Group Coaching

A Practical Guide to Optimizing Collective Talent in Any Organization

Ro Gorell

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780749467593
• eBook ISBN: 9780749467609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Group Coaching is everything you need to run successful coaching sessions effectively. Based on 20 years of HR, consulting and practical coaching experience, this book offers tools, tips, ideas, different perspectives and easy-to-use templates. Group coaching on its own is a powerful tool and when linked to your talent strategy becomes the means to optimize collective talent in any organization.

Part One

The context of group coaching

01

Why it’s important to start with self

Discovering the reasons you’re interested in group coaching

Purpose, meaning, vocation and mission; these words conjure up different things for different people. I’m guessing that you don’t wake up every morning wondering what the purpose of your work is. If we are to believe the statistics, the majority of employees go into work every day without really engaging in what they’re doing. They are physically present but mentally they’re somewhere else. In tough economic times there’s a perceived view that people are ‘waiting it out’ till the economy improves before switching jobs. So why is that? You know the answer already – they are lacking purpose in what they do. Wouldn’t it be great if through group coaching they could find a purpose for the work they do and feel engaged with the organization for which they work. And wouldn’t it be great if organizations used group coaching as a means to activate their talent management strategy to create collegiate and collaborative working so that they could leverage all the talents of everyone in the organization. So do you know what your purpose is for group coaching? Think back to when you created your coaching philosophy. What was it in that philosophy that helped shape how you work with your clients? Was there something in there that was bigger than you or beyond what and who you are?

Having worked in a corporate environment for a large proportion of my working life I am well versed in the finer points of creating corporate mission statements. Just to be clear, that is not what we are talking about here. This is more visceral than fine words on a PowerPoint slide. This is about the higher value of coaching people in groups – what it does for you, how it shapes who you are and will become.

In Figure 1.1, I outline some of the things that point towards your purpose.

FIGURE 1.1

Your purpose is greater than the sum of these parts and pulls together all the components to create your unique group coaching meaning. Bringing out your unconscious meaning to a purposeful awareness will help shape how you work with groups and how they experience you as their coach. Sure, you can be a good coach by just demonstrating skill and knowledge; if you want others to push themselves beyond what even they thought possible then you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve done that yourself. Coaching groups to liberate talent starts with taking yourself in hand and exploring your real purpose.

My group coaching purpose is to help people connect with others with their head, heart and inner strength – otherwise known as spirit – so that they have access to the capacity to grow and develop together. Anyone can be great given the right environment, support, process and opportunity to practise. I have a mission to work with organizations to help them tap into 100 per cent of their employees’ potential so that they can grow both as individuals and as an organization, and this is how I define true talent management. Our purpose is defined by the legacy we create, and optimizing all the talents in a way that derives benefit from the collective and collaborative way in which those talents are put to use is what drives me. As individuals our legacy is the energy footprint we leave behind when we’re no longer there – either because we’ve moved on to something or someplace new.

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Learning to live with another and to see oneself in the whole and see the whole in oneself. That learning to live with one another is all about being aware of our impact and our potential. That we're not alone, that we do exist in a world where there are other people... it's really about realizing potential and overcoming toleration, to see that living in our differences is actually a joyous and abundant experience.

Lorna McDowell, MD Xenergie

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What is the legacy that you want to leave behind?

Do you get where I’m coming from here? Your purpose drives you on even when times are tough, and gives you that added resilience to cope with things when they don’t necessarily go according to plan. In those situations, my role as a group coach is to work with coachees and help them find ways to move from a position of feeling powerless, uncertain, helpless and stuck to a place where they are able to harness inner strength, create purposeful action and move forward towards their goal. My purpose helps me do just that. So you can see that having your own purpose clear and at the forefront of how you work with groups will define what type of group coach you are. Knowing your purpose and working out how you will manifest it is also about being clear on the means by which you will do so. Another coach, Angela Dunbar, who is a master of clean language coaching and emergent knowledge, delivers many of her group coaching sessions via the internet and teleclasses. Having experienced health and back problems, she wanted to find a way of working with people in groups that would reduce travel and yet allow her the opportunity to share her passion. And both of these aspects form part of her purpose:

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I think there are two things – there’s the fact that working in groups as opposed to one-to-one I personally find more energy-giving. I give energy but I get something back at the end of it. I can feel energized. If I had to travel halfway across the country to do it, then by the time I get back home I’ve lost some of that energy. But if I’m doing it this way [via the internet] I get to keep some of the energy – energy from the group. But there’s also the energy I get from sharing my passion for clean coaching.

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Knowing your purpose and being congruent is at the heart of authority and in the context of group coaching it is about the authority and credibility to work with coachees from a position of affinity: to demonstrate that you ‘get them’ at a deep level because you’ve done the work on yourself and are able to put yourself in their shoes. We will look at the coaching process later in the book; suffice to say that most coaching sessions start with an outcome. And as any coach will tell you, the outcome usually has importance attached to it and that’s where purpose starts.

Finding your place on your journey

Clarity of purpose defines your group coaching journey and sets the scene for where you want to go and where you’ve come from. I’ve purposely used the word journey to get away from possibly more restrictive words like plan, strategy, steps or process because I want you to tap into the more creative and lateral part of your mind that knows stuff and will give you insights. Labelling it a plan or strategy at this stage might hinder unconscious processing; this is the start of the beginner’s mindset.

Here’s a simple exercise you can do for yourself and, if you like it, use with groups. And if you don’t like it, get curious about what it is you don’t like. Sometimes I purposely use tools that I don’t like because not everyone is like me; and I’ve been amazed at how receptive others can be to stuff that I don’t like.

The concept

Creating a spatial representation of your group coaching journey will trigger insights about what it means to you, where you’ve come from, where you want to go and how you might get there.

The exercise

1 Take a piece of paper and, allowing yourself just to go with the flow, put a mark on the paper of where you are now in relation to group coaching.

2 Now, put a mark on the paper of where you want to go in relation to group coaching.

3 Put a mark on the paper of where you’ve come from in relation to group coaching.

4 Next join the three marks together in whatever way that makes sense and looks ok to you.

5 What do you notice about:

– The position on the page of the marks you’ve made – top, bottom, diagonally opposite, next to each other, close, far apart...?

– The shape and size of the marks you made on the page – dots, squares, circles...?

– The size of the paper you’ve chosen – is it a piece of flipchart paper, or is it a sticky note or maybe a piece of scrap paper that you had to hand...? Did you use one piece of paper?

– The colour and type of pen you’ve chosen – is it a thick marker pen, a ballpoint pen, felt tip, blue, green, red...?

– The type of connector you drew to join the three marks together – a straight line, zigzag line, wiggly line...?

6 Ask yourself these questions and any others that spring to mind:

– What does this mean to you?

– What insights do you have about how your mind represents your journey?

– What does it say about your past, current and future journey in group coaching?

– What can you take from the past and bring into the present?

– How can you use what you know in the present to go forward into the future?

– What did you feel about doing this exercise?

– What beliefs were present as you read the text and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction : taking the group coaching journey
• Part one: The cintext of group coaching
• Part two: Creating a group coaching strategy
• Part three: Tools and processes
• Part four: Measuring success
• Part five: Group coaching as talent liberation
• References
• Further reading
• Index
• Full imprint