Group Coaching (Ideal For Teams Experiencing Change)

Why consider group coaching in your organisation?

✔️ More budget-friendly than 1 to 1 coaching

✔️ Deeper cross-functional relationships and development

✔️ Extended life cycle as the group becomes self-sustaining

✔️ To assist your group through lots of change

✔️ Help teams bond even when working from home or remotely

✔️ Resolve issues & challenges before they escalate.

What is group coaching?

Group coaching is an on-going conversation, which supports change over time. Traditional coaching is typically seen as a 1:1 relationship where one coach works with one client and typically deep dives into one has a conversation theme. Group coaching brings the coaching conversation into a small group context either virtually or face-to-face. It is focused on gaining a deeper awareness around key issues, supporting group members, taking action, and accountability. Our clients tell us it is extremely helpful to have an external & independent coach to facilitate difficult conversations & brainstorming sessions etc.

What are the benefits of group coaching to your organisation?

1. Provide support & structure for senior managers & teams going through significant change and/or wanting to reach new heights together.
2. Teamwork – Learning from others means the group benefits from peer learning. This also helps open communication between silos or group members in different parts of the organization creating new networks
3. Lower price point per person – group coaching allows the lead coach to work with more people over less time, thus lowering the investment price per participant
4. Improved management skills – The group can be used to focus on many areas including the development and improvement of processes, services, products etc.
5. Improved interpersonal skills – the dynamic encourages peer consultation and collaboration and thus increases team functioning and maturity
6. Fosters a culture of ongoing learning – which builds and accelerates the organization’s learning capacity and ability to share across levels of employees or departments
7. Training support – Group coaching can also be useful for training follow-on, supporting learners in taking their knowledge and applying it and in creating an on-going accountability structure
8. Scalable – the lead coach can work with multiple groups at a time. And because the group becomes self-sufficient by the nature of the process, the lead coach can begin again with new groups after a certain period

As a participant of group coaching you will benefit from:

• Deeper trust and collaboration among peers and across departments
• Better understanding of the issues, motivations, and intentions of colleagues and stakeholders
• Improved strategic thinking, reflection, reframing, questioning, problem-solving planning, and time management skills
• Improved listening, coaching, questioning, and feedback skills
• Increased presentation, facilitation, and communication skills
• Increased responsibility for their own personal development

What does a typical programme look like

Group coaching can take different forms depending on the brief and needs of the organisation. And here are some examples of group coaching programmes:

Example #1: A four-month programme with 45 min sessions every 2 weeks focussing on solving a specific problem (for example how to work effectively as a virtual team) or improving a specific project.

Example #2: Group coaching for new managers – talent teams etc as a follow-on to leadership topics e.g. managing through change, building trust in virtual teams, time management etc. Consists of 1-hour monthly virtual meetings over a year.

Example #3: A group coaching program for senior managers exploring leadership strengths and weaknesses – face to face, half-day kick-off session plus 2-hour sessions over six months.

How would we proceed?

Group coaching is different for every business here’s what I’d suggest we do next….

• Let’s have a chat about your objectives for group coaching
• Discuss potential members of the group and elements of brief
• Agree that group coaching is a great solution for your needs
• Develop a programme that will hit objectives and work within calendar requirements
• Brief participants with any prep work etc.
• Begin programme
• Review progress and adapt accordingly
• Decrease lead coach role and frequency so group becomes self-sustaining without the need for external support of lead coach

How does group coaching work?

Step 1 – In the lead up to group coaching, we prefer to have pre-program video calls with each group member. The aim is to build rapport, answer any questions, understand their motivations and goals and ensure they are ready to hit the ground running. If the calls aren’t possible then this happens during the first group coaching conversation.

Step 2 – The agreed groups of individuals come together (virtually or face-to-face) to help each other deconstruct, discuss, and resolve workplace concerns. Ideally, there are 4-6 people who ‘meet’ seven or more times over 6-12 months. The team takes responsibility for solving their own problems through improved understanding, greater awareness, building knowledge, and improved interpersonal skills. The overall goal is to learn from and with each other in order to take effective actions.

Step 3 – The role of the lead coach is to help team members reflect on what they are learning and how they are solving problems. The lead coach may focus on things like:

• How the group is interacting
• How people are listening and asking questions
• How people are giving and receiving feedback
• How they approach problem-solving
• What mindsets and assumptions are shaping the conversations?
• What is the group doing well and what are they finding less easy?
• What processes they are using and how are they working

Step 4 – The lead coach facilitates most of the time at the beginning of the sessions and over time encourages group members to observe and regulate their own process and take on some facilitation responsibilities so that ultimately, they own the process fully.