A useful way of looking at the ending of a team coaching assignment is as three overlapping perspectives:
- What has changed for team members individually?
- What has changed in the internal dynamics of the team?
- What has changed in the team’s role within its systems?
Useful questions to ask from each of these perspectives include:
The individual perspective
- What is clear now for you that wasn’t before?
- In what ways have you grown?
- How has your contribution to the team changed?
- What differences can you see in how you feel being in this team?
- What do you personally need to achieve closure on the team coaching?
- What more do you need from the team to continue to grow and add value?
- The internal dynamics perspective
- What has changed in how you work together?
- What has changed in the quality of conversations?
- What do you appreciate more about your team colleagues than before?
- In what ways have you become more of a team rather than a group?
- What do you need to do even more of?
- How will you ensure that your new coaching skills continue to grow?
The external systems perspective
- What’s changed in how you see the team within the wider context?
- What’s changed in how stakeholders perceive the team?
- What possibilities do you now see to influence stakeholders?
- What role do you want to play in the wider systems and how can you achieve that?
For the team to build on the coaching and ensure that the impact is not lost over time, reviewing the three perspectives together regularly enables them to identify potential slippage and plan how to capitalise even more on their gains so far. So, an important part of the final team coaching session with a team is to help them think through how they will create and sustain that momentum on their own, without external coaching to prompt them.
By Professor David Clutterbuck
