How to Create and Manage Group Coaching Programs for Maximum Impact

Expanding your coaching practice with group coaching offers an incredible opportunity to elevate your impact and help more people achieve their personal and professional goals. 

By fostering a collaborative environment, group coaching provides clients with valuable peer insights and support to enrich their learning journey. This approach allows coaches to guide multiple clients simultaneously, creating a space where shared goals can lead to powerful breakthroughs and collective progress.

You might ask:

What’s the difference between ‘group coaching’ and ‘team coaching’?

What are the benefits of incorporating group coaching into my practice?

How do I create a meaningful group program that clients want to enrol into?

Are there tools that make it easy to manage enrollments, scheduling and sharing resources with group members?

This article covers the key considerations, common challenges and solutions so you can be empowered to expand your practice with group coaching.

Understanding group coaching

Group and team coaching are distinct yet related sub-disciplines of coaching. 

‘Group coaching’ brings together people from different walks of life to achieve personal goals within a collective setting. This can range from female entrepreneurs to creatives who need spiritual life coaching.

Group members don’t necessarily need to know each other or work towards a shared objective. However, they generally have the same expected outcomes for joining your group in the first place, whether that’s to become a more effective leader, coach, entrepreneur, etc, they share a common purpose.

‘Team coaching’, on the other hand, exists for the purpose of helping a team of people achieve a shared and common goal. Team members typically know each other and work together as a unit (e.g. the manager and direct reports in the Sales unit) for the same organization. 

In team coaching, the coach is typically a facilitator who coaches the team to work more effectively as a collective unit. The ultimate objective is to drive high performance and results not only for each member of the team, but for the larger good of the organization they belong to.

In a group program, clients enrol into your program as individuals and may enrol at staggered times. In team coaching, however, the client is a real team of people all enrolling at the same time.  

Now that you understand the subtle yet distinct differences between group coaching and team coaching, you have a better appreciation of why it’s important to be able to streamline the enrollment and onboarding process of your group program so you can deliver a professional client experience.

Benefits of incorporating group coaching into your practice

Incorporating group coaching into your practice can significantly expand your impact and reach as you can engage with multiple clients simultaneously. This makes your sessions more efficient and economically advantageous for both you and your clients. 

This approach also fosters a community environment where clients can learn from each other's experiences and insights, enhancing the overall learning experience. 

A group coaching environment often inspires increased accountability among participants, as they motivate and support each other’s progress. This not only leads to enhanced client satisfaction but also broadens the scope of your influence, as successful group dynamics often result in referrals and expanded client networks.

Group coaching can be a powerful tool to amplify your impact, helping more people achieve their goals while growing your coaching business at the same time. As a coach, you can better optimize returns (i.e. revenue) on your time investment in a group coaching setting than in a 1:1 session.

Furthermore, clients who enrol in your group coaching program may even decide to go further with you in a high ticket 1:1 coaching relationship. Group coaching is a great first step, or ‘taster’ for clients to experience the power that coaching can bring to their lives. 

How to create a successful group coaching program

To effectively implement group coaching in your practice, start by defining the specific objectives of your group program:

Who is it for? 

What benefits will they get out of it?

How will this change their lives for the better? 

How long is the program – a fixed duration or an evergreen program? 

What is the group size – is it an intimate small group or a larger community?

Be clear in your offer and the ‘why’ behind your group objectives.

Always speak to people and do your research before creating the content for your group program. Give them what they are seeking. You may already know from your experience about the challenges or pain points of your target audience, or you might need to research more on this. 

The key is to create compelling content and resources that you can share with your group so that they get value from it. 

Make it easy for clients to enrol into your group

Implement an online enrollment system that integrates seamlessly with your website and social media platforms. Your landing page should describe your program objectives, fees, collect client information and specify your terms and group policies.

Ideally, your website should have a landing page that facilitates the client onboarding process. Make it easy for clients to pay for your program online. You have enough admin work to take care of without having to keep chasing clients for payments!

Thus, it’s important to use software that helps you rather than hinders you. By selecting the right tool, you can focus on coaching your group members rather than dealing with the administrative aspects.

Coaching platforms like CoachVantage are built to support coaches to effectively manage group coaching. It generates a landing page that enables clients to pay online and enrol seamlessly and allows you to share resources and set up group sessions very easily. 

The program onboarding step is the first interaction that a prospective group member will have with you, so it’s vital that the experience is smooth and hassle-free for them! 

Managing information dissemination

Once enrolled, group members should have a single go-to place to get the information that they need. Throughout the course of your group program, you will be engaging members via group sessions, sharing files, videos and other resources. 

It can be frustrating for your clients to have to go to different places to get the information and resources that are part of your program curriculum. Without proper organization, clients can lose track of things and as a result may feel like the coaching has been ineffective and haphazard, thus leading to drop outs.

Incorporate a variety of multimedia tools such as videos, podcasts, and interactive webinars to cater to different learning styles and keep the content engaging. This variety helps maintain high energy levels and keeps participants committed to the program.

To make it more efficient and organized for everyone, use a platform to distribute session materials and resources efficiently. This approach ensures consistency in communication and keeps all members equally informed, enhancing the learning experience and ultimately resulting in member retention.

Tracking goals and assignments

Setting goals and assignments is a great way to keep members engaged and drive active participation. It allows you to keep your finger on the pulse to monitor how each member is doing.

Assignments can help reinforce techniques and application of skills that are imparted duing the coaching sessions.

You also need to ensure the content is adaptable and can be customized to address the unique dynamics of different groups. Incorporate various teaching methods, such as interactive workshops, real-world problem-solving tasks, and reflective exercises, to cater to different learning styles. 

Knowing when to create smaller sub-groups

Monitor the group’s dynamics to decide when to split a large group into smaller sub-groups, or cohorts. This can be based on participants' specific needs, progress, or preferences, facilitating more focused and personalized coaching interactions within these smaller units.

The creation of cohorts enables you to provide more focused attention and make it more manageable to track the progress of each member. It’s also easier to find common time slots to organize group sessions with a smaller group. 

Keeping track of each individual’s performance and progress is more manageable within a smaller group. If you notice that an individual is falling behind or needs extra help, it’s an opportunity for you to offer 1:1 coaching.

You can also experiment with combining group coaching with 1:1 coaching sessions in a hybrid manner. This approach can help you stand out as a coach and make it  a unique selling point of your offer.

Generating community participation and motivation

Structure your sessions around interactive and collaborative activities that encourage participation and engagement from all members. Create a safe space for members to share their thoughts, challenges and ideas. One of the key benefits of group coaching is the diversity of viewpoints that others can learn from.

Tools like Mighty Networks, Kartra, Kajabi, Facebook Groups and CoachVantage are platforms that facilitate community participation. Group members can ask questions, interact with and encourage each other, all of which helps to foster engagement, participation and ‘stickiness’ to the group.

Continuous monitoring and feedback

Regularly collect feedback through surveys or direct communication to gauge the effectiveness of the program and make necessary adjustments. This continuous loop of feedback allows you to tailor your approach to better meet the needs of the group.

More importantly, act on the feedback you receive. The best people to get honest-to-goodness feedback from are the ones you are enrolled in your group because they know first-hand what’s good and what could be done better.

Keep doing more of the good things but be sure to make improvements in the areas which cause frustration. There’s nothing worse than soliciting feedback but doing nothing to act upon it. 

Challenges and solutions

With varied backgrounds and goals, participants may have differing expectations. To address this, set clear objectives and ground rules from the outset to create a unified vision, and communicate consistently to manage expectations throughout the program.

Conflicts may also arise due to personality differences or varied learning styles. Create a safe, respectful environment by establishing clear guidelines and encouraging open dialogue. Actively facilitate sessions to ensure all voices are heard and address conflicts promptly and constructively.

Furthermore, it can also be tricky to balance individual and group needs. To address this, it's crucial to ensure individual growth without overshadowing group objectives. Design your group coaching program with flexibility. This provides time for personal reflection and small group coaching to cater to unique needs while fostering a collective sense of progress.

Key takeaways

Expanding your coaching practice with group coaching allows you to impact more lives while enriching the coaching experience for everyone involved. 

The key takeaways to create and run a successful group coaching program are:

Plan well but don’t overthink it:  remember, perfection is the enemy of progress.

Deliver a professional onboarding experience. Make it easy for your clients to enrol online.

Start small and keep growing. If you’re just starting out, don’t be bashful about starting out even with just 2 or 3 members to begin with.

Track your clients’ progress and performance. Keep them engaged for long-term retention.

Make use of digital tools to make light work of admin tasks and manage group activities in one place.