Corporate – Group Coaching
What is Group Coaching?
Group coaching is all about creating action, decision and self-discovery within a group.
In traditional coaching, there’s a powerful and direct relationship between the client and coach whereby the coach makes room for direct learning and conversation. When it comes to group coaching, on the other hand, the coach involved doesn’t have that as their primary role. In this type of coaching the coach provides and encourages an exploratory and learning space between all the group members involved.
Look at it this way, imagine each individual in the group has with them a well of questions, knowledge, concerns, strength and certain capabilities. This type of coaching’s main objective is where members of the group can have access to the combined ideas, knowledge, passion and wisdom in the room. It does all this while maintaining the respect of the privacy of these members. It only requires what each person in the group is willing to give and how much of it they want to share. Many people distinguish between team coaching and group coaching. They usually define a team as being a group of individuals whose members share similar goals and purpose and work with each other in the same organization.
Different Approaches
to Group Coaching
- Peer Coaching And Group Discussion – Most coaches will introduce peer coaching as one of the components of their program, particularly when it concerns this coaching technique. Peer coaching involves peer to peer conversations, sharing, questioning and accountability. You can include peer coaching opportunities throughout the whole coaching process, for example, in between group sessions or during group discussions.
- Laser Coaching – Typically, laser coaching involves brief bursts of one on one coaching during sessions. It entails spending about seven to ten minutes coaching individual group members on topics of their choice or that is related to the general group topic. This format work best in small groups, however, you can also use it on large groups as well. Coaches will ensure that those that want laser coaching get a chance to do so. The rest of the members of the group should pay keen attention to the questions you’re asking the individual being laser coached and determine how it impacts each one of them.
- Learning Partners – In the spirit of keeping the conversation going, learning buddies or partners may be created or assigned at the beginning of the group coaching process to help meet the coaching touchpoints. A few of the several benefits of assigning learning buddies include trust, intimacy and connection within the group, as well as deepen the conversations around the key topics. Usually, when a learning partner is incorporated in organizational programming, the new relationships they foster help encourage enhanced capacity development.
- Hybrid Approach Format – The hybrid approach formats are a blend of group coaching and one on one conversations. It can be extremely useful in contexts involving this coaching technique. Participants get both individual conversation depths as well as the breadth of group coaching conversations. This type of approach keeps the coach involved focusing on common interest areas and core foundations of the group being coached. It allows each client involved in the program to explore their interest areas in a much more focused manner.
- Individual Reflection – The opportunities of this approach are effective between sessions, during ongoing sessions, in-person or online. The integration of activities involving individual reflection approaches happens to be extremely useful in the situations where team/group members are more introverted or aren’t necessarily verbal processors. This approach formats provide team/group members with an opportunity of capturing their thoughts. It is also ideal when dealing with groups that happen to be very diverse.