Team coaching
Team coaching: clearer relationships and ways of working that hold
A team that produces, that delivers, that keeps a service running — and wears itself out on friction, repetition and meetings that decide nothing. We work on two levels at once: how its members talk to each other, and how they organise their work.
When we are called in
The team has stopped really talking
Disagreements get settled one to one with the manager, never in the room. Everyone protects their patch. Often the collective has come apart without anyone deciding it: successive departures, newcomers poorly integrated, a reorganisation nobody chose.
Nobody can see anyone else’s work
Priorities change without anyone knowing why, workload is unevenly spread, items get lost between two meetings. The team works hard and has no shared view of what it produces.
The team has drifted from the real need
What gets delivered no longer quite matches what the client expected, and never at the pace hoped for. The team justifies itself, the client loses patience, and nobody checks whether the work is still useful.
The manager no longer knows where to start
New in post, or long in post and out of arguments. One-to-one meetings have been tried, an offsite, new tools. Nothing holds for more than three weeks.
Two levers: relationships and ways of working
A team in difficulty almost always combines two things: damaged relationships and a way of organising work that no longer holds. Lasting change means acting on both.
Relationships
What gets said and what doesn’t, how disagreements are handled, trust between members and with the manager. Without this work, the best-designed methods get bypassed: the board gets filled in with nothing true on it, and the retrospective becomes a polite exercise.
Ways of working
How the team makes its work visible, shares the load, keeps its rituals, handles its problems and its handovers. Without this work, the team feels better for a few weeks and produces exactly the same — then the benefit fades.
Putting visual management into a team that doesn’t talk to each other guarantees it will be dropped within two months. Working on relationships without touching how the work is organised offers a good moment with no effect on the following Monday.
The methods we put in place
We don’t impose a complete framework on a team. We take the practices that serve its activity, adapt them, and leave the rest.
Visual management
Making the work visible: what is under way, what is blocked, who is carrying what, what has been delivered. A physical or digital board, kept by the team rather than the manager, replacing a good part of the reporting meetings.
Team rituals drawn from agile practice
A short daily check-in, a regular review of what has been produced, a retrospective about the way of working rather than about people. We adapt them to teams that are not development teams: operations, back office, support, studies, cross-functional roles.
Clarifying roles and handovers
Who decides, who must be consulted, who is simply informed — inside the team and with neighbouring departments. Many tensions presented as relational are overlaps nobody has ever settled.
Problem-solving as a team
Taking a real incident and working it through to its cause together, rather than closing it in a hurry. It is a collective skill: it is learned, and it is maintained.
Ground rules
Written by the team, not by us. How you flag a delay, how you handle a disagreement, what you do when a decision doesn’t suit you. Short, concrete, revisable.
The Clear Leadership® language
Describing your own experience precisely without judging someone else’s, checking your interpretations instead of taking them as fact. It is what makes a retrospective usable rather than turning it into a courtroom. Clear Leadership training →
Changing practices starts with learning them
A method explained in a meeting changes nothing. We work by training then deployment: the team learns the practice on its own subjects, installs it in its rituals, and we support it until it holds without us.
In practice: a short action-learning sequence, then a few weeks during which the team runs the method with our support and adjusts it, then a gradual withdrawal. What isn’t holding after three months never will — better to see it early and correct it.
When the need goes beyond one team — several teams, a management line, a whole division — the same logic applies at a larger scale, as a training programme.
The manager is part of the system
We don’t work with the team on one side and the manager on the other. He or she is present at the sessions, because they are part of what is going on: without meaning to, the manager is often a piece of the problem as much as the key to the way out.
Alongside the collective sessions, we frequently offer one-to-one support for the manager. A few sessions to work on what they are discovering, what puts them in difficulty, and the stance they want to hold. This support stays connected to the collective: it is not career coaching, it is a support for holding their role in the work under way.
Our approach
1. Framing
With the manager: what they observe, what they have already tried, what they fear. And what is not a matter for team coaching — better said before we start.
2. Diagnosis
A confidential interview with each member, observation of an ordinary meeting, a look at the rituals and tools in place.
3. Feedback
What we have heard and observed, given back to the whole team: anonymised, but not softened.
4. Follow-up
Half-days spread over several months, alternating work on relationships and installing the methods, always on the team’s real subjects.
5. Embedding
The practices move into the team’s rituals, the rules are written down. We withdraw, with a check-in a few months later.
What the team gains
- A shared view of what is under way, what is blocked and who is carrying what
- Shorter meetings, where disagreements are voiced and settled
- Clear roles and handovers that stop being friction zones
- Practices the team keeps on its own, because it built them rather than received them
- A manager who knows what is going on in the team, because people say so
- The ability to handle the next difficult problem without us
Why RE-LIER
A coach who has led teams. Seventeen years in business at the head of teams and business units, in France and internationally, before becoming a coach in 2014. I know from the inside the pressure on a manager caught between their commitments and their team.
Proven practice with collectives. ICF-certified professional coach, trained in Gestalt and in systemic practice, with more than 1,200 hours of team coaching. Working with an established team is not individual coaching applied to several people: it is another craft.
Relationships and methods, not one without the other. Certified trainer in Clear Leadership® — one of the few in France — and a practitioner of collaborative working methods. It is that combination which makes changes hold beyond a few weeks.
In Paris and the Île-de-France region. On site at your premises or on neutral ground, remotely between sessions. In French and in English.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the work last?
Most often four to six months: framing, diagnosis, feedback, four to six collective sessions, then a check-in. Any less and nothing takes hold. Much more and the team settles into being supported instead of moving on its own.
Do we need to be an agile team already?
No, and we don’t install a complete agile framework. We take the practices that serve your activity — making the work visible, synchronising briefly, stepping back at regular intervals — and adapt them to your trade. A support or back-office team gains as much as a product team.
Do you install tools or do relational work?
Both, and that is the heart of it. Tools alone get bypassed, relational work alone evaporates. We alternate the two across the sessions, on the team’s real subjects.
Does the whole team have to volunteer?
No, and that is rarely the case at the start. What matters is that everyone is present. A team that comes “because it has to” can perfectly well get moving; a person designated as the problem cannot.
Does the manager attend every session?
Yes, unless we decide otherwise together. Team work done in the manager’s absence produces a team that has moved on and a manager who doesn’t know what is being talked about — that is, one more gap.
And if the problem comes from the manager?
It happens, and it shows in the diagnosis. We tell the manager before the feedback session, never in front of the team by surprise. If they are not in a state to hear it, the work makes no sense, and we say that too.
Are the interviews confidential?
Yes. What is said in a one-to-one interview is never attributed. The feedback covers what the team lives collectively, not who said what.
Do you work in English?
Yes, in French and in English, on site and remotely.
Let’s talk about your team
A first 30-minute conversation, with no commitment, to understand your context and see whether team coaching is the right fit. If it is not, I will tell you.
English 
French