Some activities work best in a group: brainstorming sessions, retrospective meetings, and even team bonding activities. These gatherings encourage conversation and insight-sharing — leading to outcomes you wouldn’t have found independently.
Other undertakings don’t instinctively fit into a group model. When you think about taking charge of your personal wellness or professional goals, you may not imagine doing so with the support of others in a group coaching session.
Individualized work with a coach can be an excellent step toward achieving your self-improvement aspirations. But even though the personalized approach of 1:1 coaching can help you set laser-focused goals and create a tailored plan to reach them, it won’t expose you to the ideas and support of peers. Sometimes, a group coaching model is a better choice.
So, is this coaching approach right for you? Here’s an in-depth look at this solution for individuals seeking personal and professional growth who want to benefit from the rich conversation, idea-sharing, and connections that working together provides.
What’s group coaching?
Group coaching is a model in which people with similar goals work with a coach in a group setting. The coach guides the group through a series of sessions that approach personal or professional aspirations and guide participants toward them. The model is flexible and the group coaching framework can help participants tackle anything from fostering a more creative mindset to launching a business.
Some group coaching courses take place online, while others are in person — often in the workplace, though it could also be a third location like a coworking space. Companies may invite a coach to work with a group of employees who have a shared goal, like improving their leadership skills.
At BetterUp, we approach group coaching through our Coaching Circles™programs where a BetterUp coach leads participants through evidence-based educational content and group discussions. These programs help organizations that want to implement coaching on topics like resilience, feedback, and productivity among a large audience and build trust between peers.
16 benefits of group coaching
All coaching programs, whether individual or group, help people attain personal or professional growth and satisfaction. However, the group model comes with a specific set of benefits encouraged by the unique setting. Here’s what group coaching can do to morph individual lives, team dynamics, and the success of organizations:
For individuals
Group coaching programs impact each participant differently. Unlike training sessions, in which everyone learns a specific skill, group coaching encourages introspection and invites members to approach the journey to their goals in a way that drives meaningful results.
Cohort models help individuals:
1. Form social connections
2. Share insights and learn from others
3. Foster conflict-resolution skills
4. Increase emotional intelligence and self-awareness
5. Understand group dynamics
For groups
Group coaching reaps the benefits of healthy social dynamics and shared experiences. Sharing spurs feelings of happiness, belonging, and emotional well-being. Coaching, particularly in a group setting, has the power to:
6. Foster collective wisdom
7. Increase knowledge transfer
8. Help participants develop leadership skills
9. Raise awareness about organizational structures
10. Encourage team-wide accountability
11. Push team members to rally behind shared goals
For organizations
Many organizations now have a stronger sense of teamwork thanks to the onset of popular group-based project management styles like Agile. Teams work quickly and collectively to drive organizational results.
Companies that coach employees to work well together and learn from one another stand to benefit from cleaner operations, shared accountability, and, in turn, better outcomes. Group coaching can help organizations:
12. Establish a relationship between individual and group efforts and organizational outcomes
13. Foster employee engagement and loyalty
14. Drive cross-functional knowledge transfer between team members who wouldn’t otherwise interact
15. Improve products and services thanks to heightened information-sharing and collaboration
16. Push employees to continue self-directed learning and sharpen competencies useful to the organization
What to expect in a group coaching session
No two group coaching sessions are exactly alike. You might work in small groups or participate in significant organizational interventions, take a self-paced course, or chat with peers virtually instead of in person. You have the power to choose what kind of format works best for you — whether that’s in-depth group discussions or quiet individual sharing. There’s also a chance that you and your team have short, individual sessions instead of an on-going commitment.
An excellent way to understand the range of group coaching’s reach is to consider the model in practice. Here are four mock set-ups for group coaching courses to ground your learning.
Example #1: Group business coaching
A coaching group of burgeoning entrepreneurs meets for a weekly online course to learn how to set goals, determine metrics and milestones, and launch ideas. The webinar helps innovators with the brainstorming phase of entrepreneurial creation and pushes them to choose the best service or product and vet its viability. After their learnings from the coaching model, entrepreneurs have a clear action plan and metrics for determining whether a project is successful or requires recharting.
