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A Theory of Team Coaching

April 2005
Academy of Management Review 30(2)

DOI:10.5465/AMR.2005.16387885

Authors:

Harvard University

After briefly reviewing the existing literature on team coaching, we propose a new model with three distinguishing features. The model (1) focuses on the functions that coaching serves for a team, rather than on either specific leader behaviors or leadership styles, (2) identifies the specific times in the task performance process when coaching interventions are most likely to have their intended effects, and (3) explicates the conditions under which team-focused coaching is and is not likely to facilitate performance.

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A THEORY OF TEAM COACHING

J. RICHARD HACKMAN

Harvard University

RUTH WAGEMAN

Dartmouth College

After briefly reviewing the existing literature on team coaching, we propose a new

model with three distinguishing features. The model (1) focuses on the functions that

coaching serves for a team, rather than on either specific leader behaviors or lead-

ership styles, (2) identifies the specific times in the task performance process when

coaching interventions are most likely to have their intended effects, and (3) expli-

cates the conditions under which team-focused coaching is and is not likely to

facilitate performance.

Coaches help people perform tasks. Coaching

is pervasive throughout the life course, from

childhood (e.g., a parent helping a child learn to

ride a tricycle), through schooling (e.g., a teacher

coaching a student in the proper conduct of a

chemistry experiment), and into adulthood (e.g.,

a fitness coach helping with an exercise regime

or a supervisor coaching an employee in im-

proving his or her job performance). The main

body of research about coaching is found in the

training literature, and it focuses almost entirely

on individual skill acquisition (Fournies, 1978).

Except for the many popular books and articles

that extract lessons for team leaders from the

experiences of athletic coaches, relatively little

has been published that specifically addresses

the coaching of task-performing teams.

Here we propose a theory of team coaching

that is amenable to empirical testing and cor-

rection. The theory has three distinguishing fea-

tures. One, it focuses on the functions that

coaching serves for a team, rather than on either

specific leader behaviors or leadership styles.

Two, it explicitly addresses the specific times in

the task performance process when coaching

interventions are most likely to “take” and have

their intended effects. Three, it explicitly identi-

fies the conditions under which team-focused

coaching is most likely to facilitate perfor-

mance. Overall, we show that the impact of

team coaching—whether provided by a formal

team leader or by fellow group members—

depends directly and substantially on the de-

gree to which the proper coaching functions are

fulfilled competently at appropriate times and

in appropriate circumstances.

TEAM COACHING

Team coaching is an act of leadership, but it is

not the only one or necessarily the most conse-

quential one. Team leaders engage in many dif-

ferent kinds of behaviors intended to foster team

effectiveness, including structuring the team

and establishing its purposes, arranging for the

resources a team needs for its work and remov-

ing organizational roadblocks that impede the

work, helping individual members strengthen

their personal contributions to the team, and

working with the team as a whole to help mem-

bers use their collective resources well in pur-

suing team purposes.

Leaders vary in how they allocate their time

and attention across these activities, depending

on their own preferences; what they believe the

team most needs; and the team’s own level of

authority, initiative, and maturity. Only the last

two sets of activities (helping individual mem-

bers strengthen personal contributions and

working with the team to help use resources

well) are coaching behaviors, however, focusing

respectively on individual team members and

on the team as a whole. In this paper we deal

exclusively with the fourth—team coaching—

which we define as direct interaction with a

team intended to help members make coordi-

nated and task-appropriate use of their collec-

tive resources in accomplishing the team’s work.

Although team coaching is a distinct and of-

ten consequential aspect of team leadership, re-

cent evidence suggests that leaders focus their

behavior less on team coaching than on other

aspects of the team leadership portfolio. In a

姝 Academy of Management Review

2005, Vol. 30, No. 2, 269–287.

269

study of 268 task-performing teams in 88 organi-

zations, we (Wageman, Hackman, & Lehman,

2004) asked team leaders and members to rank

the amount of attention the team leader gave to

activities in each of the four categories listed

above (with a rank of “1” signifying the greatest

attention). For both leader and member reports,

coaching the team as a whole came in last (the

combined mean ranks were as follows: structur-

ing the team and its work, 1.75; running external

interference, 2.16; coaching individuals, 2.88;

and coaching the team, 3.02).

The lesser attention given to team coaching

could simply mean that leaders underestimate

the potential benefits of providing coaching as-

sistance to their teams. More likely, perhaps, is

that leaders do not coach their teams because

they do not know how to do so, or they have

ventured a coaching intervention or two that did

not help and thereafter focused their behavior

on seemingly more promising team leadership

strategies. By using existing research and the-

ory to identify the kinds of leader coaching be-

haviors that do help teams operate more effec-

tively, we seek here not only to advance basic

understanding about team coaching but also to

provide practitioners with some of what they

need to know to coach their teams competently.

EXISTING APPROACHES

In a review of existing research and theory,

we identified three conceptually driven ap-

proaches to team coaching and one eclectic ap-

proach that is largely atheoretical. These four

approaches, described below, point the way to-

ward a more comprehensive research-based

model of team coaching, and we draw on them

in developing propositions for the present the-

ory.

Eclectic Interventions

Eclectic coaching interventions are activities

that derive from no particular theoretical per-

spective but have considerable face validity

nonetheless, in that a lay person would be likely

to assume that they would help a team perform

well. Eclectic models are found mainly in the

practitioner literature as codifications of the les-

sons learned by management consultants

whose practice includes team facilitation (e.g.,

Fischer, 1993; Kinlaw, 1991; Wellins, Byham, &

Wilson, 1991). Although varied, these models

specify ways that team leaders can develop

members’ interpersonal skills, define members’

roles and expectations, deal with conflict and

interpersonal frictions, and help a team achieve

a level of “maturity” that lessens the team’s de-

pendence on its leader (Eden, 1985; Fischer, 1993;

Geber, 1992; Manz & Sims, 1987; Patten, 1981;

Rees, 1991; Torres & Spiegel, 2000; Woodman &

Sherwood, 1980).

Process Consultation

The process consultation approach developed

by Schein (1969, 1988) posits that competent in-

terpersonal relations are essential for effective

task performance and that group members

themselves must be intimately involved in ana-

lyzing and improving those relationships. The

consultant engages team members in analyzing

group processes on two levels simultaneously:

(1) the substantive level—to analyze how human

processes are affecting work on a specific organ-

izational problem—and (2) the internal level—to

better understand the team’s own interaction

processes and the ways that team processes

foster or impede effective group functioning

(Schein, 1988: 11–12). Decidedly clinical in orien-

tation, this type of coaching requires the process

consultant first to directly observe the group as

it works on a substantive organizational prob-

lem and then, once the group is ready, to intro-

duce systematic or confrontive interventions in-

tended to help the team deal with its problems

and exploit previously unrecognized opportuni-

ties.

Behavioral Models

Two distinct models of team coaching are

based on theories of individual behavior: (1) the

application of Argyris’s (1982, 1993) theory of in-

tervention to team-focused coaching by Schwarz

(1994) and (2) applications of operant condition-

ing to the modification of team behavior, nota-

bly those of Komaki (1986, 1998) and her col-

leagues.

In his approach, Schwarz posits that coaches

should provide feedback to a team in ways that

help members learn new and more effective

team behaviors, especially in how they give and

receive feedback. The coaching process in-

volves three phases. First is observing actual

270 AprilAcademy of Management Review

group behavior both to note behaviors that are

impeding the group’s work and to identify be-

haviors not presently exhibited that might facil-

itate group work. Second is describing to the

group what has been observed and testing in-

ferences about the meanings of those behaviors.

