Building Your Group and Team Coaching Toolkit - Perspectives (17)

Creating more awareness around the issues of importance for the client is a central  part of the

coaching process. Part of this many involve work around perspectives and options that the client has around the goals that they are working towards.

As we return to some of the original models of coaching, like John Whitmore’s GROW model, we can see how centralized discussion and exploration around perspectives can be. Throughout the options stage of the GROW model, we may be working with our clients to explore different ways they can move from where they are towards the goal they have set.

This holds true for both the group and team coaching context as well. IF I am working with a group of business owners, I may be asking the question “What options do you have to grow your revenue this quarter?”. 

For one business owner they may be focusing on enhancing referrals, another may be doing a direct mail campaign and a third may be participating in a series of webinars. 

Each pathway may be different AND the perspective they hold around it may be different.

For the person enhancing their referrals, they might be in the perspective that business growth that quarter is going to be a lot of fun, as it will allow them to reconnect with their past clients and hear about the impact of their work.

For the person doing the webinars, their perspective may be that it’s going to be a quarter full of challenge and growth. They may really benefit from connecting wih others in the group who can share ideas and resources around HOW they successfully launched webinars or expanded business using that route.

In a group coaching context, it’s important to make sure we are leaving the space for each individual to explore the range of perspectives which exist for them.

At the team coaching level, perspectives work with usually be more collective. While there may be some element of coaching and conversations around individual perspectives around things, most likely the conversations will focus in on the collective perspective around issues. So if the team is tasked with launching a new program for their stakeholders, it will be important that there is alignment for the entire team around the perspectives that exist. There can be great learning as well in terms of how different team members approach different things.

Questions around perspectives:

1.       What is the perspective you are holding around the issue?

2.       What assumptions form the foundation of this perspective?

3.       What’s another way of looking at that?

4.       What else?

5.       What’s the value of looking at the complete opposite of that?

6.       If you were to flip things to 180, what would that look like?

Enjoy your conversations,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, PCC – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
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