What Is Systemic Team Coaching, and Why Now? A Guide for Leaders and HR Managers

We hear the terms ‘team coaching’, ‘group coaching’ and ‘systemic team coaching’ with increasing frequency, as organisations look to extend the value and reach of coaching beyond the realm of 1:1 interventions to those involving groups and teams.  Pari Namazie, Managing Partner of Eunepa, a Vienna-based consultancy and Peter Horncastle, founder and Managing Director of UK leadership consultancy Deep C, introduce us to the field.

Many of our clients are both curious and sceptical when discussing team coaching, asking questions such as:

Stay ahead of the industry with exclusive feature stories on the top companies, expert insights and the latest news delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe today.

❖ What’s the difference between team building, team facilitation and team coaching?
❖ Team coaching I understand, but what’s ‘systemic’ about it?
❖ Why is there suddenly all this hype?  Is this just another passing fad?

In this article, we will outline what team coaching is – and why interest in team coaching is growing.

What Team Coaching Is Not

Team coaching is a relative newcomer to the field of OD.  Still in its developmental phase, it is marked by a degree of confusion over terminology, process and standards; not dissimilar to how individual coaching found itself in several decades ago.

To start with, let’s look at what team coaching is not. 

❖ 1:1 coaching can be provided to a team leader and their team members, but this is not team coaching, which focuses on coaching the whole team together.
❖ Group coaching involves coaching a group of individuals who have a shared interest in a project or profession, but who have no collective team responsibility for an output.
❖ Team building typically refers to activities designed to help individual team members ‘bond’ in the early stages of a team’s development, or at a key transition point.
❖ Team facilitation involves a facilitator or leader designing and facilitating an effective process for the team, often for a specific event, such as a workshop or offsite meeting.

So What Is Team Coaching?

We view team coaching as a relatively new, multidisciplinary approach to OD that draws upon elements of individual coaching, group dynamics, process consulting and action research.  

The basic ‘building blocks’ that make up team coaching include:

❖ Focusing less on individuals and more on the team as a collective entity
❖ Exploring team purpose, as well as internal and external relationships
❖ Improving the performance of the team as a collective unit
❖ Coaching that encourages dialogue, reflection and collective learning
❖ As a coach working ‘in the moment’, alongside the team
❖ Providing a longer-term intervention, rather than a ‘one-off’ event, to allow space for processing and evolving new habits
❖ Pairing up with a co-coach where necessary
❖ Utilising an array of advanced coaching skills, tools and techniques.

And What’s Systemic About It?

Systemic team coaching (STC) involves working with the team in its systemic context, enabling the team to reframe and enhance the way it relates to — and serves — its business environment.  STC places as much emphasis on how the team is leading change with and for all its stakeholders, as it does on how it functions internally.

Systemic team coaches endeavour to use ‘self as instrument’, tuning into themselves to become aware of how they experience and respond to the team, using this as data in service of the team’s learning. It involves reflecting on how the team coach becomes part of the system, i.e. how their coaching approach is affecting the system (of which the team is a part) and how the system might affect them as a coach.

The systemic team coach switches between different systemic ‘lenses’ as they work with a team.  These include.

❖ Self
❖ Individual team members
❖ Interpersonal relationships
❖ Team tasks
❖ Team dynamics
❖ Stakeholder interfaces
❖ The wider systemic context.

And Why Is Systemic Team Coaching So Relevant Today?

So, why the growing interest in team coaching?  We have identified five key drivers:

❖ The problems of the world are too great to be solved by individual ‘heroic’ leaders.  Global organisations have the power to lead breakthrough change in the world, but only through collective effort and value-creating leadership teams.  STC sets out to ensure that teams develop the capacity to learn faster than the world around them is changing.
❖ A recognition that everything is connected.  A team is not created by its members, but is a system with a life of its own, existing and operating in a wider systemic context.  Framed in this way, the interconnections between individual team members, the team, the organisation, the team’s stakeholders and its wider ecosystem are key.  STC involves building systemic awareness; a source of leadership advantage for a team, facilitating connections, meaning and innovation.
❖ Businesses operate in a stakeholder economy. To prosper, teams must not only deliver financial performance, but also make a positive contribution to society — and to our planet, working in ways that benefit all their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate.  STC encourages leadership teams to be more stakeholder-centric, co-creating value with — and for — all their stakeholders; both now and in the future.
❖ The pursuit of team purpose moves centre stage.  Teams require a clear purpose that requires commitment and collaborative effort.  It is purpose that drives team performance. STC can help teams clarify their purpose, both based on the needs of their stakeholders (outside-in perspective), as well as what the team is uniquely capable of doing that the world of tomorrow needs (future-back perspective).
❖ The prevalence of ‘VIM’ (virtual/hybrid, international and multicultural) teams.   Such teams can benefit from working with a systemic team coach on specific challenges such as:

• Managing boundaries across time zones, tasks and locations
• Virtual partnering with stakeholders
• Working effectively with difference
• Building psychological safety in a virtual environment
• Pursuing the ‘collaboration dividend’
• Overcoming any disconnection between team members and the team’s purpose.

In summary, Systemic Team Coaching (STC) has become increasingly relevant in today's organisational landscape. It addresses the pressing challenges of our interconnected world, where individual leadership alone cannot surmount complex global issues. As an answer, it offers a holistic framework that emphasises collective learning, purpose-driven collaboration, systemic awareness, and stakeholder-centricity. STC stands at the forefront of the evolving coaching landscape, promising to guide teams toward greater resilience and effectiveness.

In our next article on STC, we will look at a framework for managing a team coaching engagement and how to start with STC.