And third is helping group members decide

whether they wish to change their behaviors

and, if so, how they might do so. The model

specifies several specific ground rules both for

the facilitators’ behaviors and for team mem-

bers’ behaviors, such as providing specific be-

havioral examples for points made, publicly

testing assumptions and inferences, and explic-

itly inviting questions and challenges.

The operant conditioning approach to team

coaching is based on the well-established prin-

ciple of individual learning that behavior is a

function of its consequences. Applied to teams,

operant coaching involves three kinds of coach-

ing behaviors: (1) providing instructions about

how to behave, (2) monitoring the team’s perfor-

mance, and (3) providing performance-contin-

gent consequences to the team (Komaki, 1986;

Smith, Smoll, & Curtis, 1979). Because the oper-

ant approach to team coaching does not specify

any particular patterns of team interaction that

facilitate effectiveness across different types of

teams and tasks, team coaches must have ex-

tensive task knowledge so that they can issue

proper instructions about desirable behaviors

and reinforce the team when it does well

(Komaki, 1998; Komaki, Deselles, & Bowman,

1989; Komaki & Minnich, 2002; Smoll & Smith,

1989).

Developmental Coaching

The distinguishing feature of the developmen-

tal approach to coaching is the central role

given to time and timing. Two premises on

which this approach is based are (1) that teams

need help with different issues at different

stages of their development and (2) that there

are times in the life cycles of groups when they

are more and less open to intervention (Kozlow-

ski, Gully, McHugh, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers,

1996; Kozlowski, Gully, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers,

1996).

A key coaching intervention in the develop-

mental approach is the “learning session,” in

which the coach and team members review the

team’s purpose, assess its progress thus far, and

identify the issues the team needs to deal with

next. The focus of learning sessions for newly

formed or “novice” groups (whose members are

mainly occupied with social issues of inclusion

and acceptance and task issues having to do

with team goals and with member skills and

roles) differs from that for more mature or “ex-

pert” groups (whose members have become

ready to learn strategies for self-regulation,

such as how best to detect and correct errors and

how best to adapt to changing external de-

mands). Because teams are unlikely to be able

to process intensive interventions when task de-

mands are also high, learning sessions are re-

served for periods of relatively low cognitive

demand. During intensive work periods, devel-

opmental coaches focus mainly on gathering

data about behavior and performance for use

guiding subsequent interventions. When task

demands diminish, active coaching resumes.

Summary

Most of the approaches to team coaching just

summarized are based on well-established psy-

chological principles and findings about human

learning and performance. Moreover, research

conducted within each tradition has been infor-

mative and, especially for the operant and de-

velopmental approaches, has generated empir-

ical findings that enrich our understanding

about coaching processes and outcomes. None

of the existing approaches, however, is sup-

ported by evidence that addresses all links in

the coaching intervention–team process–team

performance sequence. We seek here to provide

a conceptual model that does explicate all links

in that sequence, that takes explicit account of

teams’ temporal and organizational contexts,

and that provides a sound basis for generating

guidance for team coaching practice.

DOMAIN

We begin by specifying what we mean by a

work team and what we mean by performance

effectiveness, which together bound the domain

of our model.

Work Teams

We focus only on full-fledged teams that per-

form tasks in social system contexts. Such teams

2005 271Hackman and Wageman

have three features. First, they are real groups.

That is, they are intact social systems, complete

with boundaries, interdependence among mem-

bers, and differentiated member roles (Alderfer,

1977). Members of real groups can be distin-

guished reliably from nonmembers, they are in-

terdependent for some common purpose, and

they invariably develop specialized roles within

the group. Real groups can be either small or

large and either temporary or long-lived.

Second, work teams have one or more group

tasks to perform. They produce some outcome for

which members bear collective responsibility

and for which acceptability is potentially as-

sessable. The kind of outcome produced is not

critical—it could be a physical product, a ser-

vice, a decision, a performance, or a written

report. Nor is it necessary that the outcome ac-

tually be assessed; all that is required is that the

group produce an outcome that can be identified

as its product and that it be theoretically possi-

ble to evaluate that product. Social groups and

other collectives that generate no identifiable

product fall outside our domain.

Finally, work teams operate in a social system

context. The team as a collective manages rela-

tionships with other individuals or groups in

some larger social system. Usually this social

system is the parent organization that created

the team, but it can be people or groups outside

that organization as well, such as opponents for

an athletic team or customers for a service-

providing team. What is critical is that team

members be collectively responsible for manag-

ing consequential transactions with other indi-

viduals and/or groups.

Team Performance Effectiveness

Criterion measures in empirical research on

team performance often consist of whatever

quantitative indicators happen to be available

or are easy to obtain (e.g., production figures for

industrial workgroups or number of correct re-

sponses for teams studied in experimental lab-

oratories). Such criteria of convenience do not

address other outcome dimensions, such as cli-

ent assessments of a team’s work, the degree to

which a team becomes stronger as a performing

unit over time, or the extent to which individual

members become more knowledgeable or

skilled as a result of their team experiences.

Because we believe that these dimensions also

are consequential for any team’s long-term or-

ganizational performance, we define team effec-

tiveness using the following three-dimensional

conception (adapted from Hackman, 1987).

1. The productive output of the team (i.e., its

product, service, or decision) meets or ex-

ceeds the standards of quantity, quality,

and timeliness of the team’s clients—the

people who receive, review, and/or use the

output. It is the clients’ standards and as-

sessments that count in assessing team

products—not those of the team itself (ex-

cept in rare cases where the team is the

client of its own work) or those of the team’s

manager (who only rarely is the person who

actually receives and uses a team’s output).

2. The social processes the team uses in car-

rying out the work enhance members’ capa-

bility of working together interdependently

in the future. Effective teams become adept

at detecting and correcting errors before se-

rious damage is done and at noticing and

exploiting emerging opportunities. They are

more capable performing units when they

finish a piece of work than when they be-

gan.

3. The group experience contributes positively

to the learning and personal well-being of

individual team members. Work teams can

serve as sites for personal learning and can

spawn satisfying interpersonal relation-

ships, but they also can deskill, frustrate,

and alienate their members. We do not

count as effective any team for which the net

impact of the group experience on members’

learning and well-being is more negative

than positive.

Although the three criteria vary in importance

in different circumstances, effective teams bal-

ance them over time, never completely sacrific-

ing any one to achieve the others. In the pages

that follow, we identify the coaching functions,

the temporal imperatives, and the contextual

circumstances that affect the degree to which

coaching behaviors can help a work team

achieve and sustain a high standing on all three

of the criteria.

FUNCTIONS

Over four decades ago, McGrath first sug-

gested that “[The leader’s] main job is to do, or

get done, whatever is not being adequately han-

dled for group needs” (1962: 5). If a leader man-

ages, by whatever means, to ensure that all

272 AprilAcademy of Management Review

functions critical to group performance are

taken care of, the leader has done his or her job

well. Thus, a functional approach to leadership

leaves room for an indefinite number of ways to

get key group functions accomplished, and

avoids the necessity of delineating all the spe-

cific behaviors or styles a leader should exhibit

in given circumstances—a trap into which it is

easy for leadership theorists to fall.

