author on coaching and coaching culture. 

Nadja has worked with multinationals for over 10 years in finance - M&A and energy & resources, working in oil & gas new business development, contracts & procurement, plant operations and social impact. She ran several start-up initiatives in sustainable technology. Her background is in the highly analytical field of system- and control engineering, which she uniquely combines with her ability to ground teams, allowing them to more readily perceive and become aware of underlying dynamics in the (organisational) system from which sustainable change can happen, spurring performance. 

What our clients say about us

"Initially, we were offered an opportunity to work with Ro in 2021 as she completed further coaching accreditation. More recently, I reached out to Ro to work with us again, as our team had grown and faced different challenges.

As a manager I’m over the belief that the manager needs to solve the team’s problems or challenges. We’re adults and capable of enabling each other to find solutions to our challenges. And as a Team, finding solutions together that work for the team.

To do this, I needed a little help. This is where Ro came in.

Ro demonstrated how we as a team can use a coaching style, naturally, daily, and have focused Team Coaching sessions - to address our Big Rocks (challenges).

Ro's ability to "stay out of the content" and coach teams is a real gift, and she does this with humour, putting everyone at ease.

Now the real work begins, as we continue our Team Coaching approach. The verdict: we're all converted!" – Manager Health Services

“I appreciate how Nadja Cramer's assistance has significantly enhanced open communication within our team and created a safe environment for collaboration. Through her guidance, we have been able to foster an atmosphere where team members feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and ideas openly. This has positively impacted our organization by encouraging innovation, problem-solving, and a stronger sense of team cohesion. Additionally, the safe environment she helped establish has contributed to increased trust among team members, leading to improved collaboration and overall job satisfaction. Nadja's support has played a pivotal role in enhancing communication dynamics and team dynamics within our organization.

I thoroughly appreciated the coaching program, especially the coach herself. She demonstrated excellent listening skills and consistently challenged me to think outside the box. Her ability to encourage a fresh perspective and provide thought-provoking insights significantly contributed to the program's effectiveness.” – Senior Manager Finance & Consultancy

Join us on a transformative journey towards unparalleled success. 

'Working Better Together' unlocks your team's full potential & cultivates a culture of resilience, innovation, and collective achievement. 

Are you ready to redefine teamwork and propel your organization to new heights?

Contact us today to learn more about our program and book your Introduction Workshop.

Ro Gorell                                                        Nadja Cramer

Author & Coach                                           Coach & Facilitator                                      

E: ro@growtalentro.com                         E: nadja.cramer@gmail.com

T: 04 49 25 3830                                          T: 04 88 99 7501

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http://au.linkedin.com/in/rogorell             https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadja-cramer-04a55945/