Within weeks of starting her job as general manager with her new employer, Alice came to appreciate her team members’ high level of individual competence, and yet, something seemed not quite right.

For example, during her team meetings, she noticed that each of them focused strongly on making their area of responsibility look good and most of them would get defensive if any critique or suggestion for improvement came up. In fact, she felt that the lack of cohesiveness and team spirit posed a barrier to what the team could achieve.

Her first thought was to organise a team-building activity. However, reflecting on her past experience she felt that any improvements were only short lived.

Alice spoke of her predicament with her friend Tom. He mentioned his own positive experience with team coaching. Unlike team building, team coaching works on a deeper level, focusing on how team members cooperate. It reveals and deals with shortcomings in terms of the team’s positivity and productivity.

During a two-day retreat, Alice and her team worked with a facilitator and team coach to determine the major objectives of the coming fiscal year. Team-coaching activities were interspersed throughout the two days.

At the end of the first day, the team underwent the so-called “Lifeline Dinner” which is designed to let team members get to know each other from unknown, often surprising, sides. This typically results in breaking down any barriers among team members and creates deeper connections.

On day two, the team members went through “The Four Poisons of a Team” exercise. Team members were eased into sharing which of the four poisons – defensiveness, stonewalling, blaming and putting others down – were most present in the team. It ended with each member making a firm commitment to reducing one of these poisons. These commitments were carefully followed up on in the subsequent weeks.

The result was overwhelmingly positive. Alice’s team members started to share more best practices with each other, challenged each other respectfully, and eventually went from being internal rivals to working as a high-performance team.