Coaching Skills for New
Team Leaders
P
Rita J. Bailey Nicholas, is a leadership
development coach, mediator, and
facilitator. She works with wide range
of public, charities, and private sector
organizations in the United Kingdom
and internationally. She specializes
in developing new and established
managers who want to enhance
their personal and professional
development in leadership and
communications.
Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-864-9 (2017)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Rita Bailey Nicholas MBA, Dip, Psych, FInstLM,
MABP, MCMI, MBTI
ractical guide for Team Leaders who want an
immediate tool at their fingertips for enhancing
learning and performance in their teams. Coaching
is a positive approach to supporting, developing, and
holding team members accountable for achieving project
outcomes. It is also an effective leadership style to adopt
if there are performance concerns, and also for w orking
with talented employees identified in the team. This
guide encourages team leaders to adopt a coaching style
as part of their leadership skills. It will include examples
of popular coaching models and sample questions.
Abstract: Modern leaders are constantly seeking ways
to improve team and individual learning, performance,
and productivity in the workplace. A coaching leadership
style will support any team leader to facilitate sustainable
change with their staff, increasing learning, productivity,
and performance. Effective coaching tools are available
to team leaders to adapt and integrate for managing new
hires, established team members, or getting the best from
talented employees. It allows team leaders to manage
more effectively, and motivate their teams, increasing
responsibility and ownership, enabling better clarity
during times of greater demands on teams, and improves
team relationships.
Keywords: coaching, development, employees, leadership,
learning, mentoring, motivation, performance, p
roductivity,
retention, skills, talent, teams
Introduction
Team leaders responsibilities for motivation and en-
hancing performance hasnt changed over the last forty
years. The contribution of leadership in galvanizing
and transforming workforces and organizations is well
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 Coaching Skills for New Team Leaders
documented in leadership research, man-
agement texts, and courses.
It was in the 1980s that sports psychology
had an impact on the business world.
The idea of top performers in business
increasing productivity, and accountability,
became an ideal to strive forthe goal
being excellence, profitability, an industry
leader profile and accolades in their c hosen
market.
The modern workplace is a place of
complex demands, where rapid change can
even seem chaotic, and uncertain, at times.
The demands are external from global
market forces, or internal drivers from
within the organizations, as individuals
do their best to deal with and handle the
change.
The recognition that increasing staff
performance is critical to success has led
to team leaders being expected to con-
sider how they will inspire, motivate staff
and how they will get them to work cohe-
sively. Team leaders are working within
new organizational structures to get better
results and to become more competitive.
The modern workplace consists of a
diverse range of team working s tructures.
There are matrix teams, project teams, and
even virtual teams who need to c ollaborate
across time zones and borders. Team lead-
ers are having to become more creative and
confident in considering how they will get
the best out of their staff. No team stays the
same in the context of change (Lencioni,
2002), and team leaders are a lways work-
ing with changes in company strategy,
direction, and workforce. Additional pres-
sures include the following:
New legislation and policy initiatives;
New demands in the markets;
Consumers pressures;
Challenges in operating conditions for
growth and development;
Technological changes and challenges;
Challenges in increasing skills capabilities
of staff to match the new market conditions.
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-864-9 (2017)
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This context has become the everyday
norm for team leaders who are striving
to keep staff productive and committed
to high performance while these changes
are still taking place. This new norm
requires team leaders to have good ap-
proaches and techniques to help them
lead and manage staff effectively. Utiliz-
ing effective tools such as coaching to
increase performance, productivity, indi-
vidual effectiveness, and competencies is
seen as a viable way forward for any mod-
ern team leaderwho intends to have the
right impact and results that make a real
difference to staff morale, cohesion, and
engagement.
The Rise of Coaching
Coaching has become a buzz word in
business for some 20 to 30 years now.
The word coaching is used not just in
schools, but across industries, reaching
into education, MBA programs, career
development, professional development,
finance, marketing, and human resources
development.
Coaching in the twenty-first century has
wide recognition in terms of its value and
importance in developing staff and support-
ing performance growth and e velopment.
A Chartered Institute of Personnel De-
velopment (CIPD, 2004) survey reported
that eight out of ten use coaching in their
organization. Four-fifths of these stated
their o rganization was seeking to develop
a coaching culture. Indeed, companies are
accepting that developing coaching culture
was of strategic benefit to the organization
(Megginson, 2005). If they want everyone
to be on the same page with increased pro-
ductivity, then coaching could be a highly
effective management tool for increasing
staff performance, and ultimately, achieve
business excellence. Furthermore, sup-
porting employees through great times
of pressure could assist them by working
together more effectively throughout the
organization.
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 Coaching Skills for New Team Leaders
Why Growth in Coaching
The CIPD (2006) notes that the growth in
coaching has taken place due to the follow-
ing reasons:
Rapidly evolving business environment
is an everyday challenge;
The ability to learn and adapt is now a
critical skill for the modern workplace;
Flatter organizations and expansion of
roles and responsibilities,
specifically for managers;
Fast-paced turbulence in business.
Team leaders observing these changes
will be concerned about the new and in-
creasing challenges their team faces. Savvy
team leaders will be looking for modern
tools and techniques that assist team mem-
bers to cope with these major changes
in their roles and responsibilities in the
workplace.
Whether you are already a newly pro-
moted team leader, deputizing, in an in-
terim role taking over an established team,
or seeking to transition into a new team
leader role, this expert guide is for you. It
will enable you to understand the unique
approach of coaching, what it is, and what
the difference is between similar methods
used to motivate and develop staff, such
as mentoring and counselling. Some of
the questions team leaders frequently ask
us are:
When should I use coaching?
What do I need to do to be an effective
coaching team leader?
What do I need to do to prepare and plan
for a typical coaching conversation?
What type of questions should I ask? How
do I start?
This expert guide is to give you an under-
standing and clear approach to confidently
have a coaching-style conversation that
supports your team members to be their
very best, while increasing performance
Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-864-9 (2017)
www.businessexpertpress.com
and productivity. It offers you a set of
tools you can apply immediately in assist-
ing your team. This guide can also provide
established team leaders and project man-
agers an opportunity to strengthen their
coaching skills with a well-structured ap-
proach for enhancing staff effectiveness.
Reasons for Coaching Your Team
Sir John Whitmore (2002) states, Coaching
is a call for a fundamental transformation
of management style and culture. This is
where coaching underpins team leaders
behaviour and interaction that support
the full release of staff performance.
The CIPD survey (2006) highlights that
key objectives for using coaching is:
To address staff underperformance;
To improve individual performance in
their roles and responsibilities;
To improve overall staff productivity.
Every team leader is concerned with
poor performance impacts on their team.
Due to the demands and pressures in
the business, there is a tendency to look
for quick, traditional solutions such as a
training course, or redeployment in a dif-
ferent role, which often does not resolve
the issue. Frequently, this shifts the prob-
lem to another part of the organization,
team, or lays the blame at the feet of the
team member when it could be a skills
or m otivation issue that coaching could
resolve. Many researchers define perfor-
mance as a function of both ability and
motivation. Ability is a team members
aptitude, while motivation is the out-
come of their commitment and desire. It
is often noted that individuals with high-
level motivation and less ability can still
achieve an above-average performance.
However, a team member with 25 per-
cent ability would not be able to achieve
performance targets, regardless of levels
of motivation (Turning managers into
leaders, 2012)
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