Example #2: Work-life balance group coaching
People at various career stages meet in a virtual coaching course that focuses on establishing a healthy work-life balance. Participants meet with the coach bi-weekly for three months and work to determine their wellness needs and pinpoint stress areas. Then, they meet in small groups and speak directly with the facilitator to discuss work-life balance issues and chart routes to a more sustainable rhythm that prioritizes time for family, friends, and self-care.
Example #3: Sales team coaching
A sales team receives in-person, on-site coaching twice a month in a group session covering how to improve marketing techniques and align practices to company goals. Participants practice making more confident sales calls, set individual objectives that align with organizational ones, and devise plans for implementing them. Throughout the course, the team builds trust, fosters mutual respect, and benefits from information sharing — thanks to group members sharing sales tactics and skills with one another.
Example #4: Creativity tapping
A group of people who want to think more creatively and tap into their talents meets locally to discuss what’s holding them back from exploring their artistry. The coach helps participants overcome their fears and assigns exploratory homework in which individuals can try creative projects they were hesitant to tackle before. Group members leave the course feeling confident in their ability to generate innovative ideas.
Is group coaching right for you?
How do you determine whether to seek group or individual coaching sessions? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to self-improvement — it depends on you.
Compare yourself to an ideal group candidate and see if any of their traits or needs resonate with you. Successful group coaching is excellent for people who:
Have a common goal
If you share a topical goal with others — such as improving time management skills — you’ll have better luck finding a group coaching course that satisfies your needs than someone with a very specific area for improvement.
Group coaching is also a solid option for organizations that have spotted a common need among their employees, like a lack of resiliency. The company can seek the services of a coach specializing in approaching that subject matter with everyone at once.
Prefer to listen and learn
It might sound counterintuitive, but you may thrive in a group coaching setting if you’re an introvert or have trouble opening up in 1:1 conversations. In a group, the onus won’t always be on you to talk, and you can learn and respond to others' ideas. In some sessions, you might not even speak at all — and that’s okay.
If and when you do open up, you may even build strong bonds with your peers and learn to feel safe sharing your inner thoughts. Everyone else in the group is in the same position as you, so you can be vulnerable together.
Are limited by employer offerings
Group coaching can be a more affordable option than individual coaching. If you’re on a budget, consider starting with a collective course. If the experience is satisfying and you want to continue learning in a 1:1 coaching model, you can ask your manager if the company would cover individual training.
Group coaching is also a solid investment for companies. For an established fee, the organization can coach many employees at once and quickly boost hard and soft skills. And the expenditure in coaching may continue to pay out in higher revenues due to better employee performance or other savings, such as decreased turnover, thanks to improved employee satisfaction.
Want accountability support
Coaches are pros at providing accountability and support for their clients. Spreading out the responsibility among a group can intensify this experience, which is particularly helpful for people who really struggle to remain accountable.
In group coaching models, you observe and encourage others on their journeys — and they do the same for you. And since you’re all pushing toward a similar goal, you can quickly notice if you’re falling behind and work to remove whatever is holding you back. And if you aren’t reaching your goals, you’ll see that you’re not the only one, which can reassure you.
Individual versus group coaching
Group coaching shares many of the same core goals as 1:1 models. Like individual coach-client relationships, collective coaching programs aim to help people discover their inner motivations, tap into their skills, and reach their goals — just in the company of others.
However, the 1:1 model remains unique in a few key ways. Individual coaching:
- Allows coaches and clients to tailor a bespoke action plan for a unique goal
- Fosters a bond between the coach and client
- Places accountability solely on the client (with motivational support from the coach)
- Pushes clients to have vulnerable conversations about their inner workings and areas of improvement
- Can meet the client’s scheduling needs and desired session frequency
- Often affords frequent progress check-ins for the client and greater direct access to the coach
Learn more about yourself with effective group coaching
Group settings encourage you to learn about others, appreciate interpersonal dynamics, and share information. And these characteristics of collective work are what make group coaching so powerful.
But group coaching is also an opportunity to learn about yourself. Coaches guide these programs so that everyone involved creates personal goals and a tailored plan to reach them — even when the objective is a shared one. And whether you’re interested in life coaching, professional coaching, or another type, BetterUp has a coach for you.
Seek out group coaching and learn not only about your peers but also about your motivations, desires, and areas of opportunity.
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