Leadership Coaching for Improving Teamwork: A Case Study

This case study focuses on the importance of coaching for improving teamwork in business processes. It highlights the use of the GROW model to identify performance deficiencies and the role of empathy and emotional intelligence in leadership. The study also discusses the goals, reality, options, and will of the employee towards improving his communication and cooperation with colleagues.

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Leadership coaching
by Student’s name
Instructor
Course
Institution

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Introduction
Coaching is an essential aspect of business processes as it enables impartation of
useful business and personal skills to employees which not only improves their capacity to
deliver on business objectives but also improves relations with peers within the workplace
thus improving teamwork within a workforce. Peter is a prolific employee that understands
clearly his contribution towards the company. He insists that meeting personal targets has
been his priority every season since joining the firm and his records indicate that his efforts
have been primarily focused on this. Management within the company is also satisfied with
the quality of work produced by Peter, with few concerns about his cooperation with his
colleagues on team projects. Peter claims that the major obstacles to his performance are
constant supervision, micromanagement and conforming his work to that of his peers.
Generally, he is satisfied with his job and the responsibilities coming with it. It has thus
become imperative to work on Peter’s empathetic capacity as well as emotional intelligence
which seems to be the root of his dysfunction within a team.
Empathy is an important driving force within a team and bears heavily on either the
success or failure of a team process (Caruso, et al., 2014). Peter is a strong and committed
employee with the capacity to lead others as they look up to him. As such, it is important for
Peter to improve his capacity to process emotions induced by his peers and reduce the
detrimental effects of these emotions towards the quality of teamwork. His potential for
leadership is a clear indicator of the requirement of his participation within a team as other
team members will often look up to him. His performance index as regarding sales assists
indicates deficiency in assisting his peers in accomplishing their goals which becomes a key
point of emphasis during the coaching process. In order to fully maximize the effects of the
coaching session, a GROW model is employed to ascertain the goals and performance
deficiencies elicited by Peter.

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Goals
Peter has a clear understanding of the expected standards upon his quality of work.
This, he says, has enabled him to constantly meet his personal objectives within the business
and amass a collection of positive remarks and feedback from clients. Additionally, he claims
to be driven and ambitious and aims for a top administrative position in future.
Reality
While most of the management personnel is generally satisfied with his work,
concerns are present about his ability to perform adequately within a team. While Peter seems
a driven, ambitious and capable employee, several gaps exist in his performance especially
regarding his teamwork capabilities. There is a disjoint between Peter’s aspiration to become
a leader within the company and his performance within a team which has a direct bearing
towards his leadership capacity (Kuster, et al., 2015). While most of his peers tend to look up
to him, Peter often appears dismissive and passive when working within a group.
Additionally, while Peter seems to understand his contribution towards achieving the
business objectives, he is unaware of his potential to lead which becomes increasingly
apparent within a team. His generally calm and reserved temperament reflect upon his
general lack of empathy which this coaching session seeks to enhance in order to improve his
capacity within a group.
Options
Towards the question as to why he failed to meet his sales assists targets, Peter was
direct and blunt. “I show them how to do it, and it is not up to me if they mess it up”, were his
words. Essentially, Peter does not follow through with his team-oriented activities that
include input, correspondence with team members and eventual output. He just ‘does his
part’ and submits. The effect of this is a disjointed mosaic of efforts that is often below

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expected standards due to lack of correspondence and cooperation. Improvement in his
communication thus became necessary. The only way harmony could be achieved in the team
would be if Peter made an active effort to understand his peers and how they work in order to
achieve a seamless effort towards accomplishment of business objectives.
Will
Peter pledged to take it upon himself to improve his communication and cooperation
with his colleagues. As a metric to justify the said improvement, he promised to meet his
targets with regards to revenue through sales assists. Additionally, he pledged to meet the
required number of hours of self-training and evaluation within three months.
Conclusion
Peter’s coaching is essential in order to create harmony with his peers which is
apparently lacking presently due to Peter’s lack of empathy and communication deficiencies.
The process was able to identify key areas that require improvement such as communication
and cooperation with colleagues. Throughout, Peter portrayed adequate willingness towards
correcting the said deficiencies in order to improve his performance and meet personal and
business objectives.

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References
Caruso, D.R., Fleming, K. and Spector, E.D., 2014. Emotional intelligence and leadership.
In Conceptions of Leadership (pp. 93-110). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Kuster, J., Huber, E., Lippmann, R., Schmid, A., Schneider, E., Witschi, U. and Wüst, R.,
2015. Leadership and Teamwork. In Project Management Handbook (pp. 213-239).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.