How to Run a Group Coaching Program

>> Have you ever wanted to run a group coaching program? In this lecture, we'll talk about the various aspects of creating, marketing, and running a group coaching program. Group coaching is a great way to expand your practice as it allows you to help more people at the same time. Because you're working with more than one person, sometimes group coaching can actually be more lucrative than private coaching. To illustrate, if you charge $300 a month for private coaching and $100 a month for group coaching, but you have five clients in your group coaching program, you'll be making $200 more per month than if you were working with just one private coaching client. Let's break down the steps to running a group coaching program. One, pick a topic. The first step to offering a group coaching program is to decide what you're going to talk about. Your group coaching program can simply be a group version of the six month program, a condensed version of the six month program, or something totally new in that you create to serve your target market. It's up to you to decide what will work for you. If you're interested in starting a group coaching program but don't have a lot of time to create something new, we suggest starting with the handouts you were given in your Health Coach training program. Of course, you can create new handouts and materials for your group when time allows. Two, structure your program. Next, you'll want to consider how you're going to offer your program. Will you offer group coaching online or in person? How many people do you want in your group? How often will you meet? How long will you meet for? Will you offer any kind of support outside of the group coaching sessions? If so, what will you offer? We've included these questions on the Create Your Group Program handout included in this module. If you're interested in creating a group coaching program, take a moment to write down the answers to these questions on that handout. Three, market your group program. Marketing a group program is a little different from marketing private coaching because you're looking to enroll participants in your program all at the same time rather than one at a time. When you're running a group program, give yourself sufficient time to market and promote your group. This usually means about four to six weeks before the first session of the group. If you're doing a group program in person, you might promote yourself by posting flyers, going to networking events, or connecting with local referral partners. If you're offering a group program online, you might promote yourself by e-mailing your newsletter subscribers, posting about it on social media, or creating an event on Facebook or Eventbrite that you invite people to. There are many ways to market yourself and to promote your programs, experiment with a few of the ones we've discussed and see what works for you and your groups. Four, coach your clients. Once you've filled out your group program, it's time to run it. Before your first session, you might consider screening your group members to get to know a little bit about each of them before the program starts. This is a great way to see what they are each struggling with, and to get a feel for group dynamics before you all meet. In the first session, you'll want to have members of the group introduce themselves and share their goals with the group. This helps to establish trust and rapport amongst attendees. If you're running a live in-person group, you can do this during the first live session. If you're running a virtual online group, you can ask participants to share a bit about themselves in your Facebook group as an introduction. It is important that each member feels comfortable in the group. So we also recommend starting off your group coaching program by creating some boundaries and guidelines for your group, such as when one person is talking, other people listened silently. No feedback is given after someone shares. Anything that's shared in the group stays with the group. Once you have your guidelines set, it's time to get coaching. Group coaching can be very similar to private coaching. The main difference is that instead of working with each client one at a time to dig deeper into their issues, you work with the group as a whole to help the members of the group get to the core of their individual issues. This could include asking the group high-mileage coaching questions and asking them to share their thoughts with the group, asking the group to reflect on something and write about it in their journals, doing some private coaching with one group member while the rest of the group observes. When you're planning your sessions, it's important to remember that not all of your time should be structured. We recommend leaving about 20 percent of the time unstructured so you can answer any questions that arise or spend more time on a subject that your clients seem really eager to learn about. Another aspect of group coaching that makes it different from private coaching is the group dynamic. How does your group interact with one another? It is not uncommon for a group to have participants who are eager to share and those who are quieter. As the Health Coach, you'll want to make sure that everyone is getting a chance to speak and participate. This might mean you're asking your more talkative members to dial it back a bit or calling on your more reserved participants to speak up. Five, manage your group. Just as you want to keep in touch with your private coaching clients in between sessions, it's important to keep group coaching clients engaged between meetings as well. You can achieve this by offering them homework assignments or creating a private Facebook group for them to interact in between sessions. To recap, we talked about how group coaching allows you to leverage your time and help more people at once. Then, we talked about what goes into running a group coaching program, from picking your topic, to structuring your group, to marketing it, and finally, coaching it. Lastly, we talked about ways to keep in touch with your group members between sessions. I hope this video was helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye for now.