What functions are most critical for team per-

formance effectiveness? Functions whose ac-

complishment are critical for group decision

making have been identified by Hirokawa and

Orlitzky (Hirokawa, 1985; Orlitzky & Hirokawa,

2001), and those that bear on other aspects of

group behavior have been comprehensively re-

viewed by Hollingshead et al. (in press). For our

specific and delimited purposes—that is, iden-

tification of the most critical functions served by

those who coach work teams—we focus on three

aspects of group interaction that have been

shown to be especially potent in shaping group

performance outcomes (Hackman & Morris, 1975;

Hackman & Walton, 1986).

Specifically, we posit that team effectiveness

is a joint function of three performance pro-

cesses: (1) the level of effort group members col-

lectively expend carrying out task work, (2) the

appropriateness to the task of the performance

strategies the group uses in its work,

and (3) the

amount of knowledge and skill members bring

to bear on the task. Any team that expends suf-

ficient effort in its work, deploys a task-

appropriate performance strategy, and brings

ample talent to bear on its work is quite likely to

achieve a high standing in the three criteria of

work team effectiveness specified earlier. By the

same token, teams that operate in ways that

leave one or more of these functions unful-

filled—that is, where members expend insuffi-

cient effort, use inappropriate strategies, and/or

apply inadequate talent in their work—are

likely to fall short in one or more of the effective-

ness criteria.

Associated with each of the three performance

processes are both a characteristic “process

loss” (Steiner, 1972) and an opportunity for pos-

itive synergy, which we call a “process gain.”

That is, members may interact in ways that de-

press the team’s effort, the appropriateness of its

strategy, and/or the utilization of member talent;

alternatively, their interaction may enhance col-

lective effort, generate uniquely appropriate

strategies, and/or actively develop members’

knowledge and skills.

Coaching functions are those interventions

that inhibit process losses and foster process

gains for each of the three performance pro-

cesses. Coaching that addresses effort is moti-

vational in character; its functions are to mini-

mize free riding or “social loafing” and to build

shared commitment to the group and its work.

Coaching that addresses performance strategy

is consultative in character; its functions are to

minimize mindless adoption or execution of task

performance routines in uncertain or changing

task environments and to foster the invention of

ways of proceeding with the work that are espe-

cially well aligned with task requirements.

Coaching that addresses knowledge and skill is

educational in character; its functions are to

minimize suboptimal weighting of members’

contributions (i.e., when the weight given to in-

dividual members’ contributions is at variance

with their actual talents) and to foster the devel-

opment of members’ knowledge and skill.

The three coaching functions specifically and

exclusively address a team’s task performance

processes—not members’ interpersonal rela-

tionships. This focus distinguishes our model

from the great majority of writing and practice

about team coaching, especially in the eclectic

tradition, which posits (sometimes explicitly but

more often implicitly) that coaching interven-

tions should primarily address the quality of

members’ interpersonal relationships.

The pervasive emphasis on interpersonal pro-

cesses in the team performance literature re-

flects a logical fallacy about the role of those

processes in shaping performance outcomes. To

illustrate, consider a team that is having perfor-

mance problems. Such teams often exhibit inter-

A team’s strategy is the set of choices members make

about how to carry out the work. For example, a manufac-

turing team might decide to divide itself into three sub-

groups, each of which would produce one subassembly, with

the final product to be assembled later. Or a basketball team

might decide to use modified zone defense, with one player

assigned to guard the opposing team’s best shooter. Or a

team performing a task that requires a creative solution

might choose to free associate about possible solutions in

the first meeting, reflect for a week about the ideas that

came up, and then reconvene to draft the product. All of

these are choices about task performance strategy.

2005 273Hackman and Wageman

personal difficulties, such as communications

breakdowns, conflict among members, leader-

ship struggles, and so on. Because both lay per-

sons and scholars implicitly rely on an input–

process– output framework in analyzing group

dynamics, it is natural to infer that the observed

interpersonal troubles are causing the perfor-

mance problems and, therefore, that a good way

to improve team performance would be to fix

them. As reasonable as this inference may

seem, it is neither logical nor correct. Although

serious interpersonal conflicts sometimes do un-

dermine team performance (Jehn & Mannix,

2001), it does not necessarily follow that the

proper coaching intervention in such cases is to

help members improve their interpersonal rela-

tionships.

In fact, research suggests that, in some cir-

cumstances, the causal arrow points in the op-

posite direction—that is, performance drives in-

terpersonal processes (or, at least, perceptions

of those processes), rather than vice versa. For

example, Staw (1975) gave task-performing

teams false feedback about their performance

and then asked members to provide “objective”

descriptions of how members had interacted.

Teams randomly assigned to the high perfor-

mance condition reported more harmonious and

better communications, among other differ-

ences, than did groups assigned to the low per-

formance condition (see also Guzzo, Wagner,

Maguire, Herr, & Hawley, 1986).

Doubt also is cast on interpersonal ap-

proaches to coaching by action research that

seeks to improve team performance by improv-

ing the quality of members’ interactions. Some

of these studies use interventions based on the

process consultation approach to coaching re-

viewed earlier; others employ a broader set of

interventions that generally are referred to as

team building or group development activities.

Although interventions that address members’

relationships and interaction can be quite en-

gaging and do affect members’ attitudes, they

do not reliably improve team performance (for

reviews, see Kaplan, 1979; Salas, Rozell, Mullen,

& Driskell, 1999; Tannenbaum, Beard, & Salas,

1992; Woodman & Sherwood, 1980). Moreover,

those experimental studies that have directly

compared teams given task-focused and inter-

personally focused interventions have found the

former to significantly outperform the latter

(Kernaghan & Cooke, 1990; Woolley, 1998).

Proposition 1: Coaching interventions

that focus specifically on team effort,

strategy, and knowledge and skill fa-

cilitate team effectiveness more than

do interventions that focus on mem-

bers’ interpersonal relationships.

TIMING

The efficacy of coaching interventions de-

pends not just on their focus, as discussed

above, but also on the time in the group’s life

cycle when they are made. Regularities in group

life cycles have been explored empirically for

many decades, beginning with Bales and Strodt-

beck’s (1951) classic study of phases in group

problem solving. In a number of conceptual

frameworks, scholars have sought to summarize

research findings about group development, the

most prominent being the “forming-storming-

norming-performing” model proposed by Tuck-

man (1965). Almost all of these frameworks have

treated group development as following a fixed

set of stages, with each successive stage being

contingent on successful completion of the prior

one.

In recent years, research on temporal issues in

group behavior has raised doubt about the gen-

erality and validity of stage models (Ancona &

Chong, 1999; Gersick, 1988; Ginnett, 1993;

McGrath & Kelly, 1986; Moreland & Levine, 1988;

for a recent attempt to reconcile alternative tem-

poral models, see Chang, Bordia, & Duck, 2003).

Gersick’s findings are particularly relevant for

our purposes. In a field study of the life histories

of a number of project teams whose performance

periods ranged from several days to several

months, Gersick (1988) found that each of the

groups she tracked developed a distinctive ap-

proach toward its task as soon as it commenced

work, and each stayed with that approach until

precisely halfway between its first meeting and

its project deadline. At the midpoint of their

Woolley’s main effect finding was significantly condi

tioned by the timing of the intervention, and the Kernaghan

and Cook finding was obtained only for groups composed of

members with ample task-relevant abilities. We discuss the

moderating effects of timing and of group design on the

impact of coaching interventions later.

274 AprilAcademy of Management Review

lives, almost all teams underwent a major tran-

sition. In a concentrated burst of changes, they

dropped old patterns of behavior, reengaged

with outside supervisors, and adopted new per-

spectives on their work.

