Coaching does not have to be confined to one person and one coach. Hugh Reynolds explores Group Coaching as a forum where ideas are exchanged, multiplied and carried forward, while the core experience of being heard remains central.

When I first experienced coaching, a stand out feeling was one of being valued. I can't remember precisely what I was being coached on (this was over 20 years ago!).  Yet that feeling I took away from the coaching room hasn't left me. It's visceral, and I reckon it stems from what the coach had helped me to discover for myself:

That I matter.
That my issues are worthy of attention.
That what I say, think and feel about those issues is meaningful.

It was all about me. The agenda was mine and no-one else's. I must have let the feeling go to my head - because for a long time, I put the power of coaching all down to the individual space it cut out for me - and my individual issues - in my busy individual life. I don't regret taking this self-centred approach to coaching. One-to-one coaching has done - and still can do - so much for me. There are countless cases where for coaching to work, it needs to happen with just one other person in the room, or on the call.

And, there's more to coaching than 1:1 coaching reveals.

And, as my colleagues at Management Futures have introduced me to the different ways they can coach in numbers bigger than one  - I got curious about the difference. I wanted to understand how something so deeply personal and valuable for me as an individual, could be done in the presence of other consenting adults.

Here's something simple that has been helping me re-evaluate coaching. It's got me thinking about the different ways we value ourselves, and how we value our coaching experiences.

On the 10th September 1917, an ad for SYSTEM magazine was featured in The Chicago Daily Tribune. It was entitled The Difference Between Dollars and Ideas:

You have a dollar.
I have a dollar.
We swap.
Now you have my dollar.
We are no better off.

You have an idea.
I have an idea.
We swap.
Now you have two ideas.

You see where I'm going with this?

It's not that dollars aren't a really important consideration in coaching. We know they are. Both in terms of how many it takes to hire a good coach, and how many more the funding organisation could save or make as a result of getting the best coaching. It's also got to be the right kind of coaching - for its people.

The coaching room - however many clients are present - is in every case a forum for ideas. When we exchange them, they don't have to work like dollars, or apples or toys we might want to keep for ourself. There are often very strong reasons for keeping thing confidential and personal; keeping the process of idea generation and exchange to just one other person (the coach). And in a host of other cases, there can be huge benefit to accessing collective insight.

Let's think about sharing and giving. Even in an individual setting the coach is helping you - the person at the centre of an individual issue - share ideas back with yourself, things that you might not have been so generous about generating and giving yourself, without the right coaching conditions - set-up by a good coach. When we come together for coaching; when our ideas or issues overlap in an exchange - a great thing is that we can go away with more even than we could bring-in. Crucially, in Group Coaching many of the elements that make 1:1 coaching so impactful are maintained. Importantly for me and how I came to see the benefit of coaching, that deep feeling of being valued, being heard, is still right at the heart of Group Coaching too. What's more: when I say something of value, it's not just a thought boomerang. The thoughts exchanged are infectious. They spread out and add-up, to increase our stores of both individual and organisational intelligence. The additional benefit is felt between the group, during, and after the session - a coaching bond between the band of coachees.

‍Curious how group coaching can work for your people?

If you want learning to stick and people to feel supported through real work challenges, group coaching can be a simple, stimulating next step. We will help you identify the right cohort, clarify the outcomes you want and shape a programme that fits - contact us via info@managementfutures.co.uk‍