Transformational Coaching Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum: Why Executive Coaching Must Extend Beyond the Individual

At Groove Management, we believe that leadership is not a solo act—it’s a team sport. And the same holds true for transformational coaching.

As an executive coach, I position myself as a success partner to each of my clients. Together, we explore a wide range of themes—self-awareness, workplace culture, personal motivations, executive presence, strategic clarity, and execution. But more often than not, one topic consistently rises to the surface: team dynamics.

When I review my coaching logs and conversations, a consistent pattern emerges: the majority of coaching time is spent unpacking relationships. We discuss how the leader interfaces with peers, direct reports, and stakeholders. We use tools like the Groove360 assessment to gather feedback from multiple perspectives and bring hidden dynamics into the light. These insights fuel personal growth—but they also point to something deeper: leaders do not operate in isolation.

The True Unlock in Executive Coaching

In my experience, the highest-impact coaching doesn't just involve working with the leader. It involves working with their team. Hearing about the team is helpful—but observing them in action is transformative.

That’s why one of the most valuable steps in a coaching engagement is direct interaction with the coachee’s team—often in the form of a facilitated offsite. These sessions aren’t just about strategy or goal-setting; they’re about building trust, surfacing friction points, and strengthening alignment. They allow me to witness real-time behavior patterns, communication styles, decision-making tendencies, and energy levels—all of which reveal far more than any one-on-one session could.

Being able to witness the leadership style of the leader in action, the body language of the team and the ways in which team members engage with their leader provides golden nuggets that aid in the ongoing coaching. These concrete behavioral examples observed first hand cannot be duplicated through the one-on-one coaching alone. Many of my biggest breakthroughs with executive coaching clients have occurred after facilitating team interactions. This new data adds perspective, brings me closer to the leader and allows me to discuss team member relationships based on how I experienced the team members.

The Leadership Ripple Effect

Coaching a leader is about more than their personal success. It’s about their impact on others. Great leaders create the conditions for others to thrive. And when they grow, their teams grow with them.

This is where Groove’s work with team dynamics becomes a powerful force multiplier. While executive coaching is often the entry point to an organization, it’s the team-level interventions that truly unlock systemic change. That’s why our coaching philosophy emphasizes leadership as service—helping leaders elevate those around them and create cultures of clarity, accountability, and psychological safety.

The goal of executive coaching is to help the executive, but the goal of the executive is to help the team and organization, therefore executive coaching’s overall success is incumbent upon helping the team.

Several years ago I coached a CEO of a high growth venture backed scale up. The CEO and his team had friction on several fronts. We conducted a 360 and the data highlighted some of the struggles. As a follow up to the 360 I suggested holding a 360 debrief with the team where the CEO shared the feedback with his team. I facilitated this session and it became very clear where there was misalignment, a lack of trust and communication style issues. That debrief led to a team retreat where we worked through the issues plaguing the leader and his team. We resolved many of the issues through continued work and this shifted the CEOs approach to leading his team. To this day the CEO and his team members refer to their team and the work they performed together as the best team and most rewarding work they have done in their entire careers. This just solidifies the power of team interactions to executive coaching success.

Build Team Engagement Into the Coaching Contract

Looking ahead, I’m more convinced than ever that we need to bake team interaction into the coaching process from the outset. It’s not just a “nice-to-have”—it’s a strategic lever for deeper transformation. It leads to more powerful insights, more cohesive teams, and ultimately, more effective leaders.

Of course, executive coaching can still be valuable without engaging the team. But in my experience, its full potential is only realized when the team is part of the journey.