At Inclusive Leadership Company, we use group coaching as, through shared experiences, group coaching enables leaders to grow together and close the gap between their learning and real, personalised situations. Specific benefits to group coaching include:
- The research evidence consistently demonstrates the effectiveness of group coaching.
- Group coaching is scalable and efficient (particularly when compared to one-to-one coaching).
- Group coaching can simultaneously develop participants coaching skills as they take on the role of peer coach, gaining multiple experiences of both being coached and coaching others.
When using group coaching for inclusion, there are two key factors you need to consider:
- Methodology: we combine peer coaching and reflective observation and everyone has equitable opportunity to experience all roles.
There are a range of effective approaches to structure group coaching sessions. We use a blended approach that combines ‘hot seat’ peer coaching and group reflective observation.
Participants take on one of three roles: coachee (who shares their experience), the coaching team (who asks questions) and the observing team (who observe and reflects back).
Hot seat peer coaching is when each participant takes a turn in the hot seat. They share their coaching issue, goal or problem statement (the facilitator assists in helping them to formulate this succinctly). The facilitators and rest of the group then take turns to ask the hot seat participant open coaching questions to encourage them to reflect on their issue and see their issue from new and unique perspectives. The observing team then is tasked to share their feedback on what they observed in the discussion. After listening to the observing teams feedback, the facilitator finally asks the coachee to share one action they will take away and work on.
Combining hot seat coaching with group reflective observation is a powerful methodology to explore topics such as inclusion. We find that the experience enables individuals to:
- Work on a core issue that is important to them (while in the coachee role).
- Nurture inclusive leader traits: curiosity, empathy, courage and humility (while in the observing team role).
- Practice and develop coaching skills in a safe space, forming the foundation for inclusive leader behaviours (while in the coaching team role).
- Learn from observing others, gaining glimpses of others experiences and ways of thinking.
- Building deep bonds and connections that are sustained outside of the coaching session.
2. Ensure key skills are in place: Effective group coaching depends on the skills of the facilitators.
Group coaching facilitators must be well versed in coaching skills, however, they also need facilitation and teaching skills, as the group coach spans many roles during the group coaching session. Here are our top three priorities for group coaching facilitators:
- Creating the safe space for the work to be done. In group coaching, we are expecting people to get open and vulnerable, usually with their work peers, very quickly. It takes a high level of coaching skills for the facilitators to contract and set the conditions for this to happen and maintain the conditions throughout the session as the discussion evolves.
- Educating. A core outcome for group coaching is that participants learn how to coach. This means that facilitators often have to pivot into different roles throughout the session, for example, pausing coaching to switch to teaching mode during a critical moment to highlight examples of great coaching practice or share feedback on areas to improve.
- Time keeping. We cannot over emphasise the importance of this enough! If the time is not kept too, each participant will not be able to contribute and participate in all roles. This will compromise their experience, feelings of fairness as well as their psychological safety (if they do not get the opportunity to contribute, as the facilitator, you have effectively silenced them with poor time keeping). Effective time keeping in group coaching means balancing the needs of the individuals with the needs of the group. Sometimes this means stepping in to move the group on when necessary. Sometimes it means judging when one participant might need a little more time than others, while maintaining one eye on the overall experience for everyone. All while maintaining the safe, containing space needed for the session. Effective time keeping means that no participant ever feels rushed or like time is an issue. This is one of the many reasons why we always recommend that group coaching is conducted with two facilitators, managing the time while maintaining safety, is both complicated and critical.
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Create Inclusive Leadership Capability with Group Coaching
Built on scientific evidence from a range of disciplines, we developed our Inclusive Leader Programme to target behaviour change where it really matters. Our programme covers all aspects of the learning cycle, ensuring that Inclusive Leadership is not only developed at the knowledge level, but it is transferred back to real situations in the workplace, maximising outcomes such as innovation and performance for individuals, teams, and the organisation as a whole.
Combining knowledge sharing, assessment, group coaching, guided applied learning and the option to add in an avatar experience, our Inclusive Leader Programme combines data-led insights with the safe, reflective space of group coaching to directly target behaviour change.
To find out more about our Inclusive Leader Programme, contact us at enquiries@inclusiveleadershipcompany.com
