Coaching sessions are available live with our coaches face-to-face, online, or on the phone!
Have you ever been on a ‘dream team’?
It might have been in or out of the workplace; in a choir, on a sports team or on a committee, where the team felt united, powerful, focussed, and where the work was achieved easily in an atmosphere you enjoyed?
Sometimes we think that ‘dream team’ magic happens only by chance.
At Aspire, we know that it can be consciously created. We work with teams to strengthen the positivity and productivity of the team as a whole.
Over a series of fun, interactive and in-depth sessions, our practical team coaching approach builds awareness and skill in the team as one team – not just as separate individuals – so that the team can move out of old patterns of behaviour, choose new strategies and truly fulfil its potential.
We help teams to achieve:
- Higher team morale and trust
- Open, effective communication
- Constructive handling of conflict
- Creative and innovate thinking
- A values-based culture
- Shared purpose
- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities
- Increased empathy and unity
This is more than just team-building; this is change at a fundamental, relational level that is both transformational and sustainable.
How will you create your dream team at work?
A team coaching programme is often split into 3 phases over a period of 6-8 months:
Phase 1: ‘Discovery’
We begin by discovering where the team is right now to establish a baseline. This happens in two ways:
The One-To-One
The first is a one-to-one video call – thirty mins or so – with each senior team member. This is so that trust and rapport with the team coach can be established ready for the group work; each person’s unique and valuable perspective can be heard, and a snapshot can be taken of where the team is currently at.
This conversation also invites each individual to consider what he or she would like out of this work personally, and collectively. Questions will be asked such as:
What are the strengths and challenges of the LT right now?
What is the atmosphere like?
How do you handle different points of view?
What do you like and find useful about the way the team works together?
How is the team perceived by your teams and within the wider organisation?
What does this team need to truly thrive?
Themes from these conversations will be collated and (anonymously) shared in the first session, at which point the team’s outcomes are explored, defined and set. This is facilitated by the team coach but ultimately decided on by the team.
The Team Assessment
The second is a licensed team assessment tool called the Team Diagnostic Assessment that is very useful for revealing the ‘system’ to itself and how it currently functions. Instead of a team assessment that is an aggregate of individual profiles (like many are), this assessment measures what the team members create together, by asking the team to assess the team as a whole.
Research shows that the most successful teams have the means to both take action and build effective relationships to motivate and sustain that action. So this assessment is built on these two fundamental axes:
- Factors that optimise productivity
- Factors that promote positivity
The team will assess themselves on seven different Productivity factors and seven different Positivity factors. The results of the assessment will be debriefed in the first or second team coaching session. This Productivity / Positivity theory will then be woven through the rest of the team development programme in order to enable this team to create a high-performing culture together.
Phase 2: Ongoing Team Coaching
These are often a mix of half-day and full day sessions (between 4 – 8 sessions), and can be held either online, in person or a mixture of both.
The team coach will lead the team through a series of experiential, fun, and sometimes challenging exercises to meet the outcomes that they have defined. Relational theory is not hard to understand intellectually but can be harder to apply to one’s own team relationships. So, the sessions make use of exercises that are creative and dynamic designed to cut through usual patterns of communication and enable the team to have new kinds of conversations.
In this virtual age, the team sessions are also designed to have feeling of ‘off-site’ – a relaxed, intimate, fun atmosphere to open up and support and new thinking and behaviour (whether in person or online). If the team is fairly new, getting to know each other away from the usual work focus will strengthen their relationships and sense of being one team.
Input from the coach is a purposeful blend of coaching and training so that the team is both educated in the robust theory that the exercises are grounded in, and fully aware of how to practically apply it. The coach makes sure this facilitation is enjoyable, thoughtful and rigorous to keep everyone engaged and energised.
Each session will end with the team committing to concrete actions that will be reviewed at the next. Individuals start to hold each other to account; the team becomes ‘response-able’ and more able to self- regulate. The team decides what it wants to do to reach its goals and owns the process of getting there.
Phase 3: Completion and Next Steps
Before the final team coaching session, the team undertakes the Team Diagnostic Assessment once more to gain a ‘before and after’ picture of where they are at with the seven Productivity and seven Positivity factors.
This formally completes this programme and they celebrate their success as a team, and also acknowledge the impact on the wider organisation they are leading. They set intentions for how they want to work together in the future. By this point the systemic principles have been embedded and the team’s levels of trust and alignment mean that this work is now self-sustaining.
Team coaching is therefore more than teambuilding; this is change at a fundamental, relational level that can be both transformational and sustainable. The leadership team will finish the programme revived, united, upskilled and committed to future action.
I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.
Mother Theresa
Contact us now to find out more and to book your team coaching session.