9 lessons for building high-performing teams
Until recently, leadership coaching was primarily considered a one-on-one practice. But as our world becomes increasingly complex, we find ourselves more connected and reliant on each other than ever before. No individual can navigate today’s challenges alone.
If your executive team is facing issues like siloed leadership, organizational change, persistent conflict, or a feeling of being stuck, you may have tried one (or most) of the following solutions to help them become more cohesive:
Assumed that your smart and talented team members would naturally figure out how to collaborate more effectively. You might have thought that they would just figure it out without talking about it.
Acted as the referee or mediator within the team.
Conducted training sessions focused on areas like productivity or team building, but saw no lasting, sustained change.
Established new rules for better collaboration—these can be too specific (like no cell phones or working in the office on certain days) or too vague (such as treating each other with respect).
Oscillated between getting bogged down in details and completely stepping back from responsibility.
No matter how effective executive leaders are on their own, they can only achieve the impact they want to create if they’re able to work together cohesively and build safe, trusting relationships with each other. Success requires collective effort and high-performing teams.
This is where team coaching comes in.
What is team coaching?
Team coaching shifts individual mindsets by introducing new ways of thinking and better ways of working together to achieve meaningful business results. When this happens, team members recognize that their team's collective efforts are more important than their individual areas of responsibility.
Team coaching requires attention, focus and intentional effort from all team members to develop their relationships with each other and improve ways of working.
How does team coaching work?
The team coaching process is layered and complex. This is due to the dynamic nature of teams, which include individual differences, multiple goals and objectives, evolving needs, emotional responses, and more. To help you better understand how team coaching works, here are 9 lessons we've uncovered from our experience in building high-performing teams:
1. The first step is always a mindset shift.
The thinking that got leaders to where they are now isn’t the same thinking that will help them create the future they desire.
As coaches, we come in as objective partners to help executive leaders shift their mindset towards prioritizing their relationships with each other and unifying the team. Our role is to get curious, and ask thought-provoking questions. We’re not afraid to say the thing everyone is thinking but afraid to say. We’ll surface what no one else will in service of moving leaders and teams towards a new future.
2. It requires wisdom, self-awareness, and the development of one’s character at psychological levels.
Leading as a unified, cohesive executive team requires vulnerability, courageous conversations, a willingness to understand and change, and a commitment to having each other's backs while genuinely caring for one another.
As partners, we bring our whole, vulnerable, and authentic selves to our relationships with leadership teams. We model what it looks like to show up as real, imperfect humans. We’re willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and clean them up. This is how we create safety and a way for team members to do the same with one another.
3. Leadership teams need to consistently reflect on their progress, experiments, and learning experiences.
Progress happens over time through experimentation and learning, rather than being a one-time effort. We often see shifts in team performance after three meetings when the team begins to demonstrate commitment.
4. Every individual on the team should have a clear and meaningful role that contributes to the overall goals and objectives of the team.
Just because someone reports to a leader doesn't mean they're automatically part of the leadership team. High-performing teams are made up of individuals who share a collective purpose and goals. These members come together to ideate, debate, collaborate, make decisions, and align their efforts to achieve the team's objectives.
5. The complexity of coordinating the team and managing relationships among its members increases exponentially with the size of the team.
On paper, having an inclusive executive team sounds like a positive. But when too many voices and people are at the table—anything more than nine people is generally too big—the executive team can become dysfunctional. Opinions are drowned out or forcibly shared, relationships become hard to manage, and two tiers are created within the team, either officially or unofficially.
6. The perspective of every team member is important—not just that of the leader.
Considering and valuing all viewpoints leads to more innovative solutions and better decision-making. However, once a decision is made, it’s important for everyone to support and align with the team’s direction. Teams often need to practice balancing diverse viewpoints with a unified approach and communication.
7. External pressures can test the strength of a leadership team.
When leadership teams struggle, there’s often an assumption that their smart, talented members will naturally figure out how to collaborate more effectively. But when the pressure is on, it can be really tricky for leaders to prioritize their peers, especially when everyone has different priorities. Stakeholders and the environment can put unseen pressure on the team and its relationships, and even past events can have an impact if they’re not addressed.
8. Every framework and team assessment tool identifies what is needed for building high-performance teams; however, we also need to understand the underlying distractions to remove the barriers to progress.
As partners, we steer clear of one-size-fits-all approaches. While we have tools, frameworks, and outlines, we co-create the coaching experience with teams. We’re always willing to redesign, flex and adapt to remove barriers to progress and meet their evolving needs.
9. Leaders are people first, roles second.
We attend to who they are as human beings in their development. We believe anything is possible and give leaders grace to be imperfect and learn.
Team coaching can help teams work through decisions where there are no right answers. It’s a developmental process that helps strengthen trust with one another, and increase alignment and accountability. It's valuable for any executive team, especially those facing issues like siloed leadership, organizational change, persistent conflict, or a feeling of being stuck.
What we create
The executive team sets the tone for your entire organization. The culture of an organization is a magnification of their values, behaviours, and interactions.
To be a cohesive and high-performing team, members must commit to regularly working on their relationships and maintaining the behaviours developed through the coaching process. As a leader, you want this commitment even when your back is turned or you’re not in the room. You want all your members to have a shared level of passion, ambition, drive for results and continuous learning. You want to move out of complacency and get back to winning.
At Incito, we’re passionate about helping leadership teams become unified and more cohesive. We’ve seen how incredibly transformative team coaching is if leadership teams are willing to take the time to develop and put in the work. If you want your team to explore new ways of thinking and better ways of working together to achieve meaningful business results, let’s talk about team coaching!