Group coaching: The new ‘Wild West of coaching’?

Abstract

Literature on group coaching is scarce, but growing evidence points to an area ripe for further exploration. Group coaching is scalable, cost-effective and arguably better suited to promoting collective understanding and thinking than one-to-one and team coaching. However, this is an area fraught with challenges. In the limited existing literature, group coaching is usually bundled with team coaching and there is no consensus on what group coaching is. This confusion is reflected in the wide, sometimes contradictory, approaches used in the limited number of empirical studies available. Despite that, emerging evidence points to the potential benefits of group coaching in a range of settings. This article explores the extant literature on group coaching and argues for a definition of group coaching that is firmly based on the group process. Finally, it makes the case for group coaching to be considered on its own merit to support the development of the theory, research and practice of this misunderstood coaching modality.