Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening to a podcast for coaches. In the last two or three days, I've had three conversations with clients of mine about group coaching. It's a relevant conversation for me because, over the last six months or a year, as I consistently bump up against some definition of full in my one on one practice, the question always comes to mind, well, is it time for me to think about starting a group? And in fact, a very good friend the other day.
We were talking about my practice. She runs a large community membership. And we were talking about the fact that I do sometimes have to turn away one on one prospects. By the way, I do have spots open right now. So if you've ever thought about wanting to coach with me, it's probably a good time to reach out. But anyway, there are often times in my coaching practice where I am having to turn people away because there's just not a place for them in the calendar.
And I was sharing this with my friend and my friend just got this kind of confused look on her face and said, Mark, why aren't you launching a group? And so I had to sit with that and I had to think about it. Why am I not launching a group? And today I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I'm not launching a group. But I'll also tell you why I probably will someday and why I will be excited to do it when I do it. I bring that up because I'm not anti group coaching.
I just don't view it quite the same way other people seem to, or the way I think it gets talked about within the broader coaching community, my thesis for this whole set of ideas. Is that group coaching is not scaled one on one coaching. They're fundamentally different things. So if a coach transitions from one on one coaching to group coaching, or if they start to do some one on one coaching and some group coaching, it's not that they're doing the same thing in two different ways.
They're doing two different things. There's overlap between the two activities, but they are different activities. So let's talk about that. Let me try to make those ideas clear so that you can. Find ways to productively disagree and take those productive disagreements into your own practice. And to the extent that you agree, you'll take that into your practice. My main reason for not launching a group coaching program is because I'm thinking about. What is the client experience in that program?
And when I am a client experiencing the thing that we call group coaching, how do I feel? And for me, there are some deal breaker aspects to this experience that in order to launch a group coaching program or not even a group coaching program, but a one too many experience, because that's what we're actually talking about. One coach and many participants, I would have to find a way to resolve these. Here's the first one. One on one coaching is slower. Group coaching is faster.
If I'm the client in a one on one coaching experience, there's time for reflection. There's time for silence. There's time for consideration. You could say that the same is true of a group coaching experience, but it's natural state exerts pressure against that silence and against that reflection. Why? Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, there are people physically in the same space.
Even when it's a zoom space, there are, there are people physically in the same space as me and I, as the client know that there is a person behind me in line and that there's a person behind them in line and the clock is ticking toward the end of this session. So however much the coach tells me as the client, take your time. We're in no hurry.
It's hard, maybe even impossible to believe that because I can see the faces in the little squares on zoom of the people who are most likely waiting to be quote unquote coached next. Maybe even in zoom, they have their virtual hands raised and I see all the virtual hands. So even when I'm supposedly able to pause to get silent and to reflect, I know that I've got a line of people behind me. That's what makes group coaching tend towards speed versus slowness, hurry versus patience.
And there are some consequences to that natural speed and the natural pressure that exists in these group coaching settings. One is that the coaching that happens in these group coaching settings tends to be shallower rather than deeper. That's not just a function of the fact that there's a queue of people behind me waiting to be coached. It's also that I'm in a room full of maybe strangers. Now, maybe over the course of a group coaching experience, I build rapport with the people in the room.
So my willingness to go deep and to self disclose increases over time, but I'm still having to consider, even at a subconscious level, I'm having to consider the fact that what I share in that setting Is shared, not just with my coach, it's shared with everyone else in the room. I also have to consider that in most of these programs, the coaching is recorded and published.
Now, yes, that recording exists behind a paywall and probably, and yes, most people aren't going back to review those coaching calls, but if I'm a client, in that setting, some part of me is considering the fact that other people are listening today and that other people can listen, people with whom I have no rapport potentially forever into the future. Yeah. In my observation, clients in these settings do tend to get themselves past these anxieties for the most part.
But I don't think the nature of the thing allows them to get past those anxieties completely. Does that mean the interaction they're having with the coach and with the group is a bad one or an unhelpful one? No, it actually doesn't. Those can be quite helpful, quite powerful experiences for people, but they're fundamentally different. Then a one on one coaching interaction where there's no one waiting in line behind me.
There's no concern about the recording being available to a bunch of strangers on the internet. There's no concern about judgment from other people in the room. You've heard me say before that research shows that in the therapy world, All therapeutic success is based on the rapport and the trust that exists between practitioner and client. I don't have any reason to believe it's different in the coaching world.
And in a group coaching setting, those that we typically see in our community, that trust has to extend to the entire group in order for the experience to be as successful as it would be with a one on one coach. Again, that rapport can be created and I've seen it be created and I've felt it with other participants in a group myself, but it's still a different thing. from a one on one coaching experience.
So looking at this through the client's eyes, I've got concern about the natural speed and the natural pressure and the natural uncertainty that exists in a group coaching interaction. Not just uncertainty about the things I've already said, but uncertainty about how long is my time. There are people waiting behind me in line, but there's no particular structure that tells me what to do. My coaching time starts at this time and ends at that time.
