Reflections on Group Coaching Training

Jessica Chivers | December 2024.

This ‘reflective essay’ was written at the end of a three month Professional Group Coaching programme with coaching psychologist Ana Paula Nacif. I share as a window on Group Coaching training and to inspire and encourage other executive coaches and coaching psychologists to keep developing their practice and their self-understanding. It is the full, unedited version.

Approaching Group Coach training

I approached the learning with positive anticipation after hearing Ana Paula speak about group coaching at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Coaching Psychology conference in June 2024. This was serendipitous as I’d only weeks before discussed with a colleague who runs group coaching on an executive education programme at London Business School the merits of group coaching for a particular need/population I am keen to work with.

After 20 years of coaching training and CPD activities I have learned that I am most successful at applying what I learn when I am thinking from the start how/when/with whom I will make use of it. I came to the group coaching training with the intention of piloting a group coaching programme for parents of neurodivergent children who are seeking support to maintain or increase their own wellbeing and maintain or progress their careers. I’ve found it helpful to have this intention sitting in the background throughout the programme as it’s helped me really think about the application of what I am learning.

I thought I knew what was meant by ‘Group Coaching’ (GC) when I started the course and I soon realised what I was holding in mind was more akin to hot-seat coaching. Hot-seat coaching does technically fit within Nacif’s definition of group coaching “A collaborative and time-limited small-group process in which a professionally trained coach uses coaching principles and approaches to work with a group of individuals on their own personal goals and/or outcomes.” (Nacif, 2021, p.172) The experiential reality of GC, however, as taught and demonstrated by Ana Paula is that the group is always together as one, with all goals/outcomes always present event whichever person is talking. It’s like a complex interwoven web of threads where everyone is ‘getting somewhere’ at the same time.

Is the Group Coach really necessary in high-functioning groups?

As a group we sometimes wondered whether the Group Coach was really necessary as the group seemed to be functioning so well without her/him. We reflected that part of the apparent ease of the group working together is likely to be because of the skills we have honed as coaches and these same skills are perhaps less likely to be present in the groups we go onto work with. This said, there were times when we came out of practice sessions that we reflected on how important it was to know that the Coach was there. That the presence of the Coach allowed the conversation to happen because we felt ‘secure’ that there were boundaries being held by the coach. I have heavily underlined these words from “Group and Team Coaching: The Secret Life of Groups” (Thornton, 2016) which I read as part of the training programme:

“What does not change is the Group Coach’s role as boundary keeper, the person who holds the framework within which the group works. The group coach, like the individual coach, focusses on the group’s task mainly indirectly, by promoting group members’ capacities to tackle it. The primary focus is on helping the group move the task forward by concentrating on the quality of interactions in the group. If the group coach is seduced into focussing on the group’s task rather than his/her own, which is to help the group improve it’s functioning, the group and its task will be the loser.” (p. 38)

The magical and fortifying qualities of Group Coaching

I’ve been struggling to find a word that precisely captures the beauty, magic and efficacy of the group coaching experience. What I see and feel is that learning is taking place constantly for all group members, albeit at different paces, and that the insights group members get (that relate to their goals/objectives) often come seemingly out of nowhere, sparked by something another group member says. It’s such a rich experience.

I’ve been struck by how validating and useful GT can be for people who are experiencing something that makes them feel different/separate/alone and that is not easily discussed with or understood by the people closest to them. To come together as a group under a uniting theme such as ‘working and living well as a parent of neurodivergent children’ is to say “your challenges are real and shared by others. You are not alone”. This is a unique and precious feature of GT than 1:1 coaching cannot replicate. I think it’s fortifying to spend time with people who share similar struggles and aspirations.

Different flavours of Group Coach

When I’m learning something new I will pay attention in a forensic way, attending to exactly how the teacher/instructor is doing what they’re doing. In the beginning one doesn’t know if those particular words, body language or timing – for example – are quite deliberate and integral to the practice. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking the way the teacher/instructor is doing something is the way it ‘must’ be done! Ana Paula has a warmth and humility about her which came out in a specifically reassuring way in the first session “This is just one way…you will bring your own approach and style” or words to that effect. I relaxed a little.

