ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies empirically sound lessons for team coaching practice by harvesting patterns from scholarly research on influences on team effectiveness, and drawing out their implications for team coaching. It provides both team coaching researchers as well as practitioners with a solid foundation of theory and research upon which future efforts can build and extend the growing profession and impact of team coaching in organizations. Shaping the features of the team’s design is an essential leadership activity, because a high quality team design establishes powerful and persistent positive influences on the key processes that drive effectiveness over time. Self-managing teams need considerable focus on the design and launch capabilities of leaders. Coaches who have insight into design problems may help the leader by identifying an opportunity to change the basic design of the team, or create such an opportunity themselves.
