How to Use Group Facilitation to Drive Team and Group Coaching
Earlier this year, we began working with a 31-member strong HR team consisting of leaders and individual contributors to facilitate the development of a culture of collaboration across the HR function.
This project is particularly interesting because it leverages various coaching approaches, including group facilitation, team coaching (and potentially individual/executive coaching down the road), as well as various learning modes. It’s also a great example of how starting the client journey with group facilitation can shape the direction of subsequent project phases.
How Group Facilitation Can Serve as a Springboard for Team Coaching
Our client began with an in-person half-day group facilitation that engaged all 31 HR team members in a highly interactive workshop that leveraged the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument. The MBTI helped participants to:
Get to know each other in a positive and fun way (everyone completed the instrument ahead of the session and gained an overview of the results during the session).
Gain valuable insight and deepen self-awareness of strengths and blind spots and how personal style shows up in the workplace.
Learn how each HR leader perceives the world and makes decisions. Each leader shared his/her results, as did the larger group.
JLPA Facilitator and Coach Vicki Rossetti said the session went really well. Team members were highly engaged, open, and transparent in sharing what made them unique and what about their coworkers felt like nails on a chalkboard. The team addressed how individual personality preferences might positively or negatively impact team cohesion. The large group session concluded with a set of posters that mapped out:
What the group believed the HR function to be doing well.
What the group believed would make the function better/more effective.
Coaching a Leadership Team to Define Its Goals
The group facilitation session was an excellent springboard for the six HR leadership team members, consisting of the HR function leader and her five direct reports. Leveraging the output from the large group session and using the GRPI model (see graphic and sidebar below), team coaching commenced and consisted of a series of virtual coaching sessions.
JLPA’s Coach, Vicki Rossetti, summarized the output from the group facilitation session and sent it to the team before the first team coaching session. She set the agenda for the first team coaching session, picking up where the larger group left off and allowing the team to:
Explore how strong the foundational work was based on the input from the larger group.
Review the function’s strengths (which were mostly positive) as well as the critical feedback.
Allow time for team reflection.
Set the future direction. I.e., what would the function look like one year ahead?
What is the GRPI Model Framework?
The GRPI model originated in the field of social science and represents the four critical and interrelated aspects of teamwork (as shown left).
The GRPI model is a four-step project planning tool that helps leaders ensure productivity, efficiency, and quality. It is often used for planning when teams are forming or to diagnose when teams have reached a performance roadblock.
JLPA Facilitator & Coach - Vicki Rossetti
The Coach Role
Vicki describes her role as Coach as one of:
“In all coaching sessions, whether one-on-one, group, or team, the client has the ultimate say in how the time with the coach will be used. However, when a team participates, the coach has to take a more active role to ensure the group is aligned.”
Allowing the team to decide the meaning of the feedback and which areas were the most impactful to address.
Creating psychological safety for the team to explore where it is and where it wants to be.
Ensuring the team has the opportunity for team reflection.
Hold up a mirror for the team to consider feedback and if it’s how it wants to be seen.
Through team coaching, our client is addressing the goals of the function and has already started to identify areas needing greater management. E.g., Meeting purpose and outcomes were often unclear and identified as a key area to address. How to structure and manage meetings and make commitments more efficiently and effectively proved to be an easy fix.
The coaching is ongoing.
As for group coaching, there’s an opportunity to strengthen skills within specific competencies identified for development.
What Is the Difference Between Team and Group Coaching?
Team and group coaching is becoming increasingly popular because it is results-oriented and cost-effective. Team coaching can also be a powerful intervention when paired with executive coaching of the team’s leader. As described above, group facilitation can be an excellent starting point for team or group coaching since it allows needs to be identified and incorporated into subsequent coaching.
If you’re wondering how team coaching differs from group coaching, the table below provides a side-by-side guide to help distinguish between these two development approaches.
If you want to learn more about our approach and the options for working with your teams, please contact Jonathan Parker at jonathanlparker@journeycounts.com