Following the midpoint

transition, groups entered a period of focused

task execution, which persisted until very near

the project deadline, at which time a new set of

issues having to do with termination processes

arose and captured members’ attention. Gersick

(1989) subsequently replicated these findings in

the experimental laboratory for groups that all

had the same amount of time to complete their

task (for alternative views of temporal dynamics

in task-performing groups, see Seers & Woo-

druff, 1997, and Waller, Zellmer-Bruhn, & Giam-

batista, 2002).

Gersick’s findings about the natural develop-

mental processes of task-performing groups

raise the possibility, consistent with both the

process consultation and developmental ap-

proaches to team coaching previously summa-

rized, that the readiness of work teams for coach-

ing interventions changes systematically across

their life cycles. By “readiness for coaching” we

mean (1) the degree to which the issues to be

addressed are among those naturally on team

members’ minds at the time of the intervention,

coupled with (2) the degree to which the team as

a whole is not at that time preoccupied with

more pressing or compelling matters.

We posit that coaching interventions are more

effective when they address issues a team is

ready for at the time they are made and, more-

over, that readiness varies systematically

across the team life cycle. In contrast, even com-

petently administered interventions are un-

likely to be helpful if they are provided at a time

in the life cycle when the team is not ready for

them. Indeed, ill-timed interventions may actu-

ally do more harm than good by distracting or

diverting a team from other issues that do re-

quire members’ attention at that time. We next

discuss the kinds of interventions that are most

appropriate at the beginnings, midpoints, and

ends of work team life cycles.

Beginnings

When team members first come together to

perform a piece of work, the most pressing piece

of business, both for members and for the team

as a whole, is for them to get oriented to one

another and to the task in preparation for the

start of actual work. This involves establishing

the boundary that distinguishes members from

nonmembers, starting to differentiate roles and

formulate norms about how members will work

together, and engaging with (and, inevitably,

redefining) the group task. These activities,

which involve simultaneous engagement with

the interpersonal and task issues that dominate

the start-up of any social system, create a high

state of readiness for anything that shows prom-

ise of reducing members’ uncertainties and

helping them get off to a good start. A coaching

intervention that helps a group have a good

“launch,” therefore, can significantly enhance

members’ commitment to the team and the task,

and thereby enhance their motivation to perform

the work of the team as well as they can.

The power and persistence of coaching be-

haviors at the launch of a task-performing team

are affirmed by Ginnett’s (1993) study of the be-

havior of airline captains during the first few

minutes of a newly formed crew’s life. The struc-

tural “shell” within which cockpit crews work is

quite detailed: the aircraft to be flown, where it

is to be flown, the roles of each crew member,

basic work procedures such as checklists, and

much more all are prespecified and well under-

stood by all crewmembers. Therefore, a new

crew should be able to proceed with its work

without spending time getting organized, which

is, in fact, what happens if a captain does not

conduct a launch briefing when the crew first

meets.

Consistent with Gersick’s results, Ginnett

(1993) found that what happened in the first few

minutes of crewmembers’ time together carried

In Gersick’s research it was not clear whether the mid

point transition was prompted externally (i.e., by reference

to a clock or calendar) or internally (i.e., by members’ sense

that about half their allotted time had elapsed). Mann (2001)

investigated this question experimentally by having groups

work in a room with a clock that ran normally, in one where

the clock ran one-third faster than normal (i.e., when thirty

minutes had passed, the clock showed that forty minutes

had elapsed), or in one where the clock ran one-third slower

than normal (i.e., at the thirty-minute mark it showed twenty

minutes). Groups with the normal clock experienced a single

midpoint transition, replicating earlier findings. But groups

with the faster and slower clocks exhibited two such transi-

tions—one at the midpoint indicated by the clock and the

other at the actual midpoint of the allotted time—showing

that groups pace their work in response to both internal and

external cues about elapsed time.

2005 275Hackman and Wageman

forward throughout a significant portion of the

crew’s life. Crews led by captains who merely

took the time in their preflight briefings to affirm

the positive features of the crew shell fared bet-

ter than those whose captains gave no briefing

at all or those whose captains undermined the

standard shell. Best of all were crews whose

captains went beyond mere affirmation and ac-

tively elaborated the shell—identifying, com-

menting on, and engaging their crews in a dis-

cussion of the unique circumstances of the trip

that was about to begin. These captains trans-

formed a highly competent set of individual pi-

lots into a motivated flight crew.

Because most work teams do not have struc-

tures as detailed and elaborate as those of cock-

pit crews, what happens as members come to-

gether and come to terms with their work should

shape their trajectories even more profoundly

than was the case for Ginnett’s crews. Begin-

nings provide a unique opportunity for motiva-

tional coaching interventions that breathe life

into a team’s structural shell—no matter how

rudimentary or how elaborate that shell may

be—and thereby help get a team off to a good

start with high motivational engagement by all

members.

In contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, begin-

nings are not good times to help teams formu-

late work strategy. When they are just starting

out, teams are not yet ready to address ques-

tions of strategy, as Hackman, Brousseau, and

Weiss (1976) inadvertently discovered in an ex-

perimental study of team performance. These

researchers asked a subset of participating

teams to take a few minutes to reflect on their

performance strategy—that is, to consider vari-

ous ways of carrying out the task— before actu-

ally starting work on it. The investigators hy-

pothesized that these teams would perform

better than teams that were encouraged to

plunge immediately into the work— but only on

tasks for which the most obvious and natural

way of proceeding was not the optimum task

performance strategy.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers struc-

tured their experimental task in two different

ways. In one version of the task, the most obvi-

ous and natural way of proceeding was, in fact,

optimum for team performance; in a second ver-

sion, that way of proceeding would introduce

inefficiencies and result in suboptimal perfor-

mance. As expected, the “plunge right in”

groups did better than the “discuss your strat-

egy first” groups on the version of the task for

which the obvious way of proceeding was the

optimum strategy, and the reverse was true

when the obvious way of proceeding was sub-

optimal.

Perhaps the most significant finding of the

study, however, is buried in the discussion sec-

tion of the research report—namely, that it was

nearly impossible to get the experimental

groups to actually have a discussion of perfor-

mance strategy at the start of the work period.

Only by structuring the strategy intervention as

a “preliminary task” and explicitly requiring the

team to check off each step as it was completed

could the experimental groups be induced to

have more than a perfunctory discussion of their

performance strategy at the beginning of the

work period. Beginnings are not a good time for

strategy discussions, but, as will be seen next,

midpoints are.

Midpoints

A second window for coaching interventions

opens around the midpoint of the team’s work.

At that point the team has logged some experi-

ence with the task, providing data for members

to use in assessing what is working well and

poorly. Moreover, the team is likely to have ex-

perienced an upheaval, driven in part by mem-

bers’ anxieties about the amount of work they

have accomplished relative to the time they

have remaining, that opens the possibility of

significant change in how the team operates

(Gersick, 1988, 1989). For these reasons, readi-

ness for a strategy-focused coaching interven-

tion is high at the temporal midpoint of a team’s

work.

We posit that ongoing teams having no dead-

line, and therefore no temporal midpoint, also

experience increased readiness for strategy-

focused interventions when they are about half-

way finished with the work—for example, when

they have consumed half of their available re-

sources, have progressed halfway to their goal,

or have arrived at some other natural break

point in the work. At that time members are

more likely than previously to welcome and be

helped by interventions that encourage them to

assess their work progress, to review how they

are applying members’ efforts and talents to the

work, and to consider how they might want to

276 AprilAcademy of Management Review

alter their task performance strategies to better

align them with external requirements and in-

ternal resources.

