We recently spoke with Biran Yilancioglu, TPC Leadership UK Head of Coach Training, and Andrea Cardillo, TPC Leadership Managing Partner, Italy, about the growing impact of team coaching and why it offers something fundamentally different from traditional one-to-one coaching.
Individual coaching is powerful. It builds awareness, sharpens thinking and strengthens leadership capability.
But here is the reality many organisations face: an individual can change, and still return to the same dysfunctional system.
Team coaching works at a different level.
The Limits of One-to-One Coaching
When we coach an individual, we help them reflect and behave differently. Yet many performance issues are not rooted in one person. They sit in:
- Unclear roles and responsibilities
- Hidden conflict
- Misalignment with strategy
- Unspoken expectations
- Systemic pressure from stakeholders
- Low psychological safety
As Andrea explains, sustainable change is difficult when only one person shifts but the surrounding environment stays the same. Team coaching changes the environment itself.
Treating the Team as the Client
One of the most important distinctions in team coaching is this:
The team is the client, not just the individuals within it.
Biran highlights that effective team coaching begins with understanding the full system. It’s important to conduct one-to-one interviews, gather climate data, and contract clearly with both sponsor and team members. It is not simply about running team-building exercises. It is about diagnosing what is really driving performance, whether that is structure, process, role clarity, or wider organisational dynamics.
This systemic lens is what elevates team coaching beyond individual conversations.
From Working In the Team to Working On the Team
Andrea describes one of the most profound shifts team coaching creates:
Teams move from working in the team to working on the team.
Conflict becomes discussable rather than avoided. Trust becomes examinable rather than assumed.
Decision-making improves. Alignment between team strategy and organisational strategy strengthens.
A critical part of the coach’s role is to normalise conflict and tension. Many teams feel uncomfortable naming what is not working. When dynamics are surfaced and examined with clarity rather than blame, teams gain maturity and resilience.
The result is not just better relationships, it is better performance.
A Step Change for the Coach
Team coaching is not simply “one-to-one coaching with more people in the room”.
It demands:
- The ability to read group dynamics as a living system
- Comfort working in the here and now
- Sensitivity to invisible patterns and power dynamics
- The discipline to distinguish what belongs to you versus what belongs to the system
Andrea describes this as developing the capacity to pick up on subtle signals within the team and use them to create deeper awareness. For many coaches, this represents a significant professional evolution.
In a market saturated with individual coaches, team coaching remains a specialist field. It positions you to work with senior teams, transformation environments, and complex organisational challenges.
When Is Team Coaching Needed?
According to Biran, the signals often include:
- Newly formed or restructured teams
- Teams under high pressure
- Major change initiatives
- Teams overly focused on internal issues
- Even high-performing teams who want to sustain excellence
In each case, the leverage point is collective, not individual.
The Bigger Impact
Individual coaching changes a person.
Team coaching changes the system in which people operate.
When the system shifts:
- Alignment strengthens
- Accountability increases
- Psychological safety improves
- Strategy execution accelerates
- Cultural change becomes real
And when the environment changes, individual growth becomes sustainable.
If you already coach individuals, the question is not whether one-to-one coaching works. It does.
The real question is:
Do you want to influence behaviour inside the system, or transform the system itself?
That is the power of team coaching.
