One of the most common issues for team coaches is that the team is unused to having open conversations. At the start of any team coaching intervention, therefore, it’s important to help them contract with each other – and with you.

Useful questions to consider include:

  • What conversation would best help you to understand each team member’s intentions, motivations, and fears?
  • What commitments might you require from them and what might they need from you?
  • What conversation would best help the team contract together about how to make team coaching work for them?
  • What contract what might they need from you?

Creating the contract with you is best done individually at first, then all together as a team. Especially in teams that do not already have a positive coaching climate, individual team members are likely to have serious concerns about the process – not least, about the risks of being open and the difficulties of achieving change. In such circumstances, they are much more likely to speak up about their fears to a team coach, in a one-on-one situation than within a group. Useful questions you can ask include:

  • What first steps would you be comfortable with towards more open conversation within the team?
  • What support from me and from your team colleagues would help to make you feel safer in speaking your mind?
  • What would you like to achieve for yourself through team coaching?
  • What would you like to achieve for the team?

This will give you a lot of data to guide the team in contracting with each other. When you bring them together for the first time, you can share some of the issues without attributing them to individuals. Invite them to consider what they want to include in the contract with each other. Some of the common themes that arise are:

  • Maintaining focus
  • Mutual respect
  • Open and honest conversation
  • Sharing concerns
  • Mutual responsibility for tasks, processes, behaviors, and learning
  • Confidentiality
  • Managing conflict
  • Dealing with interruptions
  • Giving each other space to think or ”time out”

Now move on to the contract between you and the team, asking them to think about what would be reasonable expectations on both sides. This is a good place also to raise issues, such as how to prevent the team becoming dependent on you and the feedback you need from them, to help you be effective.

Consider the questions:

This exercise would typically follow on from the previous two, so you will have a lot of confidential data to draw upon. Analyze this data for key themes, on which the team might usefully contract.

© David Clutterbuck, 2015