The Benefits of Specializing in Team Coaching

In today’s complex work environment, teams play a crucial role in organizations. Their power lies in their ability to enhance collaboration, creativity, and overall organizational effectiveness.

In 2015, the Cleveland Clinic reorganized its entire hospital network around patient medical problems, moving beyond traditional functional medical practices — which separated surgeons and medical specialists — to combine personnel into patient-centric teams, dramatically improving patient outcomes.

Just as organizations continue to recognize the value of employee teams, team coaching is also gaining momentum, with private companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations turning to team coaches to harness a team’s collective expertise, energy, and wisdom to achieve more significant results.

Because of this trend, coaches who specialize in team coaching may have an advantage in better meeting the needs of their clients. Let’s look at three ways team coaching can benefit you as a coach.   

Expand Your Services by Specializing in Team Coaching

Coaching is a competitive industry, and diversifying your offerings with additions like team coaching is one way to remain relevant in today’s market. In fact, “increasing the number of services offered” and “focusing on new coaching specialties” are two of the top four ways coaches plan to grow their coaching business in the coming months and years.

Additionally, organizations recognize the value of team effectiveness and cohesion for achieving better results and see the benefits coaches bring in guiding teams to greater success. According to recent coaching culture research, “improve teamwork” is one of the top five reasons organizations utilize coaching — and team coaching is one of the top five methods organizations are currently using.

Deepen Your Coaching Skills

Adding new services like team coaching to your toolbox not only enables you to increase your revenue streams but is also a great way to grow and develop as a coach.

Team coaching is multi-faceted — you are working with a team to help them reach a common purpose and shared goals — so your knowledge needs to be broader and go deeper than when working with an individual client. Teams consist of individuals with unique personalities, knowledge, skills, and motivations, which can bring about many dynamics of power, relationships, expertise, and disparate goals. When you specialize in team coaching, you are better positioned to understand how these dynamics might play out in team interactions, the team’s agenda, internal disputes, beliefs, and alliances.

There is also a distinct set of competencies for team coaching, which build on and integrate with the ICF Core Competencies. With the growth of team coaching as a discipline of practice, there has also been a rise in team coaching educational programs. Many of these programs received accreditation from ICF Coaching Education as Advanced Accredited Team Coaching programs, equipping coaches to meet the unique challenges of coaching teams. Plus, you can also pursue an advanced certification in team coaching (ACTC) to demonstrate your skills, expertise, and experience in team coaching.

“I believe that my clients, when they realize what’s involved in the ACTC, will quickly see that there are two major factors in terms of the process of looking at the coach in terms of competency,” shares Taymour Miri, ACTC, MCC. “There’s the skills and competencies of team coaching, and also the experience.”

“Then the other side is about the character of the team coach following the Code of Ethics,” Miri added, “not only the commitment to the international standards but the commitment to go through this process and continuously develop.”

Make Coaching More Accessible

Team coaching offers coaches a unique opportunity to work with and empower diverse groups of people, helping them thrive in inclusive environments. By promoting inclusivity, cultural awareness, and skill development, you play a vital role in supporting individuals from all backgrounds to collaborate, create safety, align with their goals, and grow as high-performing teams. Team coaching can help coaches reach a broader audience and make coaching more accessible to a wider range of people, while also supporting enhanced performance at both the team and individual levels.

In the Defining New Coaching Cultures report, only 27% of organizations currently make coaching accessible to all employees. Most often, coaching is offered to senior-level staff, leaving entry-level employees with fewer opportunities.

On the other hand, team coaching can involve the entire team, from senior-level to entry-level, in the coaching experience. It is an emerging, cost-effective option for organizations to help bring coaching to employees of all levels and backgrounds. According to that same research, team coaching was one of the top four focus areas for organizations in 2023, and that focus is expected to increase in the next few years. This means that organizations will be searching for coaches who are skilled to facilitate team transformation.

Summary

Specializing in team coaching offers you continuous learning and professional development opportunities. It also allows you to make a meaningful impact in organizational development and leadership by enhancing team dynamics, promoting diversity and inclusion, and advancing professional development. Team coaches play a crucial role in shaping high-performing teams that build resilient organizations in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Equally important, team coaching allows coaches to impact more people than they might be able to with one-on-one coaching, contributing to societal transformation and empowerment.

Take your coaching career to the next level and distinguish yourself in the marketplace with ICF’s Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC). This certification recognizes the knowledge, skill, and competence of advanced team coach practitioners and sets you apart in a growing field of coaches for teams.