Team Coaching Competencies Series – Competency 1

The International Coaching Federation created competencies for Team Coaching through an extensive process and working with experts.  The Team Coaching competencies are additional points for each of the existing competencies.  In the future they plan to offer a credential in team coaching.  For now, let us explore the additions to the competencies as Team Coaching Competencies in this blog series.

Each competency has additional points for the Team Coaching and this series will go through the competencies in order.

Competency 1: Demonstrates Ethical Practice

+ Coaches the client team as a single entity.

+ Maintains the distinction between team coaching, team building, team training, team consulting, team mentoring, team facilitation, and other team development modalities.

+ Demonstrates the knowledge and skill needed to practice the specific blend of team development modalities that are being offered.

+ Adopts more directive team development modalities only when needed to help the team achieve their goals.

+ Maintains trust, transparency, and clarity when fulfilling multiple roles related to team coaching.

What this means:

• Because the coach is there for the team as a whole, if they notice one person is out of alignment and coach them that can interfere with the team functionality.
• It is essential that the coach ensure transparency and clarity about what service is offered. Sometimes team coaches offer more than one service and must distinguish which is happening when.  Consider the natural progression of services: team building, team training, team consulting, team mentoring, team facilitation, then team coaching. Coaching is advanced development for advanced results.  As with all coaching engagements, the coach ensures there is transparency about the roles.
• Offering Team Coaching calls for developing the skills for the work. This is true of related services that are offered too.
• Determining which service makes sense when is done in partnership with the team.
• Trust is built on the clarity and transparency and is maintained throughout with the ethics and confidentiality.

The points covered here are in addition to the Core Competency information taught during coach training.  The blog series will continue to cover all the Team Coaching Competencies in this format.