The Importance of Team Coaching to Support Succession Planning in Employee-Owned Trusts

An Employee-Owned Trust (EOT) is a form of employee ownership where a trust holds a controlling stake in a company on behalf of all employees, so the benefits of ownership are shared collectively rather than through individual shareholdings. In the UK, EOTs have become a mainstream succession route over the past decade, with rapid growth since the 2014 legislative changes. Today, the employee-owned sector is estimated at around 2,470 businesses, and 2024 alone saw 681 new EOTs (a 25% increase on 2023), underlining how quickly this model is expanding. 

When founders transfer ownership into an Employee-Owned Trust, the share structure changes overnight—but leadership capability doesn’t magically renew itself. In fact, this moment can expose a risk: the organisation may have relied heavily on the founder’s relationships, judgement, and informal influence to keep priorities clear and tensions contained.  

Without deliberate attention to talent succession, the business can drift into “collective ownership but individual dependency,” where some people are engaged in supporting the growth of the business but they may not be in the right roles. 

Maintaining leadership capability means identifying critical roles early, developing successors and building a deeper bench of commercial and people leadership—so the company’s performance, culture, and confidence stay strong as new leaders step up and employees experience ownership not just as a legal structure, but as a sustainable way of working. 

This is where team coaching becomes a strategic advantage. Team coaching helps leadership teams build the habits and relationships required to lead well in an ownership culture: honest dialogue, clear accountability, and confident decision-making. In practical terms, it strengthens the “how” of leadership—how people collaborate under pressure, how they handle disagreement, and how they align around priorities—so the organisation isn’t dependent on a single individual’s style or authority. 

Team coaching can also accelerate capability-building. Instead of relying solely on individual development, it develops leadership capacity collectively: decision rules, communication rhythms, and ways of working that newcomers can quickly adopt. That means succession planning becomes less risky, because continuity is held in the team system—not locked inside one leader’s head. 

For Employee-Owned Trusts aiming for resilient succession planning, team coaching offers a practical route to sustainable leadership: stronger alignment, faster onboarding into roles, and a culture that can absorb change without losing momentum.