Group Coaching for Managers

The manager populations that benefit most

A cohort works best when its members face similar challenges but do not work in the same team. Peers from different functions can be candid in a way that colleagues sharing a boss rarely are. These are the groups organisations most often put forward.

• ✦First-line managers in their first year of leading people
• ✦Middle managers caught between senior expectations and the reality of their teams
• ✦High-potential employees being prepared for bigger roles
• ✦Graduates of national talent programmes moving into their first management positions
• ✦Technical specialists who now lead people as well as projects
• ✦Women leaders in a dedicated cohort, often as part of a women’s leadership programme

Inside a session: one live challenge, many perspectives

1. 01

   Check-in

   Each manager reports briefly on the commitment they made last time and what happened when they tried it.

2. 02

   A live case

   One or two managers bring a current challenge: a struggling team member, an upward conversation, a decision they keep postponing.

3. 03

   Questions before advice

   The group asks open questions to help the manager think, rather than jumping to solutions. I coach the process and step in when it drifts.

4. 04

   Everyone takes something

   Each participant names what the case showed them about their own leadership.

5. 05

   Commitments

   Everyone leaves with one specific action to try before the next session.

Peers learn to coach by being coached

The most valuable discovery in a cohort is often simple: other capable managers struggle with the same things. That reduces the isolation many new managers feel, and it makes asking for help feel normal rather than risky.

There is a second benefit. When managers practise asking questions instead of supplying answers for each other, they start doing the same with their own teams. Group coaching becomes an informal apprenticeship in how to coach your team as a manager.

For HR, that peer network is a lasting asset. Managers who have worked through real challenges together tend to keep calling each other long after the formal sessions end, which spreads good practice across functions that rarely talk.

Confidentiality in a cohort is agreed by the group itself

In one-to-one coaching, confidentiality is between me and the client. In a group, everyone shares responsibility for it. In our first session the cohort agrees what stays in the room, how cases are discussed and what can be shared outside.

For the organisation, I report on themes and progress against the agreed goals, never on what an individual manager said. Some managers also prefer not to share a cohort with someone in their own reporting line, and we design the groups with that in mind.

Designing the programme with HR

Every group coaching programme is tailored. Before the first session, we make a few decisions together.

• ✦Managers who need more individual depth, particularly in their first months, may benefit from leadership coaching for new managers alongside or instead of a cohort.

Manager development was the core of my HR career

I began in HR and talent management, developing leaders and building talent strategies across financial services, FMCG, entrepreneurship and government, over more than 26 years. Moving managers from capable individual contributors to confident leaders of people was at the heart of that work.

I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach with more than 4,500 coaching hours, certified in leadership development and systemic team coaching. Group coaching for managers draws on both: the individual growth of each manager and the dynamics of the group around them.