Training the team in how to be coached

For a line manager to return to a team, having been on a short coaching course, and expect them to embrace the idea of being coached is highly optimistic. The typical reaction of a team is passive resistance, because:

• They don’t necessarily see the value of being coached
• They don’t expect the manager to be very good at it (and the manager, if they are a novice coach, is likely to lack confidence)
• They have other priorities and it’s not clear how coaching fits into this
• It can feel as if the manager is trying to offload some of his or her responsibilities onto the team (“It’s your job to make decisions”.)
• Coaching is not a comfortable experience at first, because it challenges the coachee’s assumptions about themselves, their work and their environment
• People find it hard to accept that the coaching is about building on their strengths rather than a remedial process, perhaps connected with disciplinary procedures
• It all seems a very one-way process
• They don’t know how they can help the coach do coaching well

Hardly surprising that many, if not most, programmes to turn line managers into coaches have a dismal track record!

Part of the solution is to educate the team about coaching. (Ideally, for the team and the leader to learn together.) Key elements of this learning are:

• Clarifying the benefits of coaching to the team, the organisation and the individual team members
• Developing a clear understanding of how coaching works and how coach and coachee can enhance the process by working together
• Basic coaching skills that the coach may use, but which the coachee can also apply for themselves in preparing for coaching
• Identifying current, shared issues that coaching can be applied to, to make the outcomes “real”
• A Team Development Plan that links individual and collective learning needs with the team’s business priorities
• Agreement that everyone shares responsibility for everyone’s learning
• Opportunities to practice co-coaching (including coaching the line manager, if appropriate!)

Some organisations create programmes to support this education, using facilitators to support the team in its first few discussions. It works well to split the learning into lots of short sessions at the end of normal team meetings, so people have time to reflect upon the learning and how they will apply it. However, any team leader, who wants to create a coaching culture, can facilitate his or her team in this kind of discussion.

© David Clutterbuck, 2015

Prof David Clutterbuck
Coaching and Mentoring International Ltd
Woodlands, Tollgate,
Maidenhead,
Berks, UK. SL6 4LJ

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