ABSTRACT
J. Williams interviewed coachees about their definitions of team coaching and found little consensus, but common themes were again achieving understanding and improved collaboration, and overcoming obstacles to performance. P. Lencioni’s deficit model proposes five key dysfunctions of a team: absence of trust; fear of conflict; lack of commitment; avoidance of accountability; and inattention to results. Either explicitly or tacitly, definitions of team coaching tend to refer either to performance, as the primary aim of the intervention, or to an improvement in team awareness and collaboration, from which performance benefits may subsequently emerge. The complexity of goal management within teams and within coaching generally was further exposed in the many diverse contributions to Beyond Goals. Questionnaires only assess pre-set issues and may miss key dynamics that can only be identified by listening to the stories of the team members and how they make collective sense of the team and their part in its success or failure.
