Executive Team Coaching To Succeed

Individually talented leaders. Collectively underperforming. Here's the framework that actually closes that gap.

According to Bain & Company research, only 17 per cent of executive teams describe themselves as truly high-performing - and only 44 per cent of leaders believe their own team is equipped to manage the pace of disruption most organisations now face. The problem is rarely individual competence. It is what happens, or fails to happen, once a group of capable individuals is expected to function as a genuine team.

Executive Team Coaching To Succeed is a practical, structured framework for coaching an intact leadership team as a unit - distinct from one-on-one executive coaching and from everyday interpersonal coaching skill. It draws on real, credited research and models - Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Peter Hawkins' Leadership Team Coaching, and Ruth Wageman's research on senior leadership teams - and translates them into a usable field guide for anyone doing the actual work, whether that's a CEO building their own top team, or an HR or organisational development professional stepping into a facilitation role.

• What executive team coaching actually is, and how it differs from 1:1 executive coaching and everyday coaching skill - plus the real business case, stated honestly
• Diagnosing a real team before intervening: real team vs working group, psychological safety, the diagnostic interview questions worth asking, and the three recurring dysfunction patterns - the shark tank, the petting zoo, and the mediocracy
• The core frameworks: the team charter, explicit decision rights, ways-of-working agreements, conflict norms, and Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions pyramid applied stage by stage
• Running the coaching engagement: contracting, designing a facilitated session, coaching the team's own leader, and working with resistance - including three labelled, illustrative composite scenarios
• Sustaining high performance after the engagement ends: accountability without micromanaging, meeting redesign, succession and composition changes, and an annual team health check
• A full FAQ, common myths, and a glossary crediting every real framework this book draws on by name

Written by the To Succeed Coaching Team, the authors of more than ninety practical guides spanning sport, fitness, study, interview preparation and travel. Book 4 - the closing title - in the Leadership & Business series, following New Manager To Succeed, First Lead To Succeed and Coach Anyone To Succeed. Find the full series at tosucceed.coach.