The following guide will outline all of the elements that go into an AceUp Team Coaching engagement with the important actions that you as the coach can take to ensure a successful coaching journey for your team members that leads to company-wide impact for our clients.
Table of Contents:
Preparation and Instructional Design - PID
Contracting with the Team Lead and Team Members
Alignment Call Post-Session Notes
Marking Sessions as Occurred - Payment
Preparation and Instructional Design - PID
Team Coaches have a bank of PID hours for each Team Coaching engagement to use to align with the Team Lead and/or other key stakeholders. This includes any time you use in the initial alignment/discovery process. The first PID alignment session is to be spent getting clear on the Team Lead’s goals and what they want to achieve in the team coaching sessions. It can also be useful to review the Team Compass during your first alignment call with the Team Lead - see the Team Compass section of this guide for more details. After the initial PID alignment session, alignment calls should be scheduled between each team coaching session, and it is the responsibility of the Team Coach to find the dates/times that work with the Team Leader and Stakeholders for these sessions.
If the Team Coaching engagement is a 1-year contract, the Team Coach will have a bank of 8 PID hours. Engagements that are 6-month contracts have a bank of 5 PID hours. As the Team Coach, it is your responsibility to schedule all of your PID sessions on the AceUp platform. For a step-by-step guide on how to schedule team coaching PID Alignment Sessions, please see this Help Center article.
Session Scheduling
Team Coaches are responsible for scheduling all Team Coaching session dates and times. The I&D Manager will make an email introduction between the Team Coach, the Team Lead, and any other key individuals, such as an Executive Assistant on the client side and The Team Coach will work directly with them to schedule. The number and duration of sessions on the engagement will be provided to you by the I&D Manager when you are first brought on the engagement. Best practice is to schedule all sessions at the beginning of the engagement for the sake of attendance.
If Team Lead doesn’t have access to calendars, let the I&D Manager know and they will connect you with someone that does.
It is also the responsibility of the Team Coach to to schedule all of your team coaching sessions on the AceUp platform once you have identified the session times with the client. Please view this Help Center article for step-by-step instructions on how to schedule your team coaching sessions.
Contracting with the Team Lead and Team Members
During the alignment period at the beginning of any Team Coaching engagement, it is critical to contract with the Team Lead. You may also need or want to contract with the individual team members and/or other individuals identified by the Team Lead that are involved with the team as well during this period. You will use your PID hours for this work and can configure your sessions in any way that you feel will best serve the team.
When contracting with the Team Lead and the team members, it is important to ensure that:
- You as the coach understand the problem that the team is facing
- Ensure that the problem the Team Lead has identified aligns with the North Star Goal/desired outcome of the decision makers. Please note that not all engagements start off with a North Star Goal. Any predetermined goal, desired outcomes, or directives that have been uncovered in the sales process will be shared with you by the I&D Manager when you are brought in as the Team Coach.
- You work with the rest of the team to confirm that the problem the Team Lead has identified is aligned from their perspective.
- This could be done through a team session, individual interviews, or sending a message though the AceUp platform to the team as a group or individually for feedback. You will be using PID hours for this so it is important to be mindful of how much time this takes. If you have a sense that you will need more PID to ensure the success of the engagement, reach out to the I&D Manager that you are working with before scheduling/offering anything and I&D will work with the client to potentially scope out additional hours.
Please note that scheduling for any individual meetings or team contracting sessions is your responsibility as the coach, and once you have agreed on times with the relevant stakeholders, please follow the instructions in the PID section of this playbook to schedule all sessions on the AceUp platform.
Confidentiality in Sessions
Confidentiality is a fundamental principle that all team members must adhere to. Upholding this principle fosters a sense of psychological safety among team members, thereby enhancing their ability to collaborate effectively.
Competency 1 in the IAW ICF Team Coaching Standards states that discussions with individual team members will need to remain confidential to the team coach and team members unless agreed upon otherwise by all team members.
Competency 3 states that the team coach ensures the confidentiality agreement is agreeable to all participating parties prior to starting.
During the first session, your responsibility as the team coach is to outline both competency 1 with the team and get verbal confirmation that all team members understand and are committed to adhere to the competency. For all subsequent sessions, we ask that you verbally remind all team members of the commitment to confidentiality at the beginning of the session.
Messaging
As the Team Coach, you will have the ability to message the participating team members though the AceUp platform using the Messages tab of your Team Coaching module.
We require that you send an initial welcome message to the team through the platform before the first session to get the team members ready for the coaching journey ahead of them. We also ask that you send a message out prior to the first session and prior to all subsequent sessions to let the team members know what you will be covering in the upcoming session. Beyond these requirements, you are free to use the messaging tool in whatever way will best support the team members during their engagement.
Team Compass
The AceUp Team Compass is a robust baseline tool that offers rapid, data-driven insights to enhance crucial aspects of team performance and dynamics. It shows the team’s perception of their performance, and can be used as a powerful diagnostic tool in a team coaching session to give participants data-driven insights into their collective thinking, team performance and dynamics.
As the coach, you will receive an email notification when the Team Compass is launched and you can view the Team Compass Report for the entire team, once at least 4 team members have completed the survey. To view the team report, navigate to the “Group Members” tab on your Team Coaching module, scroll down, and you will see the Team Analysis section.
You can also check on individual progress or completion by navigating to the Team Coaching module, clicking on “Group Members”, and then clicking “View Assessments” for each individual team member.
The Team Compass is a useful tool to facilitate alignment with the Team Lead and must be debriefed with them before the first Team Coaching session. Best practice is to debrief the Team Compass with the Team Lead during the first alignment call, but if that is not possible because it is not complete yet, you can debrief it during a follow-up alignment call.
