The Science of Team Coaching

Evidence should sit at the heart of any professional. Research creates the evidence to establish our understanding of an intervention: what it is, how to apply it best, and what effects it has on users. Coaching, in this sense, is no different from medicine or other sciences. How coaches then apply the evidence, reflecting the individual client, the situation, and their own style, may then be considered the art of coaching. In this chapter, we will look briefly at coaching research: What this evidence tells us about the effectiveness of coaching as an intervention to help individuals learn, change, and grow. We will start by briefly looking at the research on one-to-one coaching. We will then move to consider team coaching, examining the literature of process and effect.