So somewhere in that interaction, I'll start to have thoughts that sound like I'm taking too long. I'm talking too much. People are getting annoyed with me. And all of those things might be true. And since they might be true, as the client in that scenario, I'm feeling that internal pressure building and maybe I'm rushing. And you can almost guarantee that the coach is feeling the same pressures from the coaches side of things. These interactions.
Include wanting to be of service to the person you're talking to. Being aware of the fact that there's a cue behind that person trying to manage the energy in the room, wanting to make sure that everyone else in the room is getting what they want from the experience, which is mostly code for being entertained. The death of a group coaching experience is mostly boredom, more than lack of some other value.
The other value you want to be there as well, but it's just boring to watch a boring coaching interaction if there's nothing much happening, which is what great one on one coaching can look like. A lot of silence, a lot of space, a lot of looping back, maybe some talking in circles. It doesn't make great media. It can make for great individual transformation, but it doesn't make great media.
So I, as the coach, if I'm in that group coaching setting, I'm having to try to produce media as much as I'm trying to produce great,, individual coaching experiences. And that pressure will also build inside of me. What it tends to do is push the interaction. Toward advice giving. So it pushes the interaction away from inquiry and toward advice. I had this experience yesterday. I was doing my office hours time with a small handful of people who showed up to my office hours.
Some of you may be listening. It was great to meet with you. Lovely people. But I noticed myself through the course of that hour with a baseline anxiety, a baseline concern, um, That I'm taking too long with this person. What about the other people? Are the other people bored? Am I going to get to them all? And I heard myself going to advice giving above all else. I will say that I think the advice I gave was fine.
I think it was probably good advice in many cases, based on my experience and what I've observed, but it was advice giving, it wasn't inquiry. So if I'm talking with a person and she's explaining her business plans to me. If we're in a one on one setting, I will take time to go to inquiry. Who are you? What are your fears? What are your concerns? What are your past experiences? How do you feel emotionally right now? Are we giving enough space to this whole thing?
But in that setting, I switch to advice giving and I say, okay, here's what I think. Here's what I want you to do. I think this is going to work. And I do, by the way. It's not that the advice was bad, but good advice without the underpinning rapport, without the trust and without the understanding of who is receiving the advice can become bad advice. But it's the nature of these compressed group interactions that pushes me as the coach toward advice giving.
I got to tell you, it just doesn't feel good to me. I feel a physical discomfort as I'm doing it. Even as I'm aware that there's some value and some benefit to the client in that interaction, it's just unsettling for me. Because of the amount of time that I've spent in the coaching world and in my particular coaching community, I have also been an observer of these advice heavy group coaching interactions and later had the opportunity to coach The recipient of that advice one on one.
So I'm watching the person receive the advice in another setting from another coach. And then I am talking to that same person later, one on one. And I'm able to say that advice was given in a hurried way. It wasn't the best advice for that person, given their circumstances, given their emotional state, given their skills, et cetera.
And now I'm talking to them and I'm having the experience of trying to unpack and, and disentangle their thoughts and their desires and their plans from the fact that they bought so heavily into some advice that they received previously. So the advice might be useful, but it might be harmful. And it might be something that either takes a person off track or that their one on one coach later has to help them parse out and make useful. Meanwhile, that other coach had nothing but good intentions.
They were doing the most natural thing for the environment in which they were operating, which is to hurry to get through it, to get to the next person in line, to sound clever and insightful, to be entertaining, maybe at the expense. Of the person who's engaging one on one in that moment. These are the reasons that as a client, it's very rare for me to sign up for a group coaching experience because I find the experience on average, not very satisfying.
Even when it's not a negative experience, it leaves me wanting. And as a coach, the reason I don't tend to sell these is that I'm just not sure people are better off signing up for them. Certainly not better off, than signing up for a one on one coach, the thought experiment that I run is this, let's imagine that I have a full one on one practice and I have a wait list. I have 50 people on the wait list or 20 people on the wait list. The question I ask myself is.
Do I believe those people would be better served by getting into a group coaching experience with me? Or do I believe that they would be better served by working one on one with a trusted coach that I could refer them to? And let's say that dollar for dollars, same price. Do I think they should work with me in a group setting?
That has all the challenges that I've outlined already, or if I have a trusted fellow coach who for the same money could coach them one on one, what do I think is in their best interest for me today? If the goal is inquiry, insight, deep exploration, introspection, if those are the goals I will tell them, I don't have room for you right now, but I trust her, I would love for you to work with her or him. Because it's the nature of the work that I believe in.
And as long as I think there can be great rapport and trust between that prospective client and the coach, I'd refer them to, I'm going to make that connection. That's how strongly I feel about this today. What I want is for the client to have the experience that I think one on one coaching offers. I'm not as concerned with whether or not they have it with me. So does that mean I think there's no place for a one to many experience? No, I think there's plenty of places for it.
I think that one to many experiences. Or what we typically call group coaching. I believe they are at their best when they are one of two things, when they are either a classroom or a group facilitation. So let's talk about a classroom first. A classroom is a place where we have subject matter that we're studying.
