How Experienced Executive Coaches Provide Value with Team Coaching
Most projects in large organizations, as well as in small businesses, are delegated to teams. Leaders routinely ask teams to deliver on new initiatives as well as a wide range of ongoing work and programs, which is challenging because of the complex relationships, personalities, and often conflicting priorities of those who make up the team. Often the team's performance becomes the real source of success for the organization.
McKinsey research has shown that organizations with top teams that work well together toward a shared vision are two times more likely to deliver above-median financial performance. Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends research of nearly 10,000 leaders worldwide found that collaborative team structures have become the norm, not the exception.
Does Team Coaching Work?
There's solid evidence that well-designed team development — which includes training, facilitation, and coaching — improves both team functioning and performance. For example, a meta-analysis of 51 controlled studies found positive, significant effects of teamwork interventions on teamwork quality and team performance. The researchers, based at the University of British Columbia said, "Bringing a group of highly skilled individuals together is not sufficient for teams to be effective. Rather, team members need to be able to work well together for the team to successfully achieve its purpose."
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What Google Found Out About Team Performance
Google analyzed what it takes for teams to work at their best. Google's multi-year Project Aristotle linked psychological safety to better team outcomes — a quality team coaches commonly work to strengthen. Google's Project Aristotle analyzed 180 teams over two years and concluded that five dynamics — psychological safety, dependability, structural clarity, meaning, and impact — best predict effectiveness, and psychological safety ranked first. Team coaching supports these elements by setting clear norms and roles, encouraging a culture for the safe expression of ideas even if they differ from the group, and connecting day-to-day work to purpose and outcomes. Google found that these qualities translate into better decisions, meetings, and engagement.
Who is Using Team Coaching?
Prominent organizations which have adopted coaching on a large scale often include team coaching within their approach:
- SAP, one of the world's largest software companies, has been recognized by ICF for building a strong coaching culture, with thousands of coaching relationships active across the company with a coaching infrastructure that includes widespread team and group coaching
- Across the UK National Health Service, multiple departments use team-coaching engagements to improve collaboration for new or stressed units — ranging from clinical learning teams to integrated-care leadership teams
These examples reflect a broader shift in the coaching world and an opportunity for experienced coaches. Organizational buyers are seeking help for teams facing pressure, not just coaching or workshops for individuals.
The Team Coaching Flow
Carmen, a VP of Operations at a regional hospital system, inherited a cross-functional care‐delivery team with missed patient scheduling targets, confusion on how to implement changes and tense daily huddles. She brought in a certified team coach for a 16-week engagement with three simple aims: (1) clarify decision processes, (2) improve the quality of the team's work-planning meetings, and (3) raise psychological safety.
The Team Coaching Structure
- Two sponsor meetings to establish purpose, desired outcomes, and boundaries
- A brief baseline assessment of team dynamics and stakeholder input
- Four team-coaching sessions focused on norms, decision protocols, and "speak-up" acceptance, plus one observation of their weekly planning meeting with live coaching on their process
- Manager 1:1s to reinforce the new team norms
Key Outcomes After 16 weeks of Team Coaching
- Planning meetings dropped from 90 to 50 minutes without loss of quality
- The number of decisions that were delayed from meeting to meeting dropped by 28%
- A survey measuring, "I feel I can safely raise a risk early" changed from 3.1 to 4.2 on a five-point scale
- The team resolved two issues particularly fast because of clearer escalation paths
Why Team Coaching Certification is Important
For organizational buyers, credentials signal that an expert independent body has reviewed the quality and competence of the coach, increasing the buyer's confidence that the coach can manage coaching engagements competently. The ICF Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC) is known as a sign of credibility and that is why many experienced coaches are now earning this specialty credential.
To obtain ICF's Advanced Certification in Team Coaching you must complete a specific, approved curriculum, such as College of Executive Coaching's Post-Graduate Team Coaching Certification which was created to prepare experienced coaches to have the skills to coach teams and to position the coach to be able to obtain their ACTC.
Why Organizational Buyers Look for Team Coaching Certified Coaches
I have found that HR leaders and champions of team coaching initiatives don't just ask for "coaching in general." They are thinking about problems they want to solve — outcomes like faster execution, healthier meeting dynamics, more effective decision making, and higher engagement. Certified team coaches are trained to:
- Contract around organizational mission, team outcomes, and stakeholder expectations
- Use assessments and observations to focus on high-leverage, healthy team behavior shifts
- Build capabilities teams can sustain between sessions and after the coaching concludes
- Measure improvements and report them in terms leaders value
When to Suggest Team Coaching to a Client
- New or recomposed teams in response to a new initiative, reorganization, or acquisition
- Cross-functional delivery groups that get stuck in handoffs and conflict
- Leadership teams need help clarifying shared priorities and decision-making processes
- Teams where psychological safety, inclusion and engagement are too low
The research shows that team coaching and professional team facilitation improves how work is accomplished and shows measurable, short and long-term benefits.
A Practical Next Step
For professional coaches already coaching executives or managers, expanding into team coaching is a logical — and marketable — next level service offering. Coaches wanting to expand into team coaching should consider formal training aligned to ICF's ACTC to increase their credibility with buyers and to be competitive for engagements where team outcomes are tied to business results.
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Ready to take the next step? Learn more about College of Executive Coaching's Post-Graduate Team Coaching Certification and improve your competence and marketability.
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References
- Deloitte. (2025). 2025 Global Human Capital Trends. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html
- Google. (n.d.). re:Work — Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle). Retrieved November 8, 2025, from https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness.
- International Coaching Federation. (n.d.). Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC) exam overview. Retrieved November 8, 2025, from https://coachingfederation.org/credentialing/icf-credential-exams/actc-exam/
- International Coaching Federation. (2020). Coaching for potential: SAP SE (Prism Award case study).
- Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277.
- McEwan, D., Ruissen, G. R., Eys, M. A., Zumbo, B. D., & Beauchamp, M. R. (2017). The effectiveness of teamwork training on teamwork behaviors and team performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled interventions. PLOS ONE, 12(1), e0169604.
- McKinsey & Company. (2017, June 1). High-performing teams: A timeless leadership topic.
- McKinsey & Company. (2025, October 2). Demystifying top-team performance: What every CEO needs to know.
- NHS Employers. (2025, January 14). Maintaining and retaining staff through a career coaching program.
- NHS East of England Leadership Academy. (2023, June). Team coaching impact review.
