Beyond the Individual: Coaching the Team Within the System

When we think about coaching, many of us picture one-to-one conversations: helping an individual reflect, set goals and unlock new ways of thinking. That work can be transformative. I’ve experienced it myself as a coach and coachee.

But in the workplace, change is about more than a collection of individuals. As Professor Peter Hawkins, a pioneer of systemic team coaching, often points out: more often than not, the work is about the connections, how people interact, collaborate and move forward together. That’s where team coaching comes in.

Coaching individuals can change lives, but when a whole team learns to coach itself, the results can be extraordinary. Team coaching creates the culture, skills and systems that allow groups to work well together, navigate complexity and achieve shared goals. It builds trust, clarity and accountability, enabling teams not only to perform in the moment but also to adapt and thrive in the long term.

And when we add a systemic lens, the impact grows even further.

What Makes Team Coaching Different?

Unlike one-to-one coaching, where the individual is the client, team coaching treats the team itself as the client. It focuses on collective goals, trust and culture, all key ingredients of high performance.

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) even developed a dedicated set of team coaching competencies, highlighting skills like working with group dynamics, facilitating collective accountability and supporting transformation at scale (see link at the end of the article).

In practice, team coaching helps teams to:

• Build trust and psychological safety.

• Navigate challenges together rather than alone.

• Improve collaboration and decision-making.

• Hold each other accountable with respect and clarity.

• Strengthen not just performance today, but adaptability for the future.

Why a Systemic Lens Matters

Systemic team coaching goes beyond how a team functions internally. It also explores the wider system in which the team operates.

That means asking questions like:

• Who are our stakeholders, and how are we listening to them?

• What external forces; policies, funding pressures, market shifts, shape our work?

• How do our behaviours and decisions ripple out into the wider organisation and community?

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By engaging with these dynamics, teams become more confident in navigating change. They learn when to push forward, when to pause, and how to stay aligned with the environment around them.

This is particularly vital in schools and purpose-led organisations, where expectations are high, resources are tight and external pressures are constant.

What Team Coaching Enables

Team coaching delivers both stronger results and healthier team dynamics. Some of the benefits include:

• Culture: building trust, belonging, and psychological safety so teams can debate, challenge and commit to action.

• Dynamics: understanding strengths and differences so collaboration becomes smoother and more effective.

• Decision-making: distinguishing between decisions that need speed and those that need reflection.

• Accountability: creating agreed ways of holding each other to account that strengthen, rather than damage, relationships.

• Systemic awareness: learning to listen to stakeholders and adapt to external pressures with confidence.

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At its best, team coaching builds the capacity for sustainable performance and positive culture, long after the coach has stepped away.

Concluding Thoughts

Coaching a team can create a ripple effect of change across the organisation and beyond.

With a systemic lens, team coaching doesn’t just improve how people work together, it equips them to navigate complexity, adapt to and drive change and achieve meaningful results in their wider context.

If you’d like to explore how team coaching could strengthen your leadership team or organisation, I’d be happy to have that conversation.

ICF Team Coaching Competencies: icf-cs-team-coaching-competencies.pdf