Earlier this month, I had the remarkable opportunity to deliver a coaching session in front of 160 people – live. Face-to-face.
I say remarkable because, thanks to the pandemic, it has been a few years since I’ve worked a crowd that large.
But it also got me thinking about how more and more organizations are bringing people and teams together after two-plus years of physical distancing and remote work.
Standing with that crowd, all with one organization, it almost felt surreal after spending so much time in the virtual world. But it was also, for me and I know many others, wonderful – to see and to speak to people in a very genuine way.
There is a surge in demand for team coaching as top leaders and organizations look to bring people back together.
It was also a vivid example of a trend we are seeing in our business: a surge in demand for team coaching as top leaders and organizations look to bring people back together.
I was reminded, too, of this line from Neil Curran, a corporate trainer and executive coach in Ireland: “After a lengthy period of a complete upheaval of working life due to the global pandemic, we need to do a reset to ensure any fault lines that have been created are filled in. Unaddressed, those fault lines can lead to a fully dysfunctional organization.”
Leaders appear to be recognizing the fault lines and the potential perils. They are looking, proactively, for a way to bring their employees back with a strong sense of purpose and togetherness.
Team coaching vs. team building
Many are choosing team coaching, not team building. While both can be effective, we've chosen to deliver a high-performance team coaching program.
A key part of our program is our survey of individual team members before we deliver our coaching. That tells us how the team is functioning – what it is doing well, where the challenges are, and what the opportunities are.
Then we bring all the team members together to facilitate a conversation between them. We’re not consulting, or telling them what to do. We’re helping them see how they are functioning as a team and helping them come up with solutions to support the strengthening of the team.
It's coaching at its core – holding people capable and having conversations that need to be had, knowing that the team will find its path forward.
Then it is helping them discover a plan for moving forward: What have they learned over this time together and what are they going to do differently moving forward?
It is a journey. To learn more, visit the Vision Coaching website.