The increased receptivity to coaching inter-

ventions that encourage reflection on team work

strategies by teams that have logged some ex-

perience, relative to those that are just starting

out, is a tenet of developmental theories of team

coaching (e.g., Kozlowski, Gully, McHugh, Salas,

& Cannon-Bowers, 1996) and is empirically sup-

ported by the findings of Woolley (1998), men-

tioned earlier. Woolley created an experimental

version of an architectural task that involved

constructing a model of a college residence hall

out of LEGO® bricks. Groups were informed in

advance how the structures they created would

be evaluated (criteria included sturdiness, aes-

thetics, and various technical indices). She de-

vised two coaching-type interventions— one in-

tended to improve members’ interpersonal

relationships and one that provided assistance

to the team in developing a task-appropriate

performance strategy. Each team received only

one intervention, administered either at the be-

ginning or at the midpoint of its work period.

Woolley’s findings, shown in Figure 1, confirm

that strategy interventions are especially help-

ful when they come near the midpoint of a

team’s work cycle. When the strategy interven-

tion was provided at the beginning of the work

period, it did not help, further affirming that

members need to log some experience before

they are ready to have a useful discussion of

how best to proceed with their work. This con-

clusion deals specifically with the timing of ex-

ternal interventions intended to foster team

strategy planning. When work teams spontane-

ously engage in planning activities in their ini-

tial team meetings, process management norms

sometimes emerge that are subsequently help-

ful in pacing and coordinating team activities

(Janicik & Bartel, 2003).

In both the Woolley (1998) study and the ex-

periment by Hackman et al. (1976) described ear-

lier, it was difficult but possible to introduce a

strategy-focused intervention at the beginning

of a task cycle. In other cases it is impossible to

do so. Total quality management programs, for

example, involve use of such techniques as Pa-

reto analyses, control charts, and cost-of-quality

analyses to develop improved production strat-

egies (for details, see Hackman & Wageman,

1995). These techniques simply cannot be used

until a record of experience with existing strat-

egies has been amassed— once again affirming

that consultative coaching is more appropri-

ately provided around the middle of a task cycle

than at its beginning.

Ends

The third special opportunity for coaching oc-

curs at the end of a performance period, when

the work is finished or a significant subtask has

been accomplished (Kozlowski, Gully, Salas, &

Cannon-Bowers, 1996). The end of a task cycle is

FIGURE 1

Woolley’s Findings About the Focus and Timing of Coaching

Adapted from Woolley (1998).

2005 277Hackman and Wageman

the time when a team has as much data as it is

likely to get for members to use in exploring

what can be learned from the collective work

just completed. Moreover, a team is likely to be

far more ready at this point than previously to

capture and internalize the lessons that can be

learned from their work experiences, for several

reasons. The anxieties that invariably surface in

getting a piece of work organized, executed, and

finished on time dissipate once that work is

completed—significant, because people do not

learn well when brimming with anxieties (Ed-

mondson, 1999; Zajonc, 1965). Moreover, once the

task has been finished, there often is time for

reflection, which typically is in short supply in

the rush to completion. The postperformance pe-

riod, therefore, is an especially inviting time for

educational coaching interventions (see also

Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1997;

Butler, 1993; Ellis, Mendel, Nir, & Davidi, 2002).

Such interventions not only build the team’s res-

ervoir of talent, which increases its performance

capabilities for subsequent tasks, but also con-

tribute directly to the personal learning of indi-

vidual team members.

Absent coaching interventions, team mem-

bers are not likely to take initiatives after the

work has been completed to capture and inter-

nalize the lessons that could be learned from

their experiences. If the team has succeeded,

members may be more interested in celebrating

than in reflecting, and if it has not, they may be

driven more to rationalize why the failure was

not really their fault than to explore what might

be learned from it. Moreover, even if members

do take the time to reflect on possible explana-

tions for the team’s level of performance, coach-

ing may be required to bring those explanations

into alignment with reality.

In a field study of team attribution-making

processes, Corn (2000) collected a diverse sam-

ple of task-performing teams in organizations,

some of which had performed well and some of

which had not, and asked members of each

team to explain why the team had performed as

it did. The majority of those explanations fo-

cused on the behaviors or dispositions of indi-

vidual members or of the team leader. This at-

tributional bias diverts members’ attention from

the ways that less salient structural or contex-

tual factors may have shaped their interaction

and performance. Moreover, it invites the psy-

chodynamic phenomenon of “splitting,” which

can result in having leaders assigned a dispro-

portionate share of the credit for team successes

and minority members a disproportionate share

of the blame for team failures (Smith & Berg,

1987: Chapter 4). Competent, well-timed coach-

ing can help members work through such im-

pulses and generate collective learning that

strengthens the team’s capabilities as a task-

performing unit.

Summary

We have seen that work teams are especially

open to coaching interventions at three times in

the group life cycle: (1) at the beginning, when a

group is engaging with its task; (2) at the mid-

point, when half the allotted time has passed

and/or half the work has been done; and (3) at

the end, when a piece of work has been finished.

Moreover, each of the three coaching functions

discussed in the previous section of this article

is uniquely appropriate at one of those three

times: motivational coaching at beginnings,

consultative coaching at midpoints, and educa-

tional coaching at ends.

The time dependence of the coaching func-

tions is summarized in our second proposition.

Proposition 2: Each of the three coach-

ing functions has the greatest con-

structive effect at specific times in the

team task cycle. Specifically, (a) moti-

vational coaching is most helpful

when provided at the beginning of a

performance period, (b) consultative

coaching is most helpful when pro-

vided at the midpoint of a perfor-

mance period, and (c) educational

coaching is most helpful when pro-

vided after performance activities

have been completed.

This proposition could be viewed as suggest-

ing that coaching is irrelevant or ineffectual

during the great majority of a team’s time—that

is, in the extended periods that lie between its

beginning, midpoint, and end. It is true that

teams are remarkably impervious to interven-

tions, made during times of low readiness, that

seek to alter their established trajectories. Even

so, it often is possible for coaching to make

small but significant contributions to the team

and its work during between-marker periods.

278 AprilAcademy of Management Review

One such contribution is to help members co-

ordinate their activities and thereby minimize

the risks of tacit coordination identified by Wit-

tenbaum, Vaughan, and Stasser (1998). Leaders

who take on too much of the responsibility for

coordination do run the risk of becoming so in-

volved in the actual work that they overlook

opportunities to help the team develop into an

increasingly competent performing unit. And

team members may eventually abdicate to the

leader their own responsibilities for managing

team performance processes. Still, when task

complexity is very high and/or when members

are relatively inexperienced, helping members

coordinate their activities can be an appropriate

and helpful coaching intervention.

A second kind of between-marker coaching

that can be helpful to work teams is the use of

operant techniques to reinforce constructive but

infrequently observed team behaviors, such as

verbally reinforcing a team for exhibiting good

work processes (Komaki et al., 1989). Consistent

with the tenets of the operant model of team

coaching summarized earlier, these initiatives

can both increase the frequency of desirable

behaviors and decrease the frequency of unde-

sirable behaviors. However, such initiatives

may be especially helpful for teams whose ba-

sic performance processes—that is, their man-

agement of team effort, strategy, and talent—

are already strong. Even well-designed and

well-executed reinforcement of desirable team

behaviors cannot compensate for the absence of

well-timed motivational, consultative, and edu-

cational coaching interventions.

