What Are The Benefits of Group Coaching? | By Jennifer Britton

Jennifer is a thought leader in the realm of group coaching and has been working with teams and groups since the late 1980s. Group coaching is a growing field, and as you read on, some of you may find you've been group coaching for a while without even realising it. Below Jennifer outlines some great examples of group coaching as well as group coaching benefits for organizations, individuals and you, the coach.

As an increasing number of coaches and organizations look to integrate group coaching it is important to explore the benefits for clients, organizations and coaches alike. This article examines several of the group coaching benefits I mention in Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010).

Examples of Group Coaching in the public arena:

  • Business Coaching: A three-month group business coaching program is held by phone for service-based professionals. The focus of the program is on business visioning, goal setting, action and accountability.
  • A Retreat: A retreat process held over the course of several weeks by phone, focusing on better work-life balance issues. While the program is marketed as a retreat, the program is grounded in a group coaching approach. It builds on the core coaching competencies, focusing on goal setting, action, awareness and accountability for the group members.
  • Career Transition: A month long group coaching process is held in-person for people in career transition. The group meets in person weekly, exploring topics such as strengths, career inventories and vision.

Examples of Group Coaching in organizations:

  • Women transitioning back to the work force after maternity leave participate in a group coaching process. Benefits include enhancing their internal networks, and strengthened communication across the organization.
  • A global organization is building their own internal coaching culture, and key personnel from different offices are trained in coaching skills. Group coaching calls are held on a regular basis for six months after the initial training. They support group members to share their learning, take action on their learning plans, identify additional supports needed, and share best practices.
  • A national insurance organization equips their national training team with skills in group coaching, to enhance their own skill base in order to more effectively support their learners and new recruits, for better transferability of the learning process.

Group Coaching Benefits for Clients

Group coaching clients have identified the following as some of the benefits of a group coaching process:

  1. Peer Learning process: For clients, group coaching can be appealing as it involves a peer learning process.
    - Some coaching clients may prefer a collaborative group learning environment where they learn from the insights and contributions of peers, as they do from their own reflections.
    - For clients who are more introverted, the peer learning process may feel "less on the spot" and provide more time for reflection and articulation of their insights.
    - The "collective wisdom" created and explored is often identified as a key benefit.
  2. Lower Cost: The lower cost for a group coaching process may also be a contributing factor for coaching clients to say yes. Depending on how coaches position group coaching in their business mix, they may offer group coaching at a lower price point.

Group Coaching Benefits for Organizations

Many organizations across the public sector, private sector and non-profit world are now offering group coaching. Benefits of the group coaching process in organizations include:

  1. Scalability: In many organizations which have an established, or an evolving coaching culture, scalability is a key benefit to the group coaching approach. It can support the cascading involvement of professionals at lower levels of the organization. For example, organizations may look to create a group coaching process for new managers, or offer a group coaching program to sustain the conversation after a training initiative.
  2. Cross-functional fertilization and support for culture change: In today's business context of breaking down silos, a group coaching process often brings together individuals from different parts of an organization.
    - The conversations which ensue often create a web of relationships across departments, leading to the opportunity for the fertilization of ideas and different perspectives across seemingly disparate groups.
    - These new relationships across an organization often provide an important vehicle for culture change.
  3. Making it Stick: A decade ago, I was initially attracted to coaching as a leader myself, curious about how adding coaching to the retreat and training work I was doing with teams could support the transfer of learning. Today, many professionals are positioning group coaching as a follow-on to support learning initiatives, helping to make the learning stick.
  4. Lower Cost: The lower price per person can also be perceived as a benefit for organizations (public, private and non-profit) in seeking out group coaching programs for their staff.

Group Coaching Benefits for Coaches:

Group Coaching is not going to be a preference for all coaches. Some coaches may prefer the 'deep dive' we take with individual coaching clients. Others may enjoy the width and breadth a group coaching conversation leads the group in. The ability to create a safe environment where group members feel confident to engage in a coaching conversation, the ability to step back and let the group lead the process, can be a motivator for many group coaches.

  1. Leveraging time: Group Coaching can provide coaches with the opportunity to offer coaching services at a lower price point, while working with more clients.
  2. Scalability: With the leverage created by working with more people at one time, it may free up a coach to undertake additional activities within their business.

In summary: An important part of the coaching relationship involves finding out from those being coached what they see as the benefits.

Question for you: What do you see the benefits of group coaching for yourself, your clients and the organizations you work with?

If you liked this article about Group Coaching and Group Coaching Benefits, you may also like:

Jennifer Britton

Contributing Author:

Jennifer Britton, MES, CHRP, CPT, PCC, is the author of seven books and has influenced a generation of coaches in the realms of team and group coaching. You may have read her writing, including Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010), the first book in the world to be published on the topic of group coaching; From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching; or her latest, Reconnecting Workspaces: Pathways to Thrive in the Virtual, Remote and Hybrid World (2021).

Since 2006, Jennifer's Group Coaching Essentials and Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum programs have become known as the must-do training in the area of group coaching. Focused on providing coaches with best practices in designing, marketing and implementing group coaching, these programs have helped thousands of coaches launch their own group and team coaching programs in a wide variety of settings (public, corporate, non-profit). Together both courses are approved for 18.75 ICF CCEUs. These are the first two of 10 course pathways leading to certificates in Group and Team Coaching.

Potentials Realized's ICF-CCE programs are geared for aspiring group and team coaches, especially those wanting to work toward the New Advanced Credential in Team Coaching (ACTC) with the ICF.

Also check out our neuroscience course for group and team coaches (NLE-A), Team Coaching Essentials  and ACTIVATE Your Team and Group Coaching Superpowers. Prefer podcasts? Listen in to the Remote Pathways podcast, which explores the many different pathways to remote work, business and leadership.

Learn more about Jennifer & see all their articles here >>

15 Comments

  1. nichole

    This could not have come at a better time for me. I was interested in group coaching but I was not clear on the client benefits. This helped a lot. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Shad Morris

    I can understand how some teams don't work well together, and I was wondering if team coaching did anything for them. It's interesting that scalability can support involvement with professionals. I know that I would have some issues with that, and would probably benefit from it.

    Reply
  3. John

    Wow, I had no idea that group coaching could be so applicable. I really like how it mentions that coaching can be applied to things even as specific as women transitioning back into a workforce after leaving for maternity reasons. If I were a manager or a boss, I would see this as a great opportunity to educate and instruct my employees so that they can be successful and informed in their respective jobs.

    Reply
  4. Kevin Reed

    Hi Jenifer, you are absolutely right. Group coaching benefits both clients and establishments. By the help of a group coach, one can keep his cornerstone on his targets. He can surround himself with other competitors encountering almost identical provocations. He can gain incitement from group solace. Also, group coaching can make himself accountable and also he can grasp new aim setting, movement controlling, trouble management and other beneficial tactics. Moreover, I can say that group coaching is highly advantageous and it explores our inner strengths by which we will toast our victory without being sized up as a show-off.

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      Dear Kevin, thank-you for taking the time to comment. We are glad you enjoyed Jennifer's latest article - and seem to wholly agree with it 🙂 Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  5. Rosie Beckett

    I recently hired a lot of new employees onto the team that I supervise and I am thinking about enrolling all of them in a group coaching program so that they can learn leadership skills and get to know each other better. You make a great point that this coaching would give my team a chance to collaborate and learn to work together, which is vital for the success of my company. In the long run, this would benefit my company and help us to create better and long-lasting relationships with our clients as well as co-workers.

    Reply
    • Emma-Louise

      So glad you found this article helpful Rosie 🙂 I would definitely check out programs that Jennifer offers too (the article author). Warmly, Emma-Louise

      Reply
  6. Callum Palmer

    I've never really thought about doing this as a group. As you said, it does have some benefits from doing this by yourself. I'll have to look more into this as I think it would for sure benefit me.

    Reply
  7. Eli Richardson

    I liked how you said that scalability is a key benefit to the group coaching approach. One of my friends recently hired a few employees, and he wants to prepare them. I'll advise him to enroll them in a coaching course.

    Reply
  8. careercliff

    Coaching is obviously important. The issue is to identify the right coaching. Aa article like this will be very handy to decide.

    Reply

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