When team dysfunction stems from organizational problems like unstable team composition, applying coaching is a form of meddling. It pathologizes the team and absolves leadership of their responsibility to fix the underlying systemic issues they created.
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Resistance is critical information, not just a barrier. It often reveals a team's fear of losing something valuable, such as autonomy, their established identity, or a sense of expertise. Understanding what they're protecting is key to making change less threatening.
When management assigns a coach without team consent, the team perceives it as surveillance, not support. This immediately creates resistance and undermines the trust necessary for effective coaching, starting the relationship from a deficit.
A coach's impact is limited if they only focus on the team. To create lasting change, they must transition into an advocate who identifies organizational impediments and holds leadership accountable for solving problems that are outside the team's control.
Giving teams full autonomy to select their coach can be counterproductive. They might choose someone who makes them feel comfortable and validates their existing habits, rather than a coach who will challenge their dysfunctions and push for necessary, but difficult, transformation.
Mandating new processes, like reducing meetings, is ineffective if the collective beliefs driving old behaviors (e.g., lack of trust) are not addressed. To make change stick, leaders must first surface, discuss, and realign the team's shared assumptions to support the new structure.
Framing coaching as a punitive measure for poor performance destroys the intrinsic motivation necessary for change. It should be positioned as a developmental tool for high-potential growth and expanding impact, not as a punishment for underperformance.
Many leaders, particularly in technical fields, mistakenly believe their role is to provide all the answers. This approach disempowers teams and creates a bottleneck. Shifting from advising to coaching unlocks a team's problem-solving potential and allows leaders to scale their impact.
Even the best coaching will fail if the company culture punishes desired behaviors. A 'firefighter syndrome' culture, which rewards heroes who solve last-minute crises, will undermine coaching aimed at fostering proactive problem-solving, rendering the investment useless.
Before labeling a team as not resilient, leaders should first examine their own expectations. Often, what appears as a lack of resilience is a natural reaction to systemic issues like overwork, underpayment, and inadequate support, making it a leadership problem, not an employee one.
Leaders who complain their team isn't as good as them are misplacing blame. They are the ones who hired and trained those individuals. The team's failure is ultimately the leader's failure in either talent selection, skill development, or both, demanding radical ownership.