Seeing other coaches in action helped me see that of course there will be different flavours of Group Coach, just as there are many different flavours of Executive Coach or Coaching Psychologist. We in ourselves are different, will attend to different things and will bring different philosophies and tools into the groups we work with. I have started thinking for instance about how I might bring a solution-focus and strengths-based approach to the work I do with groups.

One of the things I most liked about the GC programme was the experiential nature of it: the broader learning that comes from experiencing (when being a participant in a fishbowl exercise) or witnessing (when outside the fishbowl) different ways of being as a coach not just in relation to the topic at hand but generally. There are ways of being and questions I enjoyed that I will bring in to my own practice. For instance:

“What do you need from yourself?” (Asked by the coach at the start of the session before asking “what do you need from the group?”)
“Where are we on this topic?” A question to help the group pause or re-set.
What do you like about groups? This was a question Ana Paula asked us at the very start of the first module as a way for us to start to introduce ourselves and get to know one another. I thought it brilliant because: 1) it avoids the introduction of status or hierarchy (which is the case if we introduced ourselves by saying what we do for a living/who we work with/where we work); 2) it relates to the task at hand (learning about GC); 3) it allows participants the choice to go deep or stay ‘light’ with their responses and 4) it has a positive bent (which is useful when we think about Frederickson’s Broaden & Build Theory of positive emotions).

Developing my practice

To do is to learn. There’s only so much one can learn – or think we learned – by thinking about it in theory. I am grateful that another participant on the course suggested and took responsibility for setting up a GC practice group, of which I am a part. We’ve set up six practice sessions and are rotating the role of Coach. My turn is in January which I’m looking forward to, although feel a level of butterflies-in-stomach about. I know that this is wrapped up in holding myself to irrational standards and expecting myself to be proficient in something that I haven’t done before.

Thinking about how I move my practice forward, I would like to be a participant in a GC intervention that is led by someone who hasn’t be trained or worked with Ana Paula so that I experience something completely different.

I am looking forward to working with my first group in the spring, most likely on the theme of living and working well as a parent of (a) neurodivergent child(ren). This will also be a new experience in the sense that I intend to run it as an open programme, meaning there is work to do to construct and execute an effective marketing strategy. This will be a project in itself!

And so to endings

Before the final module I read the paper Ana Paula sent us by Birnbaum et al (2002) on endings. This is an area I think I can do better with my current 1:1 coaching work. I noted two important things from the research in this paper:

There is increased satisfaction of group members when there is a purposeful ending to each session.
There is an increased sense of accomplishment of group members when there is a purposeful ending to each session.

Questions such as these can support members in looking for meaning in the single group event and what they take away and use on the world outside the group:

What did you learn today?
What stood out for you in the session?
How would you compare this session with previous?

A purposeful ending also enhances the transition between sessions by eliciting suggestions for further discussion.

Spending time thinking about endings as part of the GC training has translated into better endings of 1:1 coaching sessions as I have been mindful of consistently bringing coachees to a point of reflection five minutes before the end. I realise that in the past I have been inconsistent in doing this and I have been too willing to let coachees keep talking, thinking and problem-solving right up to the end of a session and then needing to check in that we can run over for a minute or two to close off the session. This is not ideal and not always possible! A purposeful ending also allows the coachee to feel calm and relaxed – not rushed and still processing the content of the coaching session – and set them up for whatever they have next in their day.

REFERENCES

Birnbuam, M. L., Mason, S. E. and Cicchetti, A. (2003). Impact of purposeful sessional endings on both the group and the practitioner. Social Work with Groups, 25 (4) 3-19.

Nacif, A. (2021) BeWell: a group coaching model to foster the wellbeing of individuals, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, S15, pp.171-186.

Thornton, C. (2016). Group and Team Coaching: The Secret Life of Groups. Routledge: Abingdon.