Staying with a team that consistently resists change and makes no progress sends a negative message. It signals to the organization that the coach is content to 'cash a paycheck' without delivering value, undermining the engagement and damaging their professional reputation.
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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.
To avoid becoming a permanent fixture in a failing engagement, a coach must establish a 'product strategy' for their work. This involves setting an explicit timeframe and success criteria with their sponsor upfront. If goals aren't met, it provides a clear, blameless path to walking away.
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.
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.
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.
Keeping an employee in a role where they are failing is a profound disservice. You cannot coach someone into a fundamentally bad fit. The employee isn't growing; they're going backward. A manager's responsibility is to provide direct feedback and, if necessary, 'invite them to build their career elsewhere.'
