Team coaching

Domain VI · Brief, integrative, trauma, hypnosis & coaching · Peter Hawkins · 2006

What it is

Team coaching is a coaching model, not a psychotherapy. The client is the team as a whole, and the aims are collective performance and collective leadership. Treating individual members' psychological difficulties is outside its scope. ICF defines it as "a co-creative and reflective process with a…

Format

• Typical format. An engagement means working with the whole team over time, both live and between meetings. Hawkins says team coaching is "never just a series of events or away-days". Clutterbuck's framework describes at least four whole-team sessions over 6–12 months. AoEC suggests re-assessing…
• individual coaching, especially for the team leader

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Version followed: Peter Hawkins' Systemic Team Coaching (Five Disciplines model and the CID-CLEAR engagement cycle, as in Leadership Team Coaching, 3rd ed., ch. 6, and AoEC training material). It is supplemented by Hackman, Wageman and Fisher's timing model (2009), Clutterbuck's seven-stage team coaching process framework (GTCI handout, 2020), the ICF Team Coaching Competencies (2020), and, for the coaching–therapy…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• checking that turns into blaming individuals.
• generic statements that could belong to any team.
• rapid-fire debate in which nobody asks a question.
• recognising the traps without committing to anything.
• past success, which Hawkins notes can block unlearning.

Problems the guide addresses

• Defensiveness and resistance to feedback
• Stuck teams and recurring debates
• Agreement without commitment and non-adherence between sessions
• Conflict and low trust
• Overwhelm and high emotion in the room
• Ruptures with the coach and being pulled into the system
• The team leader dominates or undermines
• Psychotherapist-specific difficulties
• The coaching–psychotherapy boundary as the bodies publish it
• Signs that a team member needs referral to clinical care

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.