A good business leader will be continually looking for innovative ways to train their employees while saving time and money, but are they actually damaging the progression of their employees by adopting outdated methods?
Traditional methods of workplace training typically lean towards individual coaching, focusing on an employee’s responsibilities and providing them with the relevant support to enable them to improve. Group coaching, however, has emerged as a more effective method of workplace training, collectively improving the commercial skills of a workforce while maintaining a healthy environment and freeing up resources.
According to a study conducted by Erek Ostrowski in 2018, group coaching is a “viable platform for supporting learning and change on multiple levels”. Developments in technology along with the rise of experiential learning has allowed business leaders to ditch obsolete training methods and embrace the rise of group sessions.
The differences between individual coaching and group coaching
There are several reasons why traditional individual coaching and group coaching are so different in the modern workplace. Firstly, while individual coaching allows employees to assess their strengths and weaknesses in order to develop, group sessions give an entire workforce the opportunity to connect with each other to share ideas and work towards the same goals.
Individual coaching also requires direct training to aid personal development, which can prove to be time-consuming, as some employees will need longer to develop their skills than others. Group sessions, on the other hand, can be delivered in one or two sessions whereby skills can be improved as a team, thus boosting morale.
Group coaching also utilises experiential learning more effectively than individual coaching. By giving employees an active platform to learn by doing rather than merely taking in vast amounts of information, learning retention and productivity can improve. For more information, read our blog on improving ROI on experiential learning.
How group coaching can lead to behavioural changes
Group sessions allow business leaders to develop an understanding of how their entire workforce behaves regularly and how best to manage them. The benefit of this is that leaders can adjust their management methods to maximise productivity in the workplace.
As well as improving their emotional intelligence capabilities, employees can develop their personal skills in the workplace through group coaching by working with fellow employees to build their confidence and commercial awareness.
Benefits of group coaching sessions
Unlike individual coaching, group coaching allows employees to take part in team-building activities and simulations, which work to aid team development. Maintaining a workforce that works productively together is critical to success, and group coaching allows this to happen.
As previously mentioned, group sessions can save a business valuable time and money. By creating a workplace training programme that develops the skills of an entire workforce at once, more time can be spent putting training into action to improve general operations.
Group coaching can also act as a tool to identify any so-called ‘disruptors’ at a business. As group sessions require employees to work together to achieve the same goals, it is critical that each individual has a positive attitude in order to succeed. Those who are reluctant to participate, as they feel that they are above group coaching exercises, can be extremely toxic to a workforce and damage productivity. Training employees in a group will make it clearer for business leaders to identify these individuals.
At a time where business leaders are looking to maximise efficiency and ROI from their workplace training events, the rise of the group coaching session could not have come at a better time. Moving away from individual coaching and developing a programme that caters to the needs of an entire workforce is now a common trend in the workplace.