by Naomi Clark-Turner 
Why are professionals unaware of coaching as an effective way to accelerate personal development? Coaching is often viewed as a perk reserved for senior level executives and an expensive alternative to mentoring. The clear benefit that broader access to coaching can offer in organizations is only limited by accessibility since coaching is not freely available to most employees.
So, what if there was an affordable way for more people to access coaching? Knowing that coaching enhances career prospects, helps develop skills and capabilities, and creates opportunities for individuals to go further and achieve more it makes sense to offer it broadly.
Increasingly, more people are finding that group coaching fulfills the desire for cost-effective coaching. It is growing in popularity and empowers individuals to proactively invest in themselves at a reasonable cost.
Group coaching creates a win-win financial situation for coaches and the clients as well as in organizations. Instead of clients or their organization paying for one-on-one sessions, session costs are split between the group members. Group coaching also provides a safe space to experience coaching and then consider more in-depth individual sessions.
In group coaching, although there is a common purpose or topic of interest, the group usually consists of individuals who are unfamiliar with each other and who are interested in coming together to explore a topic, with the topic being the primary thing they have in common.
The benefits include:
- Open sharing of knowledge, experience, and perspective between group members.
- Synergy and potential new insights for individuals and the group.
- Deep connections and strong, lasting relationships between individual group members in addition to developing trust in the coach.
Learn more about how I developed and ran my first group coaching program by reading “The Power of Group Coaching” in Coaching Perspectives X.
