Tag: team coaching Irvine

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Healthcare Team Coaching Team Effectiveness

Executive Team Coaching: 4 Ways to Build Alignment

Building alignment on a team is essential for helping improve leadership team effectiveness. As a result of my work doing executive team coaching in a variety of sectors including healthcare, I have observed how teams that lack alignment can suffer in many ways:

  • Missed goals due to the lack of alignment on critical outcomes and accountability for team outcomes.
  • Reduced productivity and inefficiency since team members are not on the same page and may duplicate efforts.
  • Unnecessary conflict and confusion about who is doing what.
  • Decreased morale with team members feeling uncertain about their roles, encountering unproductive conflict, and feeling frustrated with the inability to meet goals.

Here are four executive team coaching strategies to help you improve the effectiveness of your leadership teams.

1: Clearly Defined Goals

Goals should be clearly defined so that team members understand specific outcomes, including actionable tasks and milestones. Just because you as the team leader are clear on goals does not mean your team shares this perspective. A powerful way to test for this is by asking all team members to anonymously write down their understanding of the team goal or vision on a slip of paper. Invite them to pass the goal statement to the person they sit next to multiple times, giving each team member a chance to read everyone’s definition of the goal or vision. Finally, as the team leader, ask the members if there is alignment on the team goal.

2: Two-Way Communication

Two-way communication among team members and the team leader should employ several channels such as emails, regular meetings, and project management tools such as project plans that are easily accessible. Two-way communication allows team members to ask questions and clarify misunderstandings before they fester and damage trust. One great way to ensure alignment in a team meeting is to ask a team member to act as a scribe and record the minutes of the session while they project their computer screen for others to see. As the recorder captures key ideas and accountabilities, team members can validate the commitments before the meeting is over and make course corrections as needed.

3: Establish Roles, Responsibilities and Team Processes

Established roles, responsibilities, and critical team processes so team members understand their focus as well as the focus of their colleagues. Decision-making processes need to be clearly defined so team members understand who owns a decision and who is providing input to a decision. For example, Steve, the team leader, communicates to his team that he is the final decision-maker but invites feedback to help him make the final decision.

4: Ensure Meetings are Effective

Finally, as a team leader you should consider strategies for improving meeting effectiveness by defining agendas in advance, appointing roles, and managing time effectively. Define agendas in advance and distribute them before the meeting to help participants prepare. The agenda should include the desired outcomes, accountabilities for meeting topics, and an estimate of the time allocation. Grant the meeting facilitator the power to interrupt tangent discussions if they occur. Hang some flipchart paper on the wall to capture tangent topics to stay focused. Finally, plan on ending the meeting five minutes early to review the outcomes and accountabilities.

Building alignment on a team is an ongoing process that requires consistent effort and attention. It’s essential to create an environment where team members feel heard, valued, and motivated to work together towards shared objectives. As a leader, your commitment to these strategies can help ensure an effective leadership team.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse is an executive team coach helping teams create amazing results. He founded Nourse Leadership Strategies, an executive and team coaching firm based in Palm Springs, CA. Kevin works with leaders and teams throughout California including Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Irvine, Orange County, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Sacramento.  Contact him at 442.420.5578 (call or text) or kevin@nourseleadership.com

 

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Healthcare Leadership Teams Team Coaching Team Effectiveness

Team Coaching in Healthcare: Floundering Clinical Team

Leadership team alignment is critical to achieve results

Some newly hired leaders need help navigating challenges that make it tough to be effective in their roles. One issue that some new leaders need help with is creating and sustaining a high-performing leadership team. Team coaching in healthcare plays a critical role in helping clinical teams thrive.

In this case, a newly hired director assumed the leadership of a for-profit healthcare organization comprised of five managers. His facilitative, extroverted approach clashed with the style of the former director, an introverted, traditional top-down manager. This director contacted me to help him address resistance from his management team toward his efforts to enhance team functioning.

What is team coaching?

Team coaching is helpful because it promotes effective communication, resolves conflicts, aligns teams with organizational goals, enhances collaboration, and improves team performance and success. It provides a structured and supportive framework for teams to grow, adapt, and excel in a dynamic environment. There are specific skills needed by team coaches to ensure success. While the primary focus of team coaching is the group, an essential factor to consider is the leader’s teaming skills. We have found that many team coaching in healthcare engagements need to start with assessing the skills of the team leader.

Presenting Team Issues

The newly hired director needed help to help his team become high-performing. Team meetings with his managers were often quiet despite his attempts to facilitate dialogue. Managers on the team came to him with issues about their colleagues instead of engaging the peer with whom there was conflict. Collaboration and communication among the managers were limited, leading to unproductive strife and a lack of alignment on essential priorities.

Team Coaching Engagement Approach

The engagement I introduced to this manager and his team consisted of three phases: Initial executive coaching for the director, team coaching with the director and his five managers, and follow-up executive coaching for the director.

Phase 1: Executive Coaching

In a team coaching engagement, it is essential to begin with one-on-one work with the team leader to build a trusting partnership and help the leader understand how their behavior may impact the team. In this phase, I administered the Hogan Personality Assessment to the director to help him understand his strengths and weaknesses that may impact team dynamics. Key findings included:

  • He was perceptive about others’ needs and skilled at managing relationships but was reluctant to confront poor performers.
  • Lack of confidence in leading.
  • Tendency to doubt his abilities, become overly self-critical and take criticism personally.