Most of the research evidence supporting the

proposition that teams are especially open to

motivational, consultative, and educational in-

terventions at their beginnings, midpoints, and

ends comes from teams that have a single task

to complete by a specified deadline. The task

cycles of such teams are coincident with their

life cycles, and, therefore, temporal markers are

easy to identify. For many work teams in orga-

nizations, however, tasks and deadlines are not

so clear and well defined. For example, some

teams have multiple tasks to perform, perform

the same task multiple times, or have work that

requires members to manage multiple task cy-

cles simultaneously in the service of larger per-

formance goals (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro,

2001). Opportunities for temporally appropriate

coaching interventions are abundant for such

teams, because they experience multiple begin-

nings, midpoints, and ends.

Still other teams operate continuously, with-

out any official beginnings or ends whatsoever.

Many industrial production teams, for example,

keep on turning out the same products month

after month, indefinitely into the future. Even

teams with continuous tasks, however, usually

have beginnings, midpoints, and ends. They

have them because the teams, or their manag-

ers, create them.

There appears to be a human compulsion to

create temporal markers, even when no such

markers are actually needed. In a semiconduc-

tor manufacturing plant that operated continu-

ously all year (except for an annual holiday

break when the entire plant closed down), for

instance, production activities were organized

around six-week performance periods, and team

dynamics were highly responsive to the begin-

nings, midpoints, and ends of these entirely ar-

bitrary temporal markers (Abramis, 1990; Hack-

man, 2002). The creation of quarters to demark

financial reporting periods and semesters (or

quarters) to organize educational activities in

schools have the same character: they are arbi-

trary but nonetheless powerful in shaping the

rhythm of collective activity.

Temporal rhythms are deeply rooted in hu-

man experience, and if temporal markers are

not naturally provided (e.g., through human bi-

ology or seasonal cycles), we create them and

then use them to pace our activities. Such mark-

ers identify the beginnings, midpoints, and ends

of team life cycles, and they thereby create op-

portunities for coaching interventions that oth-

erwise would not exist.

CONDITIONS

The impact of motivational, consultative, and

educational coaching depends not just on the

time in the task cycle at which interventions are

made but also on the degree to which two other

conditions are in place. The first of these condi-

tions is the degree to which key performance

processes are externally constrained, and the

second is the degree to which the group itself is

a well-designed performing unit.

2005 279Hackman and Wageman

Task and Organizational Constraints

Not all of the coaching functions specified

here are salient for all team tasks, since for

some tasks only one or two of the three perfor-

mance processes drive performance outcomes.

For an arithmetic task with a self-confirming

answer, for example, the performance of a team

that has accepted and engaged with its task is

almost entirely a function of the knowledge and

skill its members apply in their work. In con-

trast, performance on a simple, self-paced pro-

duction task, such as moving materials from one

place to another, is almost entirely a function of

the level of effort members expend.

Thus, if one of the three performance pro-

cesses is constrained (i.e., if variation in that

process is controlled or limited by the task or the

organization), then any attempts by members to

manage that particular process will be ineffec-

tual. If, however, a performance process is not

constrained, then how well members manage

that process can substantially affect their

team’s eventual performance.

The salience of effort is constrained by the

degree to which work inputs are under external

control. When the arrival of the materials a team

processes is controlled externally (e.g., by cus-

tomer demand or machine pacing), a team can

only respond to whatever it receives and will be

unable to increase its output by working espe-

cially hard. In such circumstances the relation-

ship between team effort and performance is

severely restricted.

The salience of strategy is constrained by the

degree to which performance operations are ex-

ternally determined. When work procedures are

completely prespecified (e.g., by mechanical re-

quirements or by a manual that specifies ex-

actly how the work is to be done), a team has

little latitude to develop a new or better task

performance strategy. In such circumstances the

relationship between team performance strate-

gies and performance is severely restricted.

Finally, the salience of knowledge and skill is

constrained by the degree to which performance

operations are simple and predictable (versus

complex and unpredictable). When task perfor-

mance requires the use of skills that are well

learned in the general population on tasks that

are well understood, a team is unable to im-

prove its performance by bringing additional

knowledge or skill to bear on the work. In such

circumstances the relationship between the

team’s utilization of member talent and team

performance is severely restricted.

In some organizational circumstances all

three of the performance processes are uncon-

strained, and all three, therefore, are salient in

affecting performance outcomes. Consider, for

example, the work of product development

teams. The pace of the work is largely at the

discretion of the team, performance procedures

are mostly unprogrammed, and the work re-

quires use of complex skills to deal with consid-

erable uncertainty in the environment. Motiva-

tional, consultative, and educational coaching

interventions, if competently provided, all can

be helpful in fostering the performance effec-

tiveness of such teams.

In other circumstances some performance pro-

cesses are constrained and others are not. Sur-

gical teams are one example (Edmondson, Boh-

mer, & Pisano, 2001). There is little constraint

regarding the use of knowledge and skill by

team members but moderate constraint on both

strategy (some but not all procedures are pro-

grammed) and effort (some but not all task in-

puts derive from the nature of the surgical pro-

cedure and the response of the patient as the

operation progresses). Finally, there are some

circumstances in which all three performance

processes are constrained, as for a team work-

ing on a mechanized assembly line where in-

puts are machine paced, assembly procedures

are completely programmed, and performance

operations are simple and predictable. A team

assigned such a task would be a team in name

only, since performance would depend so little

on how members interacted.

Teams can be helped by coaching interven-

tions that focus specifically on reducing process

losses and/or on fostering process gains only for

those aspects of team performance processes

that are relatively unconstrained. Coaching in-

terventions that address team processes that

are substantially constrained will be ineffec-

tual, since they seek to improve team processes

that are not salient for how well the team per-

forms. Such interventions can even compromise

performance because they consume members’

time and direct their attention away from more

salient aspects of their interaction.

Proposition 3: Coaching interventions

are helpful only when they address

280 AprilAcademy of Management Review

team performance processes that are

salient for a given task; those that ad-

dress nonsalient processes are, at best,

ineffectual.

Group Design

Certain features of a team’s design, including

properties of the social system context within

which it operates, can negate the impact of

coaching interventions, even those that are well

executed and that address appropriate team

performance processes. Moreover, design fea-

tures can exacerbate the effects of good and

poor coaching on team effectiveness, heighten-

ing the benefits of good coaching and making

even worse the problems brought about by poor

coaching.

Each of the three performance processes that

form the core of our model—the level of effort the

team expends on its task, the appropriateness of

its performance strategies, and the amount of

knowledge and skill it applies to the work—is

shaped not only by coaching interventions but

also by how well a team is structured and by the

level of contextual support provided (Hackman,

Wageman, Ruddy, & Ray, 2000).

The effort a team expends on its work is influ-

enced by the design of its task (a structural

feature) and by the reward system of the orga-

nization in which the team operates (a contex-

tual support). A motivating team task is a whole

and meaningful piece of work for which mem-

bers share responsibility and accountability

and one that is structured so that members re-

ceive regular and trustworthy data about how

they are doing. Well-designed team tasks foster

high, task-focused effort by team members

(Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Team effort is en-

hanced by organizational reward systems that

recognize and reinforce team excellence—and

that avoid the common, if usually unintended,

problem of providing disincentives for collabo-

ration among team members by placing them in

competition with one another for individual re-

wards (Wageman, 1995).

