052: Professor David Clutterbuck: Coaching the Team at Work

Join Dr. Krister Lowe and today’s guest and early pioneer in the team coaching field—Professor David Clutterbuck—for this week’s episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! Professor David Clutterbuck is Practice Lead at David Clutterbuck Partnership, Special Ambassador for the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, Founder of Coaching and Mentoring International, Visiting Professor at Sheffield Hallam, Oxford Brookes and York St. John Universities and an Adjunct Faculty at Ashridge Coaching MBA. He is also the author of 65 books and countless articles, white papers and blog posts. David is the author of the team coaching classic “Coaching the Team At Work”—an essential read for all team coaches. He is a thought leader in the coaching world and a leading trainer and supervisor of coaches and team coaches. 

In this episode of the podcast, David shares his journey into team coaching. Themes explored on the show include: his book “Coaching The Team At Work;” working with teams across the full organizational hierarchy; multiple types of teams (leadership teams, cabin crew teams, stable teams, project teams, learning teams, evolutionary teams and more); knowledge management in teams; working with history in teams; coaching as a link between the inner context and the outer context; getting quick wins; the dangers of focusing too much on dysfunction; goals in team coaching; contracting and re-contracting in team coaching; three core focal areas in team coaching (performance, learning, relationships/behavior); focusing on opportunities vs. problems; performance vs. learning orientations; self-coaching in teams; individual vs. team level learning; coaching cultures in teams; learning plans in teams; peer coaching within teams; the importance of having skills in “being coached;” 9 signs when you shouldn’t coach a team; the current lack of team coach supervision; four developmental mindsets of coaches (model-based à process-based à philosophy/discipline-based à systemic/eclectic-based); powerful questions in team coaching; balancing bringing calm to teams while also generating constructive conflict; three practical tips for coaching teams – 1) how to manage extroverts vs. introverts in teams, 2) how to manage resistance to you as the team coach, 3) a creative way to address interpersonal conflict in teams; David’s 3-day “From One-to-One Coach to Team Coach” training program; David’s perspectives on the evolution of team coaching and more.

This is yet another podcast with a towering figure in the team coaching arena that is chock full of “value bombs” and an episode that you will surely not want to miss!