Everyone or No-One: The Role of One-to-One Coaching Sessions in Team Coaching
With Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong
Episode 26 of the Teams Transformed Podcast
About Teams Transformed
Teams Transformed is the podcast for courageous coaches, curious leaders, and anyone passionate about unlocking the true power of teams. Hosted by TCS Founder and Senior Faculty Georgina Woudstra and Allard De Jong, listen to explore transformational insights on how to coach teams with presence, depth, and emergence, diving into not just the tools, but the art of team coaching itself.
About this episode
In this episode of Teams Transformed, Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong explore the role of one-to-one coaching within a team coaching engagement, continuing the unfolding journey of the executive team at the fictional ACME Incorporated. Building on the previous episodes in the Where Teams Come Alive series, they reflect on what emerged from their individual coaching conversations with each team member and how those insights inform the next stage of the team's development.
Rather than treating one-to-one coaching as a separate intervention, Georgina and Allard demonstrate how individual coaching can deepen the overall team coaching process when it remains firmly in service of the team's shared learning agenda. They discuss how many executives initially arrived focused on personal goals, career progression, or the challenges within their own functional teams, requiring careful contracting to continually reconnect coaching conversations with the effectiveness of the executive team as a whole.
Throughout their debrief, they identify recurring patterns across the individual sessions. Many team members showed limited awareness of themselves as members of the executive team, identifying more strongly with leading their own departments than contributing to collective leadership. This revealed the need for ongoing work around self-awareness, contact, shared purpose, and personal responsibility within the team system.
The conversation also introduces the idea of "always be contacting" alongside "always be contracting." Georgina explains how coaches continually support clients in staying connected to their present-moment experience rather than deflecting toward analysis, past events, or discussions about other people. Together, they explore how deeper contact creates the conditions for genuine learning and behavioural change.
As the discussion unfolds, Georgina and Allard also address practical questions frequently raised by team coaches: when one-to-one coaching is valuable, how confidentiality should be managed, why every team member should be included if individual coaching is offered, and how coaches can avoid becoming intermediaries for unresolved conflict. Rather than solving problems on behalf of the team, they emphasise helping individuals develop the awareness and courage to bring important conversations back into the collective team space.
This episode offers an honest behind-the-scenes look at how experienced team coaches make sense of individual coaching conversations, integrate emerging themes, and continually adapt the overall coaching journey. It highlights that lasting team transformation depends not only on collective interventions but also on supporting individual development in ways that strengthen the whole system.
Key Themes Explored in this episode
One-to-One Coaching Serves the Team
Individual coaching is most valuable when it remains connected to the team's shared learning agenda. Personal development becomes meaningful when it strengthens each person's contribution to collective team effectiveness rather than focusing solely on individual ambitions.
Always Be Contacting
Alongside ongoing contracting, Georgina introduces the principle of "always be contacting." Coaches continually help clients stay connected to their present-moment experience instead of retreating into analysis, intellectualisation, or discussions about others.
Executive Teams Often Think Functionally
Many senior leaders naturally identify with leading their own departments rather than functioning as members of the executive team. Developing a stronger collective identity becomes a central developmental task.
Self-Awareness Precedes Team Growth
The coaching conversations revealed that many team members found it easier to analyse others than to recognise their own impact. Building self-awareness creates the foundation for stronger collaboration and healthier team dynamics.
Confidentiality Has Clear Boundaries
One-to-one coaching creates psychological safety, but coaches should avoid becoming messengers between team members. Instead, coaching supports individuals in bringing important conversations back into the team where they belong.
Individual Development Supports Collective Transformation
Some developmental work, such as exploring deeply rooted behavioural patterns or beliefs, is better suited to private coaching conversations before those insights can be brought into the team setting.
Shared Learning Goals Continue to Emerge
Rather than defining learning goals once, coaches continually refine them as new awareness emerges. Individual development goals become increasingly aligned with the evolving needs of the whole team.
Preparation Shapes Future Team Sessions
The debrief between coaches becomes a critical intervention in itself, allowing patterns across individual coaching sessions to inform future team coaching work around awareness, leadership, purpose, and conflict.
Coaching Is a Shared Learning Process
Georgina and Allard demonstrate the value of coaching partnerships, where reflection and collaborative sense-making help coaches understand the wider system more effectively than working alone.
Key Takeaways
🌱 One-to-one coaching is most effective when it serves the team's development.
🤝 Individual coaching conversations should continually reconnect to collective team goals.
🪞 Self-awareness is often the biggest developmental opportunity for executive teams.
👂 "Always be contacting" helps clients stay present with their experience.
🔄 Coaches should avoid becoming intermediaries for unresolved team conflict.
🔐 Clear confidentiality boundaries build trust while keeping responsibility with the team.
🧩 Individual learning goals become stronger when informed by team feedback.
🗣 Executive teams benefit from developing a stronger identity as one leadership team.
📈 Coach debriefs help identify emerging patterns that shape future interventions.
✨ Lasting team transformation develops through both collective and individual learning.
Why listen?
This episode offers a valuable behind-the-scenes perspective on one of the most frequently debated aspects of team coaching: the role of one-to-one coaching within a broader team coaching engagement. Georgina Woudstra and Allard de Jong share practical experience from their work with the fictional ACME executive team, illustrating how individual coaching conversations can enrich, not distract from, the team's collective development.
Listeners will gain insight into common challenges faced during executive team coaching, including balancing individual and collective agendas, strengthening self-awareness, maintaining effective confidentiality, and supporting leaders in becoming genuine members of a leadership team rather than simply heads of functions. The episode also introduces practical coaching principles such as "always be contacting," demonstrating how presence and awareness underpin meaningful behavioural change.
Whether you are an experienced team coach, leadership coach, organisational consultant, or senior leader, this conversation provides thoughtful guidance on integrating individual and team development in ways that foster deeper trust, stronger collaboration, and more sustainable transformation.
About your hosts
Georgina Woudstra is the Founder and Senior Faculty of Team Coaching Studio, an ICF Master Certified Coach (MCC) with over 20 years of experience. Georgina is recognised globally as one of the leading lights in team coaching and was among the first coaches to receive ICF's Advanced Certificate in Team Coaching.
Allard De Jong is a seasoned leadership development expert with two decades of experience solving organisational 'people problems' and accelerating leadership development. He brings a unique perspective on transformative inquiry and divergent thinking to team coaching practice.
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