Team Coaching

“What sets apart high performance teams…is the degree of commitment, particularly how deeply committed the members are to one another.” Jon Katzenback & Douglas Smith, The Wisdom of Teams

All leaders need to have others fully engaged with them to achieve their organization’s mission, vision and strategic priorities. Modern work is team work, and teams that successfully leverage each member’s strengths can unlock limitless creative capacity. Our vision is to make shared leadership easy. We do this by coaching leaders and their teams together – a powerful process that creates more focused, more engaged and ultimately more productive teams at all levels, from project and leadership teams to Boards for community groups.

When is Team Coaching Right for You?

Team coaching is an appropriate and powerful tool for any team at any time. Performance can always improve, with exciting results when it comes to creating cultural change and meeting business outcomes. Team coaching is especially beneficial if your organization is developing a new strategic plan, preparing for a change in leadership or facing a merger or acquisition.

Horizon Leadership Institute can help your team reach new levels of cohesiveness and performance. We have innovative tools and techniques to identify and use your strengths, and diagnose and resolve your challenges. Our process is designed to improve team dynamics as participants:

• Engage in an open and honest conversation
• Identify their current position
• Create a compelling shared vision
• Acknowledge the impact of change
• Name “baggage” that is a barrier to peak performance
• Highlight best conditions to maximize team performance
• Acknowledge areas of vulnerability within the team
• Re-energize by celebrating successes and identifying new opportunities
• Identify areas for action and make collective commitments
• Create conditions for trust

The Horizon Approach

The Horizon approach is essentially a three-stage process that begins with a thorough evaluation designed to assess the team’s current state and establish coaching objectives. From there, we work with the team during an intensive 1-2 day retreat, completing a series of exercises to connect team members and define actions for moving forward together. This step introduces the team to the coaching model that will be used throughout the rest of the process.

Consistency is the key to ensuring long-term, sustainable change. With that in mind, we coach the team at least once a month over the next 6-12 months, reviewing past work, setting new goals and evaluating progress. At the end of the process, we reassess the team to measure success and celebrate accomplishments.

We use a variety of assessment tools when working with teams. They provide benchmarks that signal change and measure improvements. See the Resources section for more information.

The result: Exciting growth for teams as they develop a shared vision and a new awareness of what it takes to achieve sustainable high performance. Our clients’ teams also report increased trust, better capacity at dealing with conflict and a much stronger team identity.