Four Nuggets from the Group and Team Coaching Intensive

I held the Group and Team Coaching Intensive here in beautiful Muskoka late last week on Thursday and Friday. The Forth Annual Muskoka Intensive was two days full of conversation, learning and lots of practice with group and team coaching!

I wanted to share with you four quick nuggets from the program which I think you will find useful in your own work:

#1: Building our toolkit is essential - Powerful questions, resources and activities form the foundation of a rich program. Building our toolkit with coaching resources and approaches, as well as resources from related fields such as training, facilitation and even OD, helps to create even more masterful programs for the teams and groups we work with. Just as in the Group Coaching Essentials teleseminar, I opened up my toolkit for others to explore and consider how the resources could be adapted for their own work. You will also want to check out past posts from the blog on group and team coaching activities.

Exercise: Spend 15 minutes this week taking stock of what tools you have, or reviewing a resource you have not looked at in while.

#2: Engagement is key to the learning process. When working with teams and groups you will have a variety of learning styles at play, requiring a variety of approaches to coach from.

Questions to consider: As you consider your next event, what pace will work best? What does engagement mean for this group or team? What could it look like?

#3: Incorporate what we know about neuroscience to make a more robust program.   My undergraduate work more than 25 years ago was in the field of psychology at McGill, which at the time
was a leader in neuropysch. In those days, as a third year student I took a year long course on learning and the brain, which has shaped a large part of the work I have done over the years. It's interesting to come full circle and see how what was being discovered in those days has laid the foundation for even more robust links between learning and how our brains do work. All  of my future programs will include an even tighter link between group and team coaching and neuroscience.

Exercise: The latency and recency posit that we remember the start and end of things. We place a lot of emphais at the start of programming, but not so much at the end. What can you incorporate or do at the end of calls or programs to reinforce learning?

#4: In the world of group and team coaching it is all about quality not quantity. It's all about the conversation  and providing people with a rich place for exploration, dialogue, discovery and awareness. 

Questions to consider:  What is an optimum size for you? What can you do to create connection in your groups and teams?

If you missed last week's Group and Team Coaching Intensive, I hope that you will consider joining me on November 1-2 in Toronto for our next one. The program is approved for 15 CCEs, and early early bird pricing will start soon for the November session.


Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
GroupCoachingEssentials.com
(416)996-8326
Join us for an upcoming program - the Mentor Coaching Group starts tomorrow - Monday July 14 at 11 am ET/New York by phone, and the Group Coaching Essentials teleseminar starts Thursday July 17 at 10 am Eastern/New  York (July 17, 24, 31, August 7 and 21 - 6.75 CCEs)

Also....
Next month on August 14-15 I will be hosting the Facilitation Skills Intensive, where we cover the

foundations of masterful group facilitation, along with several dozen facilitation tools. More info about the  Facilitation Skills Intensive program here.