Team Coaching

“A team is a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

Katzenback and Smith (HBR, March 1993)

For many teams, this beautifully crafted definition of high-performing teams presents a real challenge. It prompts questions for individuals and the team as a whole

  • Are we creating the right conditions to capitalise on everyone’s skills?
  • Do we need everyone on this team?
  • Are we agreed on what our team purpose is? How different is that to what I see as my own purpose?
  • Do my colleagues have my back?
  • Do our stakeholders agree with our purpose, is that what they are asking us to do?
  • Are we prepared to address unhelpful behaviour and make some tough decisions?
  • Am I doing my best thinking in this team?
  • Are we set up to compete instead of collaborate?
I felt that team coaching would be a good way for our management team to meet outside of the school setting to focus of something that we may have afforded time to in school. We knew that it was going to be more work, but we also knew that it would be invaluable. I loved the way Rachel made us comfortable enough that everyone was able to speak in a free and open manner. This in turn led to a greater amount of trust within the group. I felt that we achieved our goals as we were able to formulate an approach to sharing our school ethos with new staff coming into the school while at the same time consolidating it with present staff. I genuinely feel that we (the management in the school) became closer as a unit and that we now fully trust each other. It was an invaluable use of time and what we got from each of the sessions can't be overstated or measured.
Primary Principal - CSL Team Coaching
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Coaching Approach

Rachel’s objective as a Team Coach is to help liberate a team towards improving its performance, wellbeing, engagement and development. Rachel does this by providing a clear set of principles and process to create the self-sustaining conditions for individual members of a team do their very best thinking supported by the attention, insights and experience of their colleagues.

Team coaching helps team members to:

  • Build trust
  • Clarify significant issues
  • Create better strategies and processes
  • Make more effective decisions
  • Energise commitment
  • Ensure that time is focused only on what is important

Team Coaching Programmes

Team coaching is generally tailored to the needs of the organisation. A typical coaching programme consists of 4 to 8 team-coaching sessions over a period of 18 months, with a number of one-to-one coaching sessions for the team leader (usually a C-suite executive). Team coaching sessions are usually a mix of full-day, half-day and two-hour sessions.

Psychometric and Feedback Instruments

Team diagnostics, psychometrics, 360° feedback and stakeholder feedback are valuable in enhancing self-awareness of the team and individual strengths and stumbling blocks. They provide direction for development and help prioritise issues to be addressed during coaching sessions. The choice and use of these tools are discussed as part of the initial team coaching engagement.

Rachel has coached leadership teams in industry-representative bodies, real estate and public sector bodies such as regulators and school management teams.

School leadership team coaching, run by the Centre for School Leadership, is a professional, coaching-based developmental approach. The programme enables school leadership teams to direct their journey towards an empowered and team-led leadership model, envisioned by the Department of Education & Skills.

Team Coaching often covers areas such as

  • Team strategy
  •  Agenda setting
  • Problem identification and solving
  • Decision making
  • Transforming meetings
  • Communication
  •  Delivery of results
  •  Stakeholder management
  •  Boundary and relationship management

Group Facilitation

A group consists of individuals who are independent of each other and have
clearly defined and different sets of tasks.

Rachel also works as a facilitator for groups of individuals where she manages meetings to explore a number of questions or critical issues relevant to all members of the group. The members of the group may be from one organisation, from multiple organisations or have come together in a voluntary capacity.

In this context, Rachel’s role is to facilitate meetings in order to keep the balance and energy in the group, help the group capture and organise its best thinking and come to a point of clarity on recommendations or ideas, agree on actions and take those actions.

Through group facilitation, individuals find that they can:

  • Learn how to identify key projects and find opportunities to collaborate
  • Contribute their best thinking in order to address important questions or critical issues
  • Create a more collaborative culture
  • Learn how to build better agendas
  • Improve communications
  • Manage conflict more effectively
  • Gain better clarity on individual roles and how they can be independent of each other, as well as collaborate on projects outside of their own remit
  • Challenge the way they work and what to focus on as a group.

Due to the nature of Rachel's work and the themes she addresses, she is regularly invited to speak at conferences, events and in-house webinars on a wide range of leadership topics.

View Rachel's speaker profile