Scaling Coaching in Organizations: The Power of Group Coaching
Bringing coaching to scale in organizations presents several challenges, including high costs, limited availability of skilled coaches, and the difficulty of embedding coaching mindsets into daily operations. Traditional one-on-one coaching, while highly effective, often fails to reach a critical mass of employees, limiting its impact on organizational culture and performance.
Group coaching offers a powerful, cost-effective solution to these challenges by fostering trust and psychological safety, essential for engaging with difference and diverse perspectives. In a collaborative learning environment, participants develop a network of trusted peers, breaking down silos and accelerating the pace of organizational learning through intentional dialogue.
Additionally, group coaching enables organizations to leverage feedback—both individual and consensus-driven—while harnessing the power of vicarious experience. Observing others navigate challenges, receive coaching, and apply insights reinforces learning at a collective level. Through this process, coaching skills and mindsets are modeled, practiced, and elevated, gradually integrating into everyday conversations and decision-making.
By embedding coaching skills and mindsets into cross-functional groups, organizations create a culture where coaching is not a one-time intervention but an ongoing, shared practice. This not only enhances leadership capacity but also strengthens an organization’s ability to adapt, innovate, and thrive in complex environments.
Group vs. Team Coaching
Group coaching and team coaching differ significantly in focus, structure, and participant relationships. Group coaching is centered on individual learning and personal or professional development, where participants set their own goals and engage in a shared learning experience with peers. The group is typically composed of individuals from diverse backgrounds, industries, or organizations who come together specifically for the coaching experience, forming new relationships in the process. This approach is horizontal in nature, bringing together people of equal seniority and hierarchical position, fostering a collaborative environment where participants support and challenge each other as equals. The emphasis is on individual growth within a collective space, leveraging diverse perspectives while maintaining autonomy over personal objectives.
In contrast, team coaching is designed to enhance the effectiveness of an existing team that works together within an organization. The focus is on achieving shared, team-level goals, improving collaboration, and strengthening team dynamics. Participants in team coaching already have established relationships and a history of working together, which shapes the coaching process and its outcomes. Unlike the horizontal approach of group coaching, team coaching often follows a vertical structure, with the coaching agenda influenced by a hierarchically senior team leader. The goal is to align individual contributions with team objectives, enhance communication, and optimize performance within the team’s organizational context. While individual growth may occur, it is always in service of the team’s collective success.
How does the role of the coach differ in group coaching?
Coaches who work with groups must master an additional set of tools and distinctions that enable them to navigate the unique complexities of the group format. While everything coaches learn about one-on-one coaching remains highly relevant, group coaching presents distinct challenges and opportunities. Facilitating a group requires an understanding of group dynamics, collective decision-making, and the interplay between individual and group needs. Group coaches must develop skills in managing diverse perspectives, fostering psychological safety, and leveraging the group’s collective intelligence to generate insights and solutions. Without these additional competencies, coaches may struggle to fully tap into the generative capacity of a group, limiting the depth and impact of the coaching experience.
Because group coaching is an emerging field, there are no widely accepted competency models to guide training and practice. This absence of standardized frameworks means that group coaching innovators must draw from established disciplines such as group facilitation, organizational development, psychology, and team coaching to build effective methodologies. Dr. Ostrowski's cutting-edge approach to group coaching is rooted in his original research and practice, integrating principles from these related fields to create powerful and practical group coaching strategies. His methods provide a structured yet flexible approach that allows coaches to harness group dynamics, enabling deeper learning and more impactful coaching outcomes. By combining established knowledge with new insights, Dr. Ostrowski’s work represents an important contribution to the development of group coaching as a distinct and valuable practice.