Promoting top individual contributors into management often backfires. Their competitive nature, which drove individual success, makes it hard to share tips, empathize with struggling team members, or handle interpersonal issues, turning a perceived win-win into a lose-lose situation.

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.

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.

To help your team overcome their own performance blockers, shift your coaching from their actions to their thinking. Ask questions like, "What were you thinking that led you to that approach?" This helps them uncover the root belief driving their behavior, enabling more profound and lasting change than simple behavioral correction.

To build a culture of continuous improvement, prioritize hiring for coachability. Individuals with backgrounds in competitive athletics or music are often ideal because they have been heavily coached their whole lives. They view direct feedback not as criticism, but as an essential tool for getting better.

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.

Coaching executive teams is fraught with power dynamics. To be effective, a coach must align exclusively with the person who hired them and their specific objective. Addressing other visible problems will only create opposition from other executives and derail the engagement.