The task appropriateness of a team’s perfor-

mance strategy is influenced by its core norms

of conduct (a structural feature) and by the or-

ganizational information system (a contextual

support). Collective expectations about accept-

able behavior are either “imported” to the group

by members or established very early in its life

(Bettenhausen & Murnighan, 1985; Gersick,

1988), and they tend to remain in place until and

unless something fairly dramatic occurs to force

a rethinking about what behaviors are and are

not appropriate (Gersick & Hackman, 1990; Louis

& Sutton, 1991). When those upfront norms of

conduct actively promote continuous scanning

of the performance situation and proactive plan-

ning of how members will work together, they

facilitate the development of task performance

strategies that are appropriate for the team’s

task and situation (Hackman et al., 1976; Wool-

ley, 1998). The appropriateness of a team’s per-

formance strategies also depends, however, on

the degree to which the organizational informa-

tion system makes available to the team what-

ever data and projections members may need to

select or invent ways of proceeding that are well

tuned to their circumstances (Abramis, 1990; Bik-

son, Cohen, & Mankin, 1999).

The level of knowledge and skill a team

brings to bear on its work is influenced by the

composition of the team (a structural feature)

and by the organizational education system (a

contextual support). Well-composed teams have

members who bring to the group a rich array of

task-relevant knowledge and skills, and they

are structured so that members’ talents can be

drawn on readily in pursuing team purposes.

Such teams are as small as possible, given the

work to be accomplished, they include members

who have appropriate skills, and they have a

good mix of members—people who are neither

so similar to one another that they are like peas

from the same pod nor so different that they risk

having difficulty communicating and coordinat-

ing with one another (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992;

Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Druskat, 1996;

Goodman & Shah, 1992; Jackson, 1992).

Even well-composed teams, however, may not

have within their boundaries all of the talent

required for excellent performance. Organiza-

tional education systems can supplement inter-

nal resources by making available to teams, at

the teams’ initiative, technical or educational

assistance for any aspects of the work for which

members are not already knowledgeable,

skilled, or experienced, including, if necessary,

assistance honing members’ skills in working

together on collective tasks (Stevens & Yarish,

1999).

Research evidence clearly establishes the pri-

ority of structural and contextual features over

2005 281Hackman and Wageman

coaching behaviors as influences on team per-

formance processes and outcomes (Cohen, Led-

ford, & Spreitzer, 1996). For example, Wageman

(2001) found, in a study of field service teams at

the Xerox Corporation, that team design fea-

tures, including those described just above, con-

trolled significantly more variance in both the

level of team self-management and in perfor-

mance effectiveness than did team leaders’

coaching behaviors. For team self-management,

design features controlled 42 percent of the vari-

ance, compared to less than 10 percent for mea-

sures that assessed the quality of leaders’

coaching activities; for team performance, de-

sign controlled 37 percent of the variance, com-

pared to less than 1 percent for coaching. These

findings are consistent with other evidence,

cited earlier, showing that even highly compe-

tent process-focused coaching by team leaders

or consultants rarely generates substantial or

enduring improvements in team processes or

performance, and with the more general finding

that coaching cannot prevail against strong

structural and contextual forces (Hackman,

1987). It is nearly impossible to coach a team to

greatness in a performance situation that under-

mines rather than supports teamwork.

When, then, can coaching make a constructive

difference in team performance processes? We

propose that coaching makes relatively small

adjustments to an already defined trajectory.

When a team’s performance situation is favor-

able, competent coaching can be helpful to

members in minimizing process losses and cre-

ating process gains. When a team’s structure is

flawed and/or its context is unsupportive, how-

ever, even competent process-focused coaching

may do more harm than good.

Proposition 4: Competent coaching in-

terventions (i.e., those that foster col-

lective effort, task-appropriate perfor-

mance strategies, and good use of

member knowledge and skill) are

more beneficial for groups that are

well structured and supported than for

those that are not; poor coaching in-

terventions (i.e., those that subvert

team performance processes) are more

detrimental for teams that are poorly

structured and supported than for

those that are well designed.

Further findings from the Wageman (2001)

study described above provide evidence in sup-

FIGURE 2

How Team Design and Leader Coaching Jointly Affect Team Self-Management

282 AprilAcademy of Management Review

port of this proposition. As seen in the left panel

of Figure 2, competent coaching (e.g., conduct-

ing a problem-solving process) helped well-

designed teams exploit their favorable circum-

stances but made little difference for poorly

designed teams. Poor coaching (e.g., identifying

a team’s problems and telling members how

they should solve them), in contrast, was much

more deleterious for poorly designed teams than

for those that had an enabling team structure

and a supportive organizational context (right

panel of Figure 2).

The interaction between a team’s design and

the efficacy of coaching interventions may help

explain the finding from “brainstorming” re-

search that the pooled ideas of individuals

working alone generally exceed in both quan-

tity and quality the product of interacting brain-

storming groups (Taylor, Berry, & Block, 1957).

Studies of brainstorming typically use either ad

hoc groups created especially for research pur-

poses (e.g., Cohen, Whitmyre, & Funk, 1960) or

existing organizational groups whose members

are asked to take time from their regular work to

participate in the research (e.g., Osborn, 1963).

On the one hand, if the participating teams’

design features are suboptimal—not unlikely

for ad hoc or serendipitously obtained groups—

it would not be surprising to find that brain-

storming fails to facilitate creative team perfor-

mance. For teams that have enabling structures

and supportive contexts, on the other hand, this

particular coaching intervention—as well as

others that require teams to be able to use non-

traditional and unfamiliar group process tools—

might well generate substantial performance

benefits.

In sum, even competent coaching is unlikely

to be of much help to groups that have poor

structures and/or unsupportive organizational

contexts. Favorable performance situations,

however, can yield a double benefit: teams are

likely to have less need for coaching (because

they encounter fewer problems that lie beyond

their own capabilities), and the coaching that

they do receive is likely to be more helpful to

them (because they are not preoccupied with

more basic, structurally rooted difficulties). Over

time, such teams may become skilled at coach-

ing themselves and may even enter into a self-

fueling spiral of ever-increasing team capabil-

ity and performance effectiveness (Lindsley,

Brass, & Thomas, 1995).

CONCLUSION

In the present model we posit that team

coaching can foster team effectiveness only

when four conditions are present. Two of these

conditions have to do with organizational cir-

cumstances and two with coaches’ actions.

1. The group performance processes that are

key to performance effectiveness (i.e., effort,

strategy, and knowledge and skill) are rela-

tively unconstrained by task or organization-

al requirements.

2. The team is well designed and the organi-

zational context within which it operates

supports rather than impedes team work.

3. Coaching behaviors focus on salient task

performance processes rather than on mem-

bers’ interpersonal relationships or on pro-

cesses that are not under the team’s control.

4. Coaching interventions are made at times

when the team is ready for them and able to

deal with them—that is, at the beginning for

effort-related (motivational) interventions,

near the midpoint for strategy-related (con-

sultative) interventions, and at the end of a

task cycle for (educational) interventions

that address knowledge and skill.

When these four conditions are present, skill-

fully provided coaching can yield substantial

and enduring improvements in team effective-

ness. Yet these conditions are not commonly

found in traditionally designed and managed

work organizations. Organizational work de-

signs often constrain one or more of the three

performance processes that drive team perfor-

mance; organizational systems do not provide

the supports that work teams need; and coaches,

when trained at all, are taught the leadership

styles preferred by trainers rather than helped

to learn how to provide well-timed and appro-

priately focused interventions using their own

preferred styles (Hackman, 2002; Hackman &

Walton, 1986).

