A fully-accredited and ICF certified 2-day live training in one-to-many coaching.

Designed for qualified and in-training coaches, our Accredited Certificate in Group Coaching has been fully updated in 2023 to build on your existing skill-set and enable you to add one-to-many to your coaching services.

Whilst group coaching works with many of the principles of one-to-one coaching, it is significantly more complex in that it demands the ability to work with group dynamics, to create psychological safety, to manage group processes and to know when, as a coach, you need to step in and when to step out.

The true art of group coaching is in the balance of multiple, often contradictory, qualities. Structure versus spaciousness. Authority versus autonomy.  Process versus emergence. Coach input versus group flow. And much more.

This is not something that can be learned over two-days; it is something that needs practice over months and years.  Indeed, Animas founder, Nick Bolton, started his coaching career primarily as a group coach and says that he is still learning the art 20 years later!

But these two days will give you the foundations of knowledge, processes and skills to get started on your journey to be a group coach.

Through both taught content and practice, you will learn:

• The important differences between group coaching and facilitation, training and workshop leadership and teaching.
• The key psychological and practical skills of a group coach that you will master over the years ahead.
• Forming and contracting with a group for the work you will do together.
• Key theoretical frameworks for understanding groups including concepts from Tuckman and Jensen, Kolb, Gardner, Bion and more.
• 4 immensely practical, easy-to-use group coaching processes including:
  • Action Learning Sets
  • Balint Groups (aka Positive Gossip)
  • Echo Chamber 
  • Hall of Mirrors 
• The role of one-to-one coaching within groups through techniques such as Hot Seating along with the risks these bring in a group setting.
• Managing communication flow and energy between the group to enable fair and balanced participation.
• Working with group dynamics and core skills in surfacing tensions and conflict.
• Bringing groups to a close both on a session basis and when the group journey ends.
• The contexts and opportunities for you to use group coaching including Life Circles, Mastermind Groups, Wellness Groups and much more.

The skill of group coaching and facilitation is a key next step for coaches who want to amplify their impact by working in groups. The opportunities are endless and present a rich landscape of new work for you to do as a coach.

The Accredited Certificate in Group Coaching will be led by Lilian Flynn, a highly experienced group coach.  Lilian works with groups in prisons around some of the most challenging topics and in an environment that calls for the most sensitive approach to group work.  She also work with groups of individuals exploring their lives through positive psychology, and groups of senior leaders in organisations.

What is Group Coaching?

Group coaching, at its heart, is about creating self-discovery, decision and reflection within a group.

But what does that mean in practice?

In traditional one-to-one coaching, there is a direct and powerful relationship between the coach and the client in which the coach creates a space for a conversation and learning to take place.

In group coaching, this one-to-one conversation is no longer the primary role of the coach. The power of coaching no longer resides primarily in the questions the coach asks to create learning, discovery and curiosity.  Instead, the power resides in the space that the coach creates between the members of the group.

Think of it this way:

Imagine each person in the group carries with them a private well of knowledge, questions and concerns, and capabilities and strengths.

When the group first comes together, these wells are walled off and watertight. Group coaching aims to break down the walls of those wells so that they become a pool from which the group can access the combined wisdom, ideas, passion and knowledge in the room.

Yet it also respects that the wells are private and so only requires the individual to give as much or as little as they want to. The wonderful thing is that group coaching can only ever replenish the well!

The coach’s role then is not only about asking powerful questions or challenging an individual (though this may still happen), but rather it is in creating, maintaining and nurturing the space that allows the group to function as a unified entity.

Where one-to-one coaching requires a fine ear for incongruence, limiting beliefs or faulty thinking, group coaching is about holding the space, facilitating participation, managing dynamics and knowing where the line is between a group learning experience and someone feeling spotlighted.

Probably one of the biggest challenges for coaches in undertaking group coaching is this change in their status as the main catalyst for thinking.  This, in itself, is a journey for coaches to go on and those who do inevitably find that the trust they place in the group is well-rewarded.