Individuals and teams need feedback and coaching. Coaches provide
information, insight, feedback, encouragement, instruction, and positive reinforcement. Coaches help
people practice, correct, and improve performance. Effective coaching requires
knowledge of the individual, knowledge of the team, and knowledge
of the environment, including what is required and what limitations
or other hindrances exist.
Coaching is a huge field. There
are all kinds of coaches for activities ranging across sports,
the arts, and work of countless types. A little-understood type
of coach is the one internal to a team. Any
member of the team can be a coach at a
particular time, depending on what skills, knowledge, or abilities the
team member has relative to what the team needs at
that moment. It is not common to have rotating coaches,
or for the right coach to emerge as needed, because
many teams are comfortable only with coaching provided by
individuals outside of the team. This often has to do
with formal authority and more traditional mindsets where individuals are
accustomed to "reporting up" and taking instruction from superiors, as
opposed to working collaboratively in more democratic, egalitarian fashion.
Other topics in our resources on Team Building related to Coaching include: