A good facilitator coaches the team

Now, here is a nerdy post about team coaching, but I have spent this last half year getting an education in coaching, first as coach diploma in individual coaching by ICF (International Coaching Federation) and then adding a diploma in Team coaching, so this is a lot on my mind lately. I have been a so called Lean coach for many years, working with teams in changing ways of working and facilitation a hugh lot of workshops and Kaizens, and reflecting back on how I have learnt to facilitate and manage team dynamics and change, it becomes quite clear to me that team coaching is actually a lot of the same as good facilitation. Though, throughout this last half year I have tried to separate these two, facilitation and coaching. In the ICF's core competences for coaching, both in the individual and team coaching competences, they talk about different modalities, where coaching is one, and facilitation another, and stress the importance to know when you are doing one or the other, and that coaching should not be facilitation.

Now, it is not exactly clear how ICF defines facilitation, but if we look it up in the Cambridge dictionary it says "the process of making something possible or easier: the act of helping other people to deal with a process or reach an agreement or solution without getting directly involved in the process, discussion, etc. yourself".

Now, this is also how I would argue my role as a facilitator works, no matter what type of workshop or Kaizen event it is, I never play an active role in the teams effort to solve the problem or reach the wanted result, I simply guide the process, always making sure the whole team is involved, everyones voice is heard and that they focus on the goal (that we alway start with clearly defining).

When I started my coaching education learning about coaching individuals I found it really powerful, cause it was translating a lot of my knowledge from working with teams into working with an individual. It also allowed a better communication with team members and manager outside of the workshops when I was facilitating, which made me better prepared going into new workshops. But when I stared training for my diploma in team coaching I got really confused. Now I was told to separate facilitation out of the coaching sessions with teams, but still plan a session in the same manner I always plan a workshop or Kaizen, including setting goal, analyse the current condition and gaps and how to move forward overcoming these obstacles. Very close to most Kaizens or workshops. (The difference is more of the goal of session, in team coaching the content is not technical or work related, but relational) The thing was, I was not to facilitate the session, just coach. This is to ICF a very clear distinctions, though they also say that a coach need to be able to facilitate as long as they can tell the teams when they are doing what. So what is actually team coaching? As ICF defines it:

"Team Coaching empowers teams to work toward continued high performance and ongoing development, requiring innovation, flexibility, adaptability and goal alignment – all traits that coaching helps support.

ICF’s Team Coaching Competencies model provides a clear, concise definition for Team Coaching – partnering in a co-creative and reflective process with a team on its dynamics and relationships in a way that inspires them to maximize their abilities and potential in order to reach their common purpose and shared goals."

Well, I have grown to realise that what I know from Lean facilitation, (remember, facilitation described as "the process of making something possible or easier: the act of helping other people to deal with a process or reach an agreement or solution without getting directly involved in the process, discussion, etc. yourself") is just an easier and more actionable way of describing team coaching then ICF puts it. The difference is more in the content of the session.

So can we coach a team without facilitating? Or can we facilitate without coaching? Well, actually, I think that the coaching part in team coaching is actually still for the individuals. When a team is somewhat dysfunctional we need to call it out and deal with it and help the individuals in the team to spot and change behaviour, and in these moments I use my individual coaching skills to help the individual inside the team to see and reflect on their behaviour, as well as the rest of the team members to see and reflect upon the consequences. I think that is when I am not acting as a facilitator but as a, by the book, coach. Though, those moments would not be possible to catch if I was not facilitating the rest of the time. The mere part of moving the team to great performance is through the facilitation. So maybe team coaching is both, can not have one without the other. I don't know, what do you team coachers out there think?