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And what’s the actual difference?

Many coaches have in mind to try their hand at team coaching, and often don’t realise that it’s a different role they need to learn, and not the same as group coaching. The skills used by an individual coach are not all that's required for effective team coaching.

In group coaching, members put individual goals, opportunities or concerns on the table, and are coached by the group coach, and other members of the group.

Embedded in this process is learning for the individual being coached, but also - almost always - the other members of the group gain insight and value from observing another person work through their situation.

There is enormous, compounded learning in group coaching, as each member gets coached on their own topic, while each member also learns something relevant to their own world and, with a skilled group coach, coaching skills are also being taught throughout the sessions.

Additionally, members of group coaching sessions often state that they benefit from a feeling of collectivity and community. Leaders spend so much time managing perception that when given the opportunity - in a psychologically safe environment - to work through concerns, they learn they are not alone, and also that there’s value in connecting with others for collective problem solving.

Team coaching occurs when a team needs to work together to achieve a common goal that can only be achieved through teamwork. Team coaching is centred around the question: 'what can we achieve together that we could not achieve alone?” and is aligned  to team sports, where each member of the team has a specific role to play, but the team goal (winning the game) can only be achieved if everyone on the field is working together to get the desired result.

Very often what we call teams at work are actually groups - each member asynchronously completing tasks to create an outcome. It’s like the Ford factory assembly line; everyone has their individual job, and the car is only able to be constructed when all the parts are assembled, but the group are essentially working in silos: “I do my bit and then hand it to you to add your bit…” and so on.

For some tasks, this is fine. But for some opportunities, projects, visions, and outcomes, what is lost when teams only behave like a group is the potential of the creative construction of ideas and solutions that come when great minds work together, synchronously. Again, back to team sports. They enter the field and play together, moving and shifting and learning and listening and building plays that cannot be done separately. What is delivered is a whole that is much more than the sum of its parts. This is ideally what all teams aspire to.

So, in summary:

1. A group coach facilitates a series of coaching sessions focusing on individual topics and works to help the group coach each other and learn from that topic.

2. A team coach coaches the team as a single entity, working with the team to decide how the team wants to work together to “win the game” and achieve extraordinary outcomes.

3. Group coaching, like individual coaching, happens in contained sessions.

4. Team coaching can occur in team coaching sessions, and/or in actual team working environments - team meetings, offsites, strategy sessions etc. - where the team coach coaches the team while they are actually “on the field”, and this provides enormous scope for impact on the performance of the team.

Charity Becker is IECL’s Head of Coaching & Leader Development and an experienced Team, Group and Individual coach.

For more information on IECL’s Team Coaching programs visit👉 Team Coaching for Group Focus and Team Development | IECL

For more information on IECL’s Group Coaching programs visit👉 Individual Coaching | Adult Learning Principles | IECL

If you are an experience coach ready to upskill, we also teach Team Coaching visit👉Team Coaching Training | Course Overview | IECL