The Team Compass is the team’s voice - what they perceive as strengths and weaknesses. It is a great way to start a dialogue with the team and provides a guide for the conversation. It is up to you and the Team Lead to determine when the Team Compass will be debriefed with the team. This could be done during the first Team Coaching session or a later session, depending on what you and the Team Lead think will be most effective.
Team Compass Checkpoint
The Team Compass Checkpoint is a valuable tool that helps both you and your team understand their progress and plan future action effectively. After the 5th team coaching session in an engagement, the AceUp platform will automatically send all team members the Team Compass Checkpoint survey.
The completion of the Team Compass Checkpoint by all team members is a requirement, as it helps you as the coach assess the progress of your team coaching engagement and informs recommendations for future actions to the Team Lead and/or stakeholders. It also helps internal AceUp teams demonstrate the value and impact of the engagement to the client during checkpoint and renewal conversations.
You will receive an email notification when the Team Compass Checkpoint is launched and you can view the Team Compass Checkpoint Report for the entire team once at least 4 team members have completed the survey. To view the team report, navigate to the “Group Members” tab on your Team Coaching module, scroll down, and you will see the Team Analysis section.
Coaches are responsible for ensuring that all team members complete the Checkpoint. You can check on the progress of completion for each individual team member by navigating to the Team Coaching module, clicking on “Group Members”, and then clicking “View Assessments” for each individual team member.
The best practice is to share a prompt and value statement at the end of your 5th Team Coaching session, and then utilize the messaging tool to remind team members to complete it ahead of the 6th session. This will allow you as the coach to share the progress they have made as a team during the final session, and will help you as the coach assess the progress of your team coaching engagement and use this checkpoint to make recommendations to the Team Lead or Stakeholders, in conjunction with your AceUp Account Manager, to ensure the client is fully supported moving forward.
Hogan Assessment
Some Team Coaching engagements will include a Hogan Assessment in addition to the Team Compass when a team wants to dive into individual personality styles in the context of the team.
The Hogan Assessment offers valuable insights comparing individuals to their team members in areas such as giving and receiving feedback, communication style, judgment, stress performance, and values, while the Team Compass provides summary scores from team members on team-related aspects like role clarity, accountability, strategic alignment, decision-making, and overall team cohesion.
If your Team Coaching engagement includes a Hogan Assessment, the I&D Manager will let you know the timeline of delivery when you are brought on as the Team Coach. Once the timeline is set, the I&D Manager will enroll the team members on the Hogan platform and they will add you as well, so you can follow along with the progress of the team members.
When all team members have completed the assessment, the I&D Manager will generate a team report for you to debrief with the team. You will also have the option of connecting with an internal AceUp team member to review the report before you debrief it with the team. Best practice is to debrief the Hogan team report during the first team coaching session, but if there is a different timeline request from the client, the I&D Manager will let you know.
Please note that Hogan team debrief sessions need to be 90 minutes in duration, so please keep this in mind when planning your sessions.
Post-Session Notes
When you complete a team coaching session, you will be asked to complete a post-session survey. AceUp will aggregate anonymized themes from post-session surveys to highlight systemic insights and impact of the coaching engagement. Your contributions on the post-session note are incredibly important and are key in helping us showcase value and drive engagement renewals with the client. Please do not use any individual team member names and keep your notes high-level to preserve confidentiality.
AceUp Global Account Managers will also reference these notes in some cases for monthly progress touch points with their client partners. For this reason, your comprehensive notes that connect session outcomes to the North Star Goal are paramount in helping us drive impactful client discussions.
Under your Past Sessions tab, after you mark your session as occurred, you will get a popup with a post session survey for you to complete. When writing your note, it is important to capture the following elements of the session:
- Action - what action did they take in the session?
- Discovery - what did they discover about themselves?
- Progress - what progress was made during the session and since the previous session?
Please note that if any of the team members are also in 1:1 coaching, their 1:1 coach will have the ability to view the team coaching post-session notes that you provide.
Your session notes also directly impact the client’s team progress view on their Company Dashboard. Your inputs change the team overview in real time so the client can stay informed on what progress the team is making. To get a view of what the client sees when they look at their Company Dashboard, please review this Help Center article.
Alignment Call Post-Session Notes
When you complete an Alignment Call, you will follow the same procedure as when you complete a team coaching session.
Under your Past Sessions tab, you will mark the session as occurred and complete the post-session note. If any of the fields on the note are not applicable to your call, you may write “N/A” in the field.
Please note: For privacy and security reasons, the use of AI software to take notes during Team Coaching sessions or Alignment calls by the coach or any participants is not permitted.
Marking Sessions as Occurred - Payment
For all PID alignment sessions and team coaching sessions, you must mark the session as “Occurred” and complete a session note within 2 business days of the session. This not only provides valuable insights and data capturing the progress of the engagement, it also triggers your compensation for the session. You will receive payment for all monthly sessions in the next month’s payment from AceUp.
Team Attendance
In a team coaching engagement, all team members attending and participating in each session is critical to the success of the team. As the Team Coach, it is important to set expectations with team members at the beginning of the engagement on attendance standards and team members’ accountability to each other.
It is important for you as the Team Coach to make sure that any attendance or participation issues are addressed with the Team Lead as soon as they are noticed. We encourage you to check in on upcoming session RSVPs on the platform and if you notice that any individual team members are not attending sessions, please notify the Team Lead and make a plan to connect with the team member/s to determine the issue and work to find a solution.
You are able to view upcoming session RSVPs by going to the Sessions tab of your Team Coaching module on the AceUp platform. You will see how many team members have RSVP’d to the session and you can see individual RSVPs by clicking the link.