Team Coaching Examples: 6 Exercises, Step by Step

Team coaching is a process in which the coach works with the whole team, not with each person separately, to improve how it communicates, makes decisions and keeps its agreements. Below you will find three example engagements and six concrete exercises, each with its timing, its purpose and the steps to run it.

If you are after a catalogue of diagnostic tools for teams (Belbin, SBI, situational leadership), it is in our article on team coaching tools. This one is about what the work looks like in the room.

What is team coaching, exactly?

The client is the team. Instead of one person's career, you work on the patterns that repeat between several people: who speaks up in meetings and who stays quiet, which agreements stick and which get forgotten, how decisions get made when people disagree.

In 2020 the International Coaching Federation (ICF) published a team coaching competencies model that does not invent new competencies: it builds on the core competencies of one-to-one coaching and adds sub-competencies specific to working with teams. It is a good hint of what changes. The foundations are the same, but the coach has to hold several perspectives at once, and the relationships between them.

For a short definition with its origins and stages, see the glossary entry: what team coaching is.

How is it different from one-to-one coaching or training?

The last row is the one people forget. Before the first session, agree with the team and with whoever is paying what information reaches management and what stays inside. If that is unclear, the team senses it and the conversation stays on the surface.

Which team coaching exercises actually work?

These six cover the most common needs: getting started, understanding the team's history, sorting out collaboration, reviewing and measuring. You do not need all of them; pick according to the goal of the session.

1. One-word check-in (10 minutes)

Purpose: everyone speaks at least once in the first few minutes, and the coach learns what energy the team has walked in with.

1. Ask each person for a single word that describes how they are arriving today.
2. Go round everyone, with no comments or questions.
3. Optional second round: anyone who wants to explains their word in one sentence.
4. Name the pattern out loud, if there is one: "I'm hearing a lot of tiredness."

It looks small, but people who speak early take part more later. And if five out of eight say "swamped", today's agenda needs to account for that.

2. Team timeline (40 minutes)

Purpose: the team sees its history through several pairs of eyes and understands where its habits come from.

1. Draw a long line on a wall or a digital whiteboard, from when the team formed until today.
2. Each person writes the moments they remember on sticky notes: arrivals, departures, wins, crises. Ten minutes in silence.
3. They stick them on the line: above it if it was a good moment, below if it was hard.
4. Walk the line out loud. Ask: "Which moment do you see differently?" and "What did we learn there that we still do?"

The notes matter less than the differences between them. The same change of leadership can be a crisis for some and a relief for others.

3. Working agreements (45 minutes)

Purpose: move from implicit rules to written agreements the team can review.

1. Ask: "What would need to happen for working in this team to feel easy?" Each person writes three ideas.
2. Group the ideas by theme: meetings, messages, decisions, deadlines.
3. Turn each group into an observable agreement. Not "communicate better", but "we answer urgent messages within two hours during working hours".
4. Ask each person in turn: "Can you commit to this?" If someone hesitates, the agreement gets adjusted.
5. Decide how and when the agreements will be reviewed.

4. What I need from you (35 minutes)

Purpose: clarify expectations between roles that depend on each other, without it turning into a list of complaints.

1. For every colleague they work closely with, each person writes one sentence: "To do my job well, I need you to…".
2. The notes are handed over. Everyone reads what they received in silence.
3. Round: each person answers every request with "yes", "yes, if…" or "I can't, but I can…".
4. The "yes, if…" answers are negotiated on the spot, with the coach making sure the conversation happens between them.

The three-answer rule avoids awkward silences and forces a reply, even if it is a no. When requests arrive loaded with blame, it is a good moment for a feedback model like the ones in feedback models for coaching.

5. Start, stop, continue (30 minutes)

Purpose: review how the team is working and leave with few changes, but concrete ones.

1. Three columns: start doing, stop doing, keep doing.
2. Five minutes in silence: everyone fills in all three.
3. Read them out, cluster them and vote: three votes each.
4. The two ideas with most votes become agreements with an owner and a date.

Keep it to two changes. A team that leaves with twelve commitments keeps none of them.

6. Safety check (20 minutes)

Purpose: measure anonymously how willing the team is to give opinions, ask questions or admit mistakes.

Google's Project Aristotle, which studied 180 teams, ranked psychological safety first among five dynamics that set effective teams apart, ahead of dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact.

1. Ask people to rate, anonymously and from 1 to 5, statements such as "On this team I can admit a mistake without it being held against me" or "I can ask for help without looking incompetent".
2. Show the results aggregated, never per person.
3. Ask: "What surprises you?" and "What would move this score up by one point?"
4. Keep the answers so you can repeat the measurement at the end.

What does a full engagement look like? Three examples

These examples are illustrative, combining situations that come up often when working with teams. They show how the exercises fit together.

Example 1: a sales team after a merger

Two sales teams are merged under one manager. Each group has its own way of splitting accounts and nobody questions it out loud. Session one: check-in, team timeline (it turns out each group experienced the merger in opposite ways) and the safety check as a baseline. Session two: working agreements on account allocation and meetings. Monthly follow-ups using start, stop, continue.

Example 2: a product team with cross-functional friction

Design and engineering blame each other for delays. The key exercise here is "what I need from you": concrete requests come out, such as receiving final designs two days before the cycle starts. They become agreements and are reviewed three weeks later.

Example 3: a newly formed leadership team

Five executives who used to compete for resources now have to decide together. The coach first works with each person individually to understand where they stand, then with the group on how decisions get made: which ones are voted on, which the CEO decides and which need everyone on board. For the one-to-one work with each executive, see these executive coaching tools.

How do you measure whether the team is improving?

Without a baseline, the close of the engagement comes down to impressions. At the end, repeat exactly the same questions as at the start, in the same format and with the same anonymity. And review the agreements: how many held, which ones fell away and what happened to them.

When you work with an organisation rather than a single team, the measurement has to protect small groups so nobody is exposed. We explain how in organizational assessment for coaches.

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Turning the session into a trial of the leader. The leader is part of the system, not the defendant. If something needs saying to them, say it beforehand, in private.
• Stringing exercises together with no goal. Each exercise answers a question the team has. If you cannot name it, do not run it.
• Leaving without written agreements. Anything not written down with an owner and a date is forgotten before the next meeting.
• Showing individual results. In an anonymous survey of a three-person team, any breakdown stops being anonymous.
• Playing referee. The coach facilitates the conversation between them; the coach does not decide who is right.

Frequently asked questions