The whole group is studying some subject matter and there's a teacher and the Share knowledge, share experience, and ask good questions and help the group absorb and internalize and master the information. I love a classroom setting. If I thought I could make a living at it, I would be a high school teacher. That's how much I love a classroom setting. I still might do it someday. I just can't figure out how to make the finances work yet. I love a classroom.
I love being a student in a good classroom. I love being a teacher in a good classroom. It's magic. The second thing is group facilitation in our world. We often call these masterminds. Ironically, what we tend to call masterminds is very often just the kind of group coaching that I've spent the last, however many minutes being skeptical about when I say mastermind, what I mean is a group of people get into a room.
There is a facilitator and the facilitator does the job of drawing out the experiences and the insights and the wisdom from everyone in the room in service of everyone else in the room. It's different from teaching. The facilitator's job is not to impart specific knowledge. The facilitator's job is to draw knowledge out of the room. It's to draw questions and insights out of the room. That's facilitation. I also love facilitation.
I love to be in a room where there's great facilitation happening, and I love to be the facilitator in that room. Both of these are different from the thing that we tend to call group coaching. Now, some would say, that's not quite right. I've sat in group coaching experiences and I get so much from hearing other people get coached 100%. But I think it ends up being the worst of all worlds or the most mediocre of all worlds.
When a group coaching experience attempts to be all things at the same time, when it attempts to be one on one coaching as the coach engages with an individual participant, and it also attempts to be a classroom where the coach is attempting to impart knowledge, and it attempts to be a facilitation all at the same time. I'm happiest with all of these when they are separated. And done beautifully by themselves. We who call ourselves coaches can do all of these.
I think we'll find it easier to deliver them well, when we do each thing on its own brilliantly, and that's what I'm excited about. I am excited about the possibility of being a facilitator. And, or a teacher in different settings in the not to do some future, you may hear an announcement on this podcast. I don't have any plans yet, by the way, this isn't me seating something I already have in mind, but I love facilitation and I love teaching.
So I hope that I come up with ideas for either or both of those things in the future because they're both fun and they're both value added for both client and coach, but I don't like it when we try to cram all those things into the same setting. I don't think it works very well. And I haven't talked about this in this episode, but the group coaching that we're accustomed to seeing in our world is also very hard to market and sell.
It creates a lot of pressure on both the person selling the experience and the person being sold the experience. And by its nature, it often puts pressure on the coach. To invite people into an experience that the coach without pressure, the coach wouldn't even want in that experience. About three years ago I sold a group experience and I made all the mistakes, all the mistakes.
And one of the mistakes that I made was I tried to sell a group experience when my audience wasn't really big enough such that I could invite only people that I thought were a perfect fit into that group experience. So I ended up with people who weren't a perfect fit. And in fact, they were a terrible fit. Enough time has passed now. And I don't think there's any chance that this person is listening. I had a client sign up a client and their spouse sign up for a group experience.
The husband would come to the zoom calls and he would sort of participate. And the wife was off somewhere in the background. I think laying on a bed. She would not come on camera. She, she announced that she would not come on camera, but she wasn't going to be a silent lurking participant. She was going to yell from across the room, many, many opinions of varying relevance, whose fault is it that that person's in the, in the group. It's my fault. I won't repeat that.
They asked for and received a refund. Thank goodness. There was another person in that same group experience where from the minute this person showed up on the call, there was this rage, this negativity, this skepticism. And I found myself chasing these people. Oh, let's see. How do I make this better? I found myself giving one on one free one on ones. Oh, I've got to make sure they get the value out of this.
Until at some point, a few weeks into the experience, I realized what are you doing to yourself? Give them their money back. I ended up refunding, I think a little over one third of the participants, in that whole thing. And I didn't do an amazing job, by the way. And the whole thing, it was just sort of, meh, it just wasn't very great.
I did come out of that having built some great relationships and there were a handful of participants who at the end of the experience, thanked me profoundly for the experience. Okay. That feels great, I give them a lot of credit for the fact that that was a great experience for them.
But because I approached this whole thing from the pressures that these group coaching experiences create, both in the sales and marketing side and in the delivery side, I ended up creating a ton of stress for myself, a lot of discomfort for a handful of participants and a bunch of refunds. You don't have to do a bunch of refunds. You can, you can avoid the mistakes that I made.
But. As you go into it, when you decide you're going to transition from one on one to groups, and I put all of that in air quotes, just experiment with my idea that we're talking about fundamentally different activities that have different ways of being successful, different ways of being a rich experience. You don't have to repeat my mistakes. You can sell group coaching.
You can sell the kind of group coaching that I've been a little bit critical of and I think that your clients, many of them will love it. They'll rave about it. They'll maybe sign up again. I'm never right in a black and white way anymore. I've let go of the idea that I am black and white, correct about any given topic. All of these things have nuance.
All of them exist on a continuum, but I think you will thank yourself if you go into the possibility of selling group coaching or buying group coaching With your eyes wide open about what it is and what it isn't, what it can be and can't be, and maybe what its best format actually is.
I think all of us are in a position to be great coaches, and great facilitators, and great teachers, but I am skeptical about whether all of those things can happen in the same space at the same time with a bunch of people. And I'll talk to you next time.