5 Steps to Coach Your Team to Transformation

Transformational coaching is an approach to executive coaching that focuses on long-term behavioral change. Transformational coaching aims to bring about the positive changes that help your team and organization reach its potential. However, it’s not easy to change people and their behaviors.

While transformational coaching’s existed in the corporate world for many years, it’s something that could benefit nonprofits as well. Today’s nonprofit organizations face a litany of issues. For instance, they have to fundraise, raise awareness and innovate. As we know, today's donors want to see an impact. And that requires new ways of thinking about old problems.

When your team's thinking about transformation, there's new energy, excitement and momentum. Transformational coaching could help your nonprofit group in ways large and small. Moreover, it could help your organization become a leader in your sector. Let’s take a look at five critical steps you can take to ensure your team achieves transformation in behavior.

Transformational coaching is an approach to executive coaching based on long-term behavioral change. Transformational coaching aims to bring about the positive changes that help your team make potential a reality. Transformational coaches use various tools, including goal setting and behavioral modeling, to foster the desired behavior change.

Transformation is often tricky because people are resistant to change and don't know what they're doing wrong in the first place. If you understand the methodology, you can help your team by giving them feedback and breaking transformation into manageable steps.

1. Create a Transformational Vision

Transformational coaching isn’t just a process of changing negative or counterproductive behaviors. Transformational coaching is about inspiring your team to achieve something more — something they never thought they could achieve. It's your job as a coach to help them see their potential and their ability to achieve it.

This can happen through setting a transformational vision. What’s the goal of your team? What happens when the group reaches this goal? How does it change lives? If you want your team members to have a positive mindset, you need to show them how this goal will make a difference. Again, impact matters, and people want to know what it means for you as the leader.

2. Make Sure Your Team Is Committed

You can't coach people who aren’t committed, even if you have all the technical knowledge in the world. To ensure commitment, you need to confirm your team understands why they want to change and what it takes to succeed. The more your team understands, the more committed they’ll become.

You can hold workshops or use other training tools like videos, presentations and guest speakers to achieve commitment. Once your team knows why they want to change and what it takes, everyone needs to determine how to keep themselves accountable daily. Also, you want to create a plan to measure progress as well. Remember that when people know what you expect of them, they're more likely to succeed.

3. Build Trust in the Process

To coach your team to transformation, you have to build trust. People who struggle with their behaviors don't often think they can be successful and change how they act. They may already believe that those limiting behaviors are part of who they are, so they don't see any point in changing.

Alternately, you could have an organization that's stuck. In other words, people perform by rote. You need to show your team that you believe in them and want them to succeed at change and innovation. One of the most vital things you could do is listen to what they have to say, focus on their strengths and celebrate small wins.

4. Discuss the Benefits of Transformation

The transformational coaching process also means you need to discuss transformation benefits with your team. You want to make sure your team sees how the changes proposed benefit them personally and how it benefits the organization. Your team should understand why they make changes and what they can expect.

Discussing the benefits of transformation allows you to understand your team better. Are there any benefits they feel are missing? You may want to approach it with a series of meetings dedicated to addressing these concerns. Again, trust and listening are essential to the process. Transformation could cause stress, and you want to ensure the mental well-being of your team.

5. Provide Ongoing Support

One of the most critical aspects of transformational coaching is providing ongoing support. This doesn't just mean that you should only be there for someone when they feel like giving up. It also means being there to help your team members face their fears to achieve success. You may need to provide emotional support or even offer tangible guidance, such as how to break down a big goal into manageable tasks.

Transformational coaching isn't about quick fixes; it's about long-term behavior change. As a coaching leader, you need to ensure that your team knows this and commits to the process. Further, if you want actual transformative change for your nonprofit, you could hire an outside expert. This person will have the training to guide you and your team.

Finally, transformational coaching is successful when everyone is aligned, including the executive director, other executives, the board of directors, and team members. If you want to coach your team toward transformation, you need everyone to be on the same page about expectations. The CEO and board of directors must communicate clear goals to the team to know what they need to do and why. This helps create a sense of accountability to help your team reach its potential.