Your role as team coach

Your role as team coach

Your role as Team Coach

The Team Coach is the travel guide during the 30-Day Challenge journey. Like all good travel guides, the more they travel on a trail, the more helpful they become to other travelers they guide. They know the tricky spots where people can slip, what tools to pack on the trip, and where the best camping grounds are on the path to the top. 

There are two types of travellers on the 100-Day Challenge journey. There are the organisational leaders, and there are 30-day team members who are asked by leaders to forge their way to the top of the hill in 30 days. You will guide and support both.

What exactly does the team coach do?

Working with the team

The Team Coach

Guiding the 30-Day team

  • Work with the Challenge Mentor to support the team during the 30-day journey
  • Facilitate the Lift-off Workshop with the 30-Day team to set the 100-Day Goal, develop their work plan and develop their team agreement..
  • Facilitate the Refueling and Landing Workshops.
  • Support the team during their weekly team meetings: tracking progress and keeping them engaged and motivated.

Apart from these specific task-oriented activities, Team Coaches play an important and subtle role throughout the 30-Day Challenge. They keep everyone engaged and feeling upbeat and motivated. They do this in various ways:

  • They encourage, acknowledge, and congratulate team members at every occasion possible. 
  • They sense the mood in the room during workshops, and they liven things up with creative exercises and facilitation techniques.
  • They provide a “golden thread” during workshops, creating seamless transitions between sessions, tying different sessions to previous work and to the bigger picture, and adjusting facilitation plans if participants are getting confused or frustrated. 

What skills do you practice during your 30-Day Challenge?

There are three critical skills used in 30-Day Challenges:

Facilitation

Coaching

Communication

Some team coachers may already be very skilled in these three areas. In the step-by-step guide there will be content to sharpen your skills with useful frameworks, tools and exercises. There is no substitute though for practicing and getting feedback from peers, clients and experienced practitioners. 

Additionally, team coaches will practice project support skills, including:

  • Supporting the team in gathering data related to the goal the team sets
  • Supporting team leaders is preparing action item notes after team meetings
  • Preparing the logistics of workshops and team meetings 
  • Sending out reminder emails, encouragement emails, and doing whatever is needed to keep the team motivated, organised, and purposefully moving forward.

What time commitment and support do you need?

To succeed in the role you need to dedicate time to learn about the role and to practise it. You need the support of your senior leaders to dedicate time to this. During the 8-week guided journey, you will need an estimate of 2 hours for theoretical and 2-4 hours to apply what you have learned through the following activities:

  • Go through the learning content every week.
  • Do other preparatory work for the workshops.
  • Facilitate 30-Day Challenge workshops.
  • Reflect on these events with the Challenge Mentor and peers. 
  • As needed, support the Challenge Mentors and Team Leaders in other ways, including drafting their communications to other stakeholders in the organisation.
  • Sharing data and other information on the World of Impact platform so 30-Day Challenges can be properly documented as lessons for future teams.

Support available to you during the 8-week learning journey.

  • Access to step-by-step online training and tools
  • Twice-weekly office hours for guidance and support.
  • Access to WhatsApp group for peer learning and support with all participating organisations.
  • Support in compiling a write-up to share internally in the organisation.

How do you know you are doing a good job?

At the end of the 30-days: 
  • The maturity gap the team was working on was significantly improved.
  • The 30-Day team and the leaders who commissioned it are proud of the achievements they made during the Challenge period.
  • The 30-Day team feels good about their experience during the Challenge: they recommend it to others and are excited about having similar experiences in the future.
  • Leaders have ideas and insights on what needs to be done to sustain this higher performance, and they are ready and excited to act on these ideas. 
Interim indicators during the 30 days:
  • Appropriate individuals are part of the 30-Day team.
  • Quality of the 30-Day goal and commitment of the team to achieve it.
  • Quality of the 30-Day plan and team agreement and the commitment of the team to implement it.
  • Engagement and motivation of the 30-Day team at the Lift-Off and during the challenge.
  • Progress towards the 30-day goal during the 30 days.

What we mean by “appropriate” and “quality” will become clearer in the step by step guide and tools to assess these will be provided in the guide.

Thought starter reflection questions

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:
  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
  • How would you characterise the level of trust among participants in the meeting? To what extent did this shift as the meeting progressed? To what do you attribute this shift, if indeed it happened?

Thought starter...

Reflection Questions 

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:

  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
These are 100-Day Challenge Mentors. 

They did some work before you received the Challenge Note. This included:

  • Writing the Challenge Note, and making sure that the leaders of all the organisations represented on the team are comfortable with it – and committed to supporting the work of the team
  • Helping the leaders of these organisation recruit you and your colleagues to the team
  • Gathering some baseline data and other information that will help you and your teammates set your 100-Day goal and develop your plan.
  • Making sure all the preparations are made for a successful Lift-Off workshop, when you and your teammates will meet and get your 100-Day Challenge started. This includes venue, facilitation support, food, swags, comms, travel arrangements and whatever else is needed.

 

Mentors will participate in all or part of the Lift-Off Workshop, mostly at the start to provide context and answer questions, and at the end to give you and your teammates feedback about the goal and plan you develop.

During the 100 days following the Lift-Off Workshop, here’s what the Mentors will do:  

  • They will check in every two weeks with the team leaders to see how the team is doing and what support they and the team need.
  • They will keep other organisational leaders informed and engaged during the 100 days, and pull them in to help as needed.
  • They will participate in the last part of the Refuelling Workshop, halfway through the 100 days, to see what additional support the team needs, and to begin to plan with the team for sustainability and scale-up.
  • They will work with the team at the Sustainability Workshop to finalise recommendations on sustaining the results and building on the work of the team.