We explored ways to help the director feel more legitimate and confident in his role, including building greater alignment with his boss and developing supportive relationships with peers. Since the former director in his role embraced a more directive style, his attempts to be facilitative and engaging came across to his managers as tentative. With this awareness, he began experimenting with balancing facilitative and directive styles, becoming more mindful of how he was overusing a strength.

Phase 2: Team Coaching

In Phase 2, I began the team coaching in healthcare project by administering a team assessment instrument for the whole team, including the director, to help identify strengths and weaknesses in the team dynamic. The assessment helped pinpoint critical challenges:

  • A sense of exhaustion and overwhelm among the team.
  • Fuzzy decision-making and other essential processes.
  • Lack of alignment in the team on critical priorities.
  • Inability of the team to be forthright and honest with each other.

Once we formulated a vision for the team and specific team development goals, we conducted a series of team coaching sessions with the director and his five managers. Each session included a participant-led icebreaker, a team issue or challenge raised by the director, facilitated discussion of an article by a participant, and a final reflection of the session identifying essential discoveries. 

Phase 2 concluded with a post-assessment to measure any changes in team functioning and a wrap-up session to consolidate and integrate participants’ learning. Based on the post-assessment, the team achieved several improvements:

  • Enhanced team renewal through recognition and celebration of achievements.
  • Clearer processes, including decision-making authority.
  • Greater alignment on key team processes and direction.
  • Reduced tension and more spontaneous and fluid interactions
  • Enhanced communication, including a greater willingness to surface and resolve conflict.

Beyond the post-assessment results, participants exchanged genuine validations of team member’s talents and contributions.

Phase 3: Follow-Up Executive Coaching

Finally, in phase 3, I resumed executive coaching sessions with the team leader for three months to help him deepen his awareness and team leadership skills. Faced with a new manager joining the team, the leader used our coaching sessions to explore how best to integrate him with minimal impact on the solid trust established through the coaching process.

Lessons Learned and Key Insights

Several factors contributed to the success of this team coaching engagement, including:

  • Preparing the team leader for the experience of team coaching through one-on-one executive coaching.
  • Actively engaging the team in facilitating parts of the team coaching sessions.
  • Intervening throughout team sessions to highlight progress, key insights, and robust teaming behavior.
  • Coaching the director before the team sessions began to help him develop greater self-awareness of the impact of his behavior on team functioning.
  • Using a team assessment instrument to pinpoint areas of strength and weakness, then focusing on these in the coaching sessions.
  • Supporting the leader after the team coaching phase with additional executive coaching sessions to help her tap her newly developed insights and skills in managing her team.

In summary, for team coaching to have the most significant impact, it needs to include an upfront coaching opportunity for the leader to gain awareness of the effects of their behavior, a role for team members to play in the sessions, and opportunities for reflection at the end of each session to deepen and integrate insights.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse is an executive team coach helping teams create amazing results. He founded Nourse Leadership Strategies, an executive and team coaching firm based in Palm Springs, CA. Kevin works with leaders and teams throughout California including Riverside, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Irvine, Orange County, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Sacramento.  Contact him at 442.420.5578 (call or text) or kevin@nourseleadership.com

Categories
Leadership Teams Team Coaching Team Effectiveness

Team Coaching in Irvine

As a senior executive or leader, you likely know that building a high-functioning team is critical to organizational success. Yet, despite assembling strong teams, companies often need to achieve their desired outcomes. A skilled team coach can help your team identify and tackle obstacles, maximize potential, and drive your team toward its goals. In this blog, we explore six ways we deliver team coaching in Irvine: (1) Building trust, (2) Deepening Awareness, (3) Enhancing Accountability, (4) Facilitating communication, (5) Resolving and preventing conflict, and (6) Setting clear goals and objectives.

Building Trust

Trust is essential for effective teamwork and when established, leads to greater alignment and commitment to goals. We work on building trust among team members by creating a safe space for sharing, respecting confidentiality, and promoting mutual respect.

Deepening Awareness

As team coaches, we provide regular feedback and assessments to help teams identify their strengths and areas for improvement. We may use tools like surveys or assessments to gather data on team performance. In addition, we often help the team formulate their model of high performance to use as a basis for tracking progress.

Enhancing Accountability

Accountability is an essential element of high-performance teams – vertical (team members to the team leader) and horizontal (team members to each other). We partner with leaders to design accountability strategies for team members, such as creating ground rules and role expectations.

Facilitating Communication

We help teams improve communication by fostering open and honest dialogue. With improved communication, team members can express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns, creating a more inclusive and collaborative environment. This environment creates deeper trust, enabling team members to express their ideas and concerns.

Resolving and Preventing Conflict

Team coaches are skilled at identifying and addressing conflicts within the team. They can mediate disputes, help team members find common ground and solutions, and engage the team to learn from and prevent future conflict.

Setting Clear Goals and Objectives

We help teams to define clear goals and objectives, an essential element of creating organizational results. With clear and aligned goals, team members understand their roles and responsibilities. Clear and aligned goals have a tremendous impact on reducing unproductive conflict.

Nearly every organization taps team-based environments to accomplish its strategic priorities in today’s business environment. Creating an effective team requires time, effort, and various other resources that will be time-wasting if the team needs the proper guidance and support. Employing the services of an experienced team coach can make all the difference in helping your team perform and thrive. 

If you’re a senior executive or leader are interested in exploring team coaching in Irvine, contact us at 442-420-5578 or kevin@nourseleadership.com, and let’s explore how we can support you.

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Dr. Kevin Nourse is an executive transition coach helping newly hired or promoted executives thrive. He founded Nourse Leadership Strategies, an executive and team coaching firm based in Southern California.