One could conclude, therefore, that few schol-

arly resources should be expended on research

on team coaching because it is of so little con-

sequence. Moreover, one could view the reports

from the field (cited in the introduction to this

paper) that team leaders spend less time on

team coaching than on any other category of

leader behavior as a sign of team leaders’ wis-

dom. Rather than spend time on an activity that

so rarely makes a difference, leaders might be

better advised to focus on aspects of their lead-

2005 283Hackman and Wageman

ership portfolio for which there is a greater re-

turn from effort expended.

We believe such conclusions would be too

pessimistic—for scholars and practitioners

alike. Scholars with an interest in senior execu-

tive leadership have for many years debated

just how much of a difference CEOs make in the

performance of their firms. These disputes,

which probably can never be resolved empiri-

cally, have now given way to a more tractable

question—namely, under what conditions does

senior leadership matter (Wasserman, Anand, &

Nohria, 2001)? We suggest that a similar refram-

ing of research questions about team coaching

may be warranted. That is, instead of asking,

“How much difference does team coaching

make?” scholars might more productively ex-

pend resources in further research on the struc-

tural and contextual conditions under which

competent team coaching does (and does not)

significantly affect team performance.

The conduct of such research poses several

significant challenges. For one thing, it is far

from straightforward to measure leader behav-

iors and group processes reliably as they unfold

in real time in fluid organizational circum-

stances. And since the effects of team coaching

are determined jointly by factors that exist at

multiple levels of analysis (i.e., the organization-

al, team, and individual levels), it is necessary

to locate or create research settings where there

is ample variation at all three levels (Hackman,

2003). Studies of coaching effectiveness cannot

simply take as given whatever structural and

contextual features are commonly found either

in the experimental laboratory or in organiza-

tional life.

Indeed, it may be necessary in research on

team coaching, as sometimes must be done in

other scientific fields, such as medical research

and subatomic physics, to first create one’s phe-

nomenon of interest before conducting research

on its dynamics (Argyris, 1969). Research in lab-

oratory settings, for example, could involve the

construction and administration of model-

specified coaching interventions at times either

consistent or inconsistent with the model’s prop-

ositions and then assessment of the conse-

quences for group dynamics and performance.

And action research in field settings could as-

sess the impact of educational programs in-

tended to help team coaches design interven-

tions specifically tailored to the task and

organizational circumstances within which

their teams operate. It is highly doubtful that

any single laboratory or field study could com-

prehensively assess all the propositions of the

present model. But studies that test individual

propositions by creating specific coaching inter-

ventions and documenting their effects in con-

texts that are thoughtfully created or selected

can, over time, provide the knowledge required

to correct and refine the model.

The challenges for coaching practitioners are

just as great as for scholars, and for the same

reasons. Rather than simply taking as given the

circumstances in which their teams operate,

practitioners who lead work teams should give

first priority to determining whether the basic

structural and contextual conditions that foster

team effectiveness are in place (Hackman, 2002).

If they are not, team leaders would be well ad-

vised to exercise influence with their own peers

and supervisors to create those conditions, and

thereby to make competent team coaching pos-

sible. We hope the model of team coaching set

forth in this article is of some use to practition-

ers in orienting and prioritizing such initiatives,

as well as to scholars in conducting informative

research about work teams and the behaviors of

those who lead them.

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J. Richard Hackman is professor of social and organizational psychology at Harvard

University. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MacMurray Col-

lege and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois. His research interests

include social influences on behavior in organizations and analysis of the conditions

that foster work team effectiveness.

Ruth Wageman is an associate professor at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth

College. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University

and her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Harvard University. Her research

interests include power dynamics in teams, leader development and behavior, and

the performance of senior management teams.

2005 287Hackman and Wageman

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As organizations become more crisis-ridden, they are struggling with limited resources for business survival and continuity in crisis management. Lately, Covid-19 imposed social distancing which reflects on alternative ways of performing jobs through virtual teams and online jobs. Traditional leadership theories seem inadequate in these new job contexts, proactive crisis theories are still minor, and new leadership theories consistently proved the need to switch to team leadership approaches as shared leadership. The authors aim through this chapter to address the need for novel approaches to crisis management through team proactivity, self-efficacy, and shared leadership. The authors develop a conceptual theoretical framework that outlines the relationships between the concepts of team proactivity, self-efficacy, and shared leadership. This study extends the literature review through exploring team proactivity which is marginally studied in comparison to individual proactivity.

The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023
ORGAN BEHAV HUM DEC

Time and Transition in Work Teams: Toward a New Model of Group Development

Article

Mar 1988

Connie J. G. Gersick

Punctuated Equilibrium and Linear Progression: Toward a New Understanding of Group Development

Article

Feb 2003

Effect of group cohesiveness and training upon creative thinking

Article

Nov 1962

Team development: A true field experiment at three levels of rigor.

Article

Feb 1985

Dov Eden

Assigned 18 logistics units in the Israel Defense Forces to either experimental (team development [TD]) or control conditions to determine the effect of TD on team organization and functioning. The 9 experimental units underwent a 3-day TD workshop. 30 subordinates in each unit completed questionnaires describing their unit before and after TD. Although subjective after-only reports of the command personnel who had participated in the workshops were positive, more rigorous before–after comparisons among both command personnel and subordinates demonstrated that TD failed to improve organizational functioning. It is suggested that instead of using a dichotomous approach to evaluation (either the intervention worked or it did not), a battery of ordered evaluation criteria should be used to show how far an intervention went. (21 ref)

Research on Intergroup Relations."

Article

Jan 1979

Coordination in task-performing groups

Article

Jan 1998

Total quality management: Empirical, conceptual, and practical issues

Article

Jan 1995

Group Processes and Intergroup Relations

Article

Jan 2006

Crews as Groups: Their Formation and their Leadership

Article

Jan 2010

Robert C. Ginnett

The objective of this chapter is to change the focus of crewmembers from solely a perspective of competent individuals coming together to do work to a perspective that acknowledges that a crew, group, or team has certain unique characteristics that cannot be explained at the individual level. Further, these group concepts are critical for performance and should be understood and leveraged by anyone who considers leading a crew. The study presents some examples of crew failure and then introduces a few critical group-based concepts. Paramount among these will be group dynamics and leadership. It details four specific areas in which the captain can create effective conditions for crew work. It briefly reviews a NASA-funded research project and examines the importance of leadership during the formation process of crews and discusses some of the unexpected results of that study. The concept of organizational shells is also introduced to explain the surprising findings. Lastly, the implications for effective crew leadership are discussed.

Coach Effectiveness Training: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach to Enhancing Relationship Skills in Youth Sport Coaches

Article

Mar 1979

Little League Baseball coaches were exposed to a preseason training program designed to assist them in relating more effectively to children. Empirically derived behavioral guidelines were presented and modeled, and behavioral feedback and self-monitoring were used to enhance self-awareness and to encourage compliance with the guidelines. Trained coaches differed from controls in both overt and player-perceived behaviors in a manner consistent with the behavioral guidelines. They were also evaluated more positively by their players, and a higher level of intrateam attraction was found on their teams despite the fact that they did not differ from controls in won-lost records. Children who played for the trained coaches exhibited a significant increase in general self-esteem compared with scores obtained a year earlier; control group children did not. The greatest differences in attitudes toward trained and control coaches were found among children low in self-esteem, and such children appeared most sensitive to variations in coaches' use of encouragement, punishment, and technical instruction.

A Theory of Team Coaching

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