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As career professionals, we’re always trying to serve more clients with limited staff, limited budgets, and limited time.
If you hold 6 individual appointments in one day and every client needs help with a resume, a group session starts to look pretty appealing.
Group coaching can certainly help you reach more people.
It can also give clients something that’s difficult to reproduce in an individual session:
The chance to discover that they aren’t the only person struggling.
Career challenges can feel personal
A client might come to you because their resume isn’t generating interviews.
They might feel uncertain about their next step or uncomfortable reaching out to people in their network.
Those are practical career challenges. But after struggling alone for months, clients often start drawing conclusions about themselves.
“My experience must not be valuable.”
“Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing.”
“I should have figured this out by now.”
I’ve seen this many times during my 20 years of working in the career services space. People enter a session believing they’re the only person having trouble with a particular part of their career.
They might be unaware that other people, on a similar journey to themselves, are feeling the same way.
That opens up opportunities for peer supported learning.
Participants learn from one another
When clients feel less exposed, they often become more willing to ask questions and talk honestly about what they’ve tried.
They also hear approaches that may never surface in an individual coaching session.
One participant might share the language they used to explain a career transition. Another might describe a networking approach that felt comfortable and led to a useful conversation. Someone else may ask the question that 3 other people were hesitant to ask.
In a strong group session, the coach doesn’t have to provide every useful idea.
The facilitator brings structure, asks questions, and keeps the discussion focused. Participants contribute examples, language, and strategies that others can adapt.
They may also introduce one another to industries, organizations, resources, or people. Instead of working through every challenge alone, clients leave with several examples of how other people are handling a similar situation.
Putting several people in the same room doesn’t guarantee that they’ll learn from one another.
Participants need clear expectations about confidentiality, participation, and respect. They also need to know that they can contribute without being judged or pressured to disclose more than they want to share.
Before your next group session:
Establish confidentiality by explaining what participants can expect from you and one another.
Normalize different starting points so that participants can share a goal while needing different kinds of support.
Offer several ways to contribute by alternating the mediums of communication. Let people speak, write, use the chat, or reflect privately.
Balance participation and step in when one voice begins defining the conversation.
Invite peer learning. Ask, “What has helped you?” or “Who has approached this differently?”
Group coaching helps us serve more people. It can also change how clients interpret the challenge they’re facing.
Someone may enter the room thinking, “Everyone else has figured this out.”
Then they hear 5 capable people asking versions of the same question.
They leave with new ideas, useful language, and evidence that they’re working through a common career challenge.
A quick question for you
I’m considering creating a continuing professional development course on group coaching for career professionals. Would you be interested?
Heather
The Coach for Career Coaches