Must-Have Coaching Tools To Boost Your Group Coaching Engagement
As a coach, you know that engagement is key to successful coaching. While in 1-to-1 sessions with clients it is easier to focus your attention to engage with the client, the opposite for the group model, it is certainly a challenge to keep the engagement strong with a group, especially when you are running the group coaching program online or virtually.
It is important to highlight that scaling your coaching business from a 1-to-1 model to a group coaching program doesn’t necessarily mean dividing your dedication and commitment among the group members equally. You might already take this into account when structuring the framework and formulating the content of your group coaching program, but always remember to put your clients first when finding ways to engage with them.
When it comes to the coaching content, you can find that there are tons of methods and content you can use to boost engagement in your group. Taking examples from our study cases, live group sharing sessions, group motivation facilitation, and group feedback are among the top activities you can incorporate into your group coaching program. But, how do you make that happen? Most importantly, how can you incorporate these activities without taking a lot of your time and effort? Here we’ll share with you the must-have coaching tools to boost your group coaching engagement.
Live Sessions
Live sessions are crucial for engaging with clients in all kinds of coaching frameworks, whether it’s the 1-to-1 model or the group model. Within the live session, you get to connect at a deeper level and dig deeper into your clients’ problems and their progress, which will help you to formulate the next steps. Live sessions are even more essential for group coaching programs running online because they establish the foundation for how members will interact with each other in the group. It is a space where they can connect with you and also with each other.
There are various tools you can use to do your group coaching live sessions in the virtual world. One of the top tools used by many coaches is Zoom video conferencing. It allows you to have a video call with multiple people who can join from various devices; phones, tablets, or personal computers. Inviting people to your personal meeting space in Zoom is also pretty easy to do. You will have a unique meeting link in which you can share with your group coaching clients. Plus, Zoom is integrated with many digital calendars in which you can use to schedule the meeting in your calendar and invite your group members to add to their calendars.
To make sure that your group is engaged, plan the live sessions accordingly. Depending on the length of your group coaching programs, you can decide in which steps these live sessions are needed. For a long time commitment, you can plan for be one session at the beginning and weekly check-ins. While for a shorter time commitment, you can plan for one session at the beginning, one check-in session, and one closing session.
Progress Tracking
Within the 1-to-1 coaching model, tracking your clients’ progress is useful for assessment purposes. While in the group coaching model, progress tracking can be much more useful for your coaching as well as helping to boost group engagement as a motivational tool.
With progress tracking tools that are specifically built for coaching like Uloo’s analytics, you can see each individual progress and the collective one. Your clients will benefit from this progress tracking by being accountable to themselves, as well as being accountable to the group’s progress.
As a coach, having these analytics will allow you to focus your attention on the ones who need more of your support. This means that none of your clients will ever be left behind. You can also reward the ones who make great progress. Implementing the progress tracking as a continuous assessment to fine-tune your coaching content will keep every one of your clients feeling taken care of. It helps your coaching to still be personalized to each client’s needs, even at the scale of group coaching. In this way, each member of your group will always be motivated and engaged by your coaching.
Inevitably, showing the group members’ progress can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can motivate the individuals to