Coaching Circles – An Amazing Value Proposition

Asking for support when faced with a challenge or when feeling overwhelmed is not always easy. We often push through on our own. Sometimes we reach out for a quick fix or a helping hand. If we’re lucky, a possibility we have not considered before may reveal itself.

While this is a good outcome, it doesn’t necessarily address the limiting narratives and habits that continually hinder our performance and wellbeing over time. Something more is needed for us to mature and to better deal with the increasingly complex situations arising in our lives.

This is where coaching circles really make a difference.

In a coaching circle, each participant has the opportunity to bring to the group a meaningful project, situation or challenge not only critical to their own success but also to those they work with. Each person draws from the collective intelligence of the group to inquire, reflect and ultimately design experiments that can improve what they do and how they do it.

In addition to boosting performance and results in critical areas of the business, coaching circle participants use the process and their own practice field to mature and grow in 5 key areas:

1. Empathy – Being able to see and include the other person’s world when speaking and listening
2. System agility – Understanding the way things work and what supports/hinders effectiveness
3. Complexity – Building resilience to face emergent change and ambiguity
4. Self-observation and inquiry – Seeing and taking responsibility for one’s own reactions
5. Coaching – Supporting others’ development and autonomy rather than telling them what to do

 

These capacities are transformative in that they bring about deeper levels of presence and the skillful means to accomplish what is meaningful to us. This isn’t project specific. It’s across the whole spectrum of our lives. This is what I call an amazing value proposition!

Given these outcomes, and their cost-effectiveness compared to individual coaching, it is not surprising that many organizations have integrated coaching circles into their learning and development programs, such as for the onboarding of new managers, to support professional transitions, to accelerate the implementation of new business priorities or to foster collaboration across traditional organizational divides.

Contact us to learn more about coaching circles for your organization or about leading coaching circles!