CLC Team & Group Coaching — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Bruce Tuckman's model describes the stages of team development. A newly formed project team is having difficulty agreeing on roles and decision-making authority, with some members openly challenging the appointed leader. Which stage is this team MOST likely in?
- Forming
- Storming (Correct answer)
- Norming
- Performing
Correct answer: Storming
The Storming stage is characterized by interpersonal conflict, resistance to the leader, and power struggles as team members begin asserting themselves. A leadership coach working with this team should help them surface and work through these tensions rather than suppress them, as resolution is necessary before the team can progress.
Question 2: What is the PRIMARY distinction between team coaching and team facilitation?
- Team coaching focuses on a single session agenda while facilitation spans multiple months
- Team coaching builds the team's collective capability over time, while facilitation guides a group through a specific task or event (Correct answer)
- Team coaching is led by an internal manager, while facilitation requires an external consultant
- Team coaching uses structured exercises, while facilitation relies entirely on open discussion
Correct answer: Team coaching builds the team's collective capability over time, while facilitation guides a group through a specific task or event
Team coaching is an ongoing developmental relationship aimed at improving the team's collective intelligence, relationships, and performance capacity. Facilitation, by contrast, is typically task-focused and session-bound. A leadership coach must understand this distinction to contract appropriately and avoid slipping into facilitation when deeper coaching is needed.
Question 3: Amy Edmondson's research identifies psychological safety as critical to team performance. In a team coaching context, psychological safety is BEST defined as:
- The absence of disagreement or conflict within the team
- A shared belief that the team is a safe environment to take interpersonal risks (Correct answer)
- Formal policies protecting employees from workplace harassment
- A leader's assurance that no team member will be terminated for poor performance
Correct answer: A shared belief that the team is a safe environment to take interpersonal risks
Edmondson defines psychological safety as a team climate in which members believe they can speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, or challenge ideas without fear of humiliation or punishment. It is not the absence of conflict but rather the presence of sufficient trust to engage with conflict productively.
Question 4: A leadership coach is working with a senior leadership team that consistently avoids direct conversation about poor performance among peers. Using a systems thinking lens, this avoidance is BEST understood as:
- A personality conflict between two specific team members
- A structural dynamic the team has created and maintains collectively (Correct answer)
- Evidence that the coach needs to provide more direct feedback
- A sign that individual coaching has been insufficient
Correct answer: A structural dynamic the team has created and maintains collectively
Systems thinking in team coaching views the team as an interdependent whole, not a collection of individuals. Avoidance patterns are typically maintained by the system itself through unspoken norms, role expectations, and reinforcing feedback loops. A coach working systemically helps the team see and interrupt these collective patterns.
Question 5: When transitioning from coaching an individual executive to coaching that executive's entire team, a leadership coach must adjust their contracting to address which unique consideration?
- The coach must obtain written consent from the organization's legal department
- The coach must establish a confidentiality agreement that covers the team as the client, not individual members (Correct answer)
- The coach must reduce session frequency to once per quarter to avoid group fatigue
- The coach must transfer primary responsibility for outcomes to the team leader
Correct answer: The coach must establish a confidentiality agreement that covers the team as the client, not individual members
In team coaching, the 'client' is the team as a system, which creates confidentiality complexities different from individual coaching. A team coaching contract must clarify what information stays within the team, what can be shared with the sponsoring organization, and how the coach will handle disclosures made by individual members during sessions.
Question 6: A team coach notices that the same two members dominate every conversation, while three others rarely speak unless directly addressed. The MOST effective coaching intervention in the moment is to:
- Privately instruct the dominant members to speak less outside the session
- Create structured turn-taking by explicitly inviting quieter members to contribute (Correct answer)
- Report the imbalance to the team leader after the session
- Interrupt the current topic and deliver a brief presentation on inclusive communication
Correct answer: Create structured turn-taking by explicitly inviting quieter members to contribute
Structuring participation in real time — by directly and openly inviting quieter voices — addresses the group dynamic without singling out or embarrassing any individual. This intervention also models inclusive facilitation for the team, building their own capacity to balance participation over time.
CLC Team & Group Coaching
Bruce Tuckman's model describes the stages of team development.
A newly formed project team is having difficulty agreeing on roles and decision-making authority, with some members openly challenging the appointed leader.
Which stage is this team MOST likely in?
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