February 4, 2025
What It Takes to Be an Effective Group Coach
By Ken Giglio, Principal of Mindful Leadership
Group coaching is having its moment. It’s no surprise more and more organizations are implementing group coaching for their leaders and realizing the benefits such as:
- Cost effectiveness (vs. one-on-one)
- Peer Learning from diverse perspectives
- Scalability
- Networking across the organization
- Durable behavior changes
- Coaching skills development
- Well-being and resilience
- Feedback and accountability.
To be an effective group coach it’s critical to know the format you are working with before starting. In my years running a global coaching business, I’ve found when I ask coaches if they’ve done group coaching most say “yes.” When I ask them to describe the details of how they do group coaching, their process and approach, training, and core capabilities I get a mixed bag of answers.
One of the predominant areas for coach confusion is the difference between group and team coaching. Team coaching requires applying your coaching skills with a group of leaders who share common organizational and business goals and supporting them in leveraging their diversity, collective skills and wisdom, and interdependent relationships to learn and deliver results together.
Below is a definition of group coaching from Erek Ostrowski, author of the upcoming book, Group Coaching Foundations: Leveraging Group Reflection and Learning in Coaching. Erek is a scholar/author, coach, colleague, and friend who partners with Mindful Leadership to deliver group coaching to organizations and trains internal and external coaches to be more effective group coaches.
“Group coaching is the application of coaching principles (such as active listening, meaningful questioning, designing actions, and managing accountability) to a small group of peer colleagues…
- across multiple sessions,
- facilitated by a skilled professional (coach), and
- in service of individual, collective, personal, and/or organizational learning and goals.”
Many coaches think they can simply apply and get by with their one-on-one coach skills and approach in their work with groups. Though the same competencies can be applied to some extent, there is much more to be considered when working with a group versus one person. The number of relationships in the room expands exponentially when we consider we are in relationship with ourselves, each other in the room, and we carry in all our professional and personal relationships in conscious and unconscious ways.
In addition, as Erek points out, “Group coaching reaches ‘beyond the dyad’ to enable levers of learning and change not available in 1:1 coaching. These levers include vicarious learning, connectedness and belonging, and role flexibility—among other factors.”
So, there is a lot to be aware of and actively manage as a coach leading a group. This is why it is critically important to have adequate training in the skills to run a group and a more than surface understanding of group dynamics. In this way, coaches can be better prepared to generate a collaborative learning environment among the group’s participants.
Effective group coaches have specialized knowledge and skills and know when and how to harness the group’s energy and attention on individual and organizational development goals, and they can compassionately challenge the group and individual members by creating a safe, feedback-rich environment.
As with all coaching, receiving training and certifications is only the beginning of the developmental journey for group coaches. From my experience, reflective practice, better known as coaching supervision (also having its moment), is essential for the ongoing development of coaches as they work with groups. Reflective practice not only helps harvest learning but is also the space where coaches can support each other’s well-being and share and process their experiences including their ethical dilemmas.
All signs point to group coaching as a compelling option for organizations looking to build their leadership benches.
To serve our client organizations and coaching clients, coaches can grow their effectiveness by
- upgrading our knowledge and skills through specific group coach training
- setting up groups to practice in real-time situations in organizational contexts
- accessing reflective practice (coaching supervision) 1:1 or in groups.
Please download our Peer Group Coaching whitepaper and contact us at info@mindful-leaders.com.
Mindful Leadership’s premier group coaching method is the missing link between the pressing issues leaders face in their day-to-day work and the meaningful connection and learning that sustains leadership effectiveness over time. It’s a lower-cost and scalable complement to 1:1 coaching that develops leadership capacity and increases business results.