How to Introduce a Group Coaching Programme that Sticks: A practical guide
If you’re looking to strengthen your organisation’s leadership capability and increase business performance, group coaching could be the missing piece.
In this blog, we will explore how this approach delivers real results, how you can get started, and why your people – and stakeholders - will thank you for it.
Why Group Coaching?
Group coaching isn’t just another HR initiative—it’s a strategic move that can make a tangible difference to your bottom line. And here’s why.
· Sharper Leadership
When leaders learn together, they build stronger decision-making skills and become more agile in tackling business challenges
· Better Retention
People who feel supported and part of a learning community are more likely to stay, saving you time and money on recruitment.
· Improved Collaboration
Group coaching breaks down silos, helping individuals work together more effectively and sparking fresh ideas.
Put simply, group coaching is one important way to help your organisation run smoother, adapt faster, and keep your best people on board.
How to Get Started: Steps for Success
Introducing any new approach can feel daunting. But in our experience, launching a group coaching programme doesn’t have to be complicated.
To help you, we’ve developed a very practical roadmap.
1. Identify Your Priorities
We recommend you decide what business challenge you want to tackle first, using all the data you have available to help you. Maybe it’s developing new managers, supporting teams through change, or boosting inter-team collaboration for example.
2. Get Senior Level Buy-In
Bringing key stakeholders in from the outset always reaps benefits. Let them be part of the development process, and ask for and include their voices where possible. Their backing will help any new development programme gain traction whilst showing your business that ‘the leadership’ is invested in their growth.
3. Choose the Right Groups
Based on our experience, we recommend you form small cohorts of 4–6 people who share similar roles or challenges. For example, you may have global area managers who are interrelated as a peer group, or a set of field-based leaders who work across different departments but manage similar challenges on a day-to-day basis.
You want to select people who navigate similar or shared challenges, as this is one of the key ways to keep the coaching conversations relevant and to encourage honest pragmatic discussions.
4. Find a Skilled Group Coach
As always with coaching, you want to work with an individual who is a good fit for you and your organisation. When choosing any coach, you will also want to check for important things like qualifications, accreditation, insurance and supervision provision.
Look for someone with experience in group coaching, who knows how to build deep psychological safety, guide conversations and draw out insights from everyone.
5. Set Clear Goals and Timelines
Be upfront about what you want to achieve and how you’ll measure success. Make this visible and accessible for everyone – the coach, the stakeholders and the coachees themselves. This helps increase a sense of shared responsibility.
Plan for regular sessions – we usually recommend they take place every month or two, for an agreed period of time.
6. Pilot, Learn, and Improve
As with all new initiatives, you might choose to start small. So you can build up momentum and gather supporters along the way. Consider starting with a small group, gather feedback, and tweak the programme before rolling it out more widely.
Measuring the Impact
As with all significant development initiatives, to make a strong case for group coaching, you’ll want to show the difference it makes.
In our experience, the areas we recommend our clients focus on are as follows.
· Before-and-After Surveys
Surveys to participants, line mangers and other stakeholders help measure changes and ensure that they are visible and understood. These are personal to each business, and we usually work with our clients to help develop surveys that are relevant to them.
· Business Metrics
All businesses have valuable metrics in place, and tracking systems associated with them. We recommend clients use metrics to monitor the impact of group coaching activity. Tracking data surrounding important factors like staff turnover, engagement scores, and productivity is highly recommended.
· Stories from the Front Line
Don’t forget the power of the voices of those experiencing group coaching. They can be an overlooked audience when it comes to measurements. Be sure to collect feedback and examples from participants, and those around them, about how coaching has helped them in their roles.
Anecdotes, examples and observations are all powerful ways of helping evidence your approach is having positive business impact.
Regularly sharing the results from all these different channels with your leadership team keeps everyone in the loop and highlights the value of your investment.
Putting People First: The Employee Experience
Group coaching doesn’t just help the business—it’s a real boost for your people too. So often group coaching participants tell us the value of working together in this way.
They often talk about group coaching providing the following:
· A Safe Space to Learn
When structured carefully and facilitated by an expert, the group setting really encourages open conversations and builds trust, enabling learners to be vulnerable and share at a deeper level.
· Peer Support
A huge benefit of the group coaching approach is the depth of peer relationships that develop. When people learn together, show vulnerability to each other, support each other and problem solve together, relationships form that are deep and lasting.
We always find that participants form networks that last well beyond the coaching sessions, helping each other navigate challenges within the business years after programmes have finished.
· Confidence and Capability
A holy grail of development – people who not only ‘can’, but who believe they can. The practical aspects of group coaching provides coachees with skills and frameworks to apply, and the support to help them to apply it.
People walk away from group coaching sessions with practical tools and fresh perspectives they can use straight away – and importantly the peers around them to help them to do it.
And we all know that when employees feel supported and see that their development really matters, they’re more engaged, motivated, and much more likely to stick around.
Next Steps: Turning Ideas into Action
If you’ve found this information helpful, and are keen make group coaching part of the development in your organisation. Then here’s a a simple action plan to help you to get things moving.
Identify the business challenge you’re facing that group coaching could address
Get buy-in from senior leaders and set clear expectations and responsibilities
Partner with an experienced coaching company to design a tailored programme
Launch a pilot, measure the results, and use feedback to refine your approach
Share successes and consider expanding the initiative across the organisation
We’d love to talk to you more about the way we coach with groups. Please do reach out to us.
Finally, just remember that group coaching is a smart, people-focused investment that pays off in business results and a stronger workplace culture. By keeping things practical, measuring what matters, and always putting your people at the centre, you’ll help to set your organisation up for lasting success.