When we started Thought Leaders Business School we included one-on-one coaching as part of the program. We had a faculty who had the skills, and it seemed like a no-brainer to help people get to black belt faster.

Over the last quarter we ran an experiment introducing group coaching. We’re incredibly lucky to have one of Australia’s leading (and most well-known) pedagogy experts Adam Voigt on our faculty. You might remember him from such shows as The Project.

Adam has been running the experiment, and he was recently talking to the rest of the faculty about how it’s been going. There were a couple of key concerns that other faculty members shared:

- A loss of intimacy and connection.
- A lack of accountability (in other words, it’s easier to hide out).

I was really interested to hear Adam’s responses.

Regarding accountability, “actually our experience is that students can’t hide out, and that their peers call them out on their stuff and provide better support and accountability than a single mentor could.”

Regarding connection, “I view it as quantitative intimacy … the participants have ended up more connected to their peers, the program and the curriculum … and overall more intimacy, not less.”

And Adam’s conclusion?

“I think it’s a reasonable conclusion that we can move people up the belts more quickly with group coaching.”

What does this mean for you? If you don’t have it already, I’d recommend considering group coaching in your mix of offerings. If the person who knows more about education than anyone I know is saying this about our group coaching experiment, I know I for one am listening.