Who is responsible: the team or the team coach?

We had a very interesting discussion the other day in a team coaching supervision around attachment to results in a team coaching process. Who is responsible for tangible results of the process: the team, the team coach or is it a shared responsibility?

Several interesting thoughts emerged:

The team coach partners with the team around the process as an “expert” on processes

Of course, a team hires a team coach because the team coach has expertise around designing and delivering team coaching processes. They can expect that the team coach knows how to ask good coaching questions or is able to share their observations in useful ways. The team coach knows how to invite the team to think in productive ways about what they want to accomplish and what they are already able to do. Yet, the team coach does not blindly follow their design but partners with the team to figure out what they would like to think about and how. For example, if a team really does not like to work with post-it notes, the team coach will find other ways of facilitating. If the team insists on talking about obstacles even though the team coach loves working in a solution focused way, the team coach will facilitate a discussion on obstacles and how they can be overcome and not insist on their methodology.

The team is responsible for the outcome of the team coaching

The content of the discussion is owned by the team. Of course, the team coach will listen and engage with useful questions, but what the team decides to do in the end is up to them. This is where we can find some hidden complexities and possible stumbling blocks. If the team coach is relatively new to the field, they might measure their own success by how successful the team becomes. This can be exasperated if the team coach is internal and therefore even more worried about their reputation. However, believing that the coach is responsible for the outcome does not help the process: the coach begins to have a vested interest and is no longer able to be the multipartial coach that they have been hired as.

Also, there is a danger of the team coach taking over responsibilities of the team leader if the team coach gets too interested in creating an outcome on the content level. It may be helpful to discuss roles and responsibilities in the team coaching process with the team and the team leader in advance in order to clarify that the team coach will  not be the guarantor of the success of the session in terms of content. Instead, the team coach will be responsible for creating a space in which fruitful discussions can occur.

Now, as a experienced team coach you might see traps that the team is moving itself into when it comes to planning their steps forward. For example, the team might make grand plans for the future while complaining about little or no resources. This is the point where the team coach can and should make an observation without taking responsibility for the outcome: “I am noticing that your plans are quite ambitious. Yet, I have also heard that you have limited resources. Would you be interested in checking the feasibility of your plans?”

Or if the team veers off into details and more details in the discussion of a minor point, the team coach might notice and ask whether this is what the team wants to spend their time on. How they would like to go on is the responsibility of the team – noticing traps and mentioning them is part of the coaching expertise the coach is hired for.

Conclusion

Of course, how the discussions are happening within a team coaching process has a lot to do with the outcome. A team coach’s responsibility is to invite the team to create the conditions for success. The team coach’s responsibility is not to create or ensure success – this is the responsibility of the team and the team leader.

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