What does success in team coaching look like?

Ask any random set of people what they think it means to be successful and there will typically be little consensus. How we measure success personally and generally can be very different. Personal success (our own or that of other people) may be associated with specific achievements – such as an Olympic gold medal or making lots of money – or more abstract characteristics, such as being fulfilled, happy or a good parent. Our view of what constitutes success is further complicated by the fact that it changes over time. When asked to rank the four characteristics of money, status (recognition), job satisfaction and work-life balance, people’s responses are influenced by age, family status, career stage and a host of other contextual factors.

Put this into a team context, where team members are all at different places in defining success from a personal perspective, and it is not surprising that teams often struggle to achieve a meaningful consensus on what success would look like, either generally for the team or as a result of team coaching. As with the exercise above that helps individuals explore success in relation to themselves and their careers, a simple four-part framework can be useful. The four elements of the framework are:

1.     Feeling:

What’s different about our:

a.     Motivation

b.     Sense of purpose

c.     Psychological safety

d.     Sense of belonging

e.     Sense of being supported

f.      Shared values

g.     Level of stress

h.     Collegiality

i.      General well-being?

2.     Doing:

What’s different about:

a.     How we approach team tasks

b.     Our work capacity

c.     Putting values into action

d.     Progress towards achieving team purpose

e.     Balance between doing things fast and doing them well

f.      Speed of response /agility?

3.     Different outcomes:

What’s changed in respect of:

a.     Clarity of purpose and goals

b.     Shifting from output focus to outcome focus

c.     Delivering on our KPIs

d.     Our collective confidence

e.     Our capability to deliver

f.      Our capacity to deliver

g.     Our reputation?

4.     Stakeholder perspective.

What’s changed in respect of:

a.     Our understanding of our stakeholders’ needs

b.     The quality of our relationships with stakeholders

c.     The role we play in the system that includes us and our stakeholders.

It can also be valuable to conduct a comparison between a PERILL survey taken near the beginning of the team coaching assignment and one at the end. Where scores have changed, what are the implications for each of the four elements of this framework?

As a general principle, it is important to discuss with the team at an early stage of contracting how success will be measured. Doing so avoids confusion later, plus it alerts both the team and any sponsors to look out for expected outcomes as they occur. And being aware of progress so far stimulates the team to invest more energy into achieving the outcomes they want. In short, if what gets measured gets done, then contracting for measuring success is a critical part of the team coaching process. 

Copyright: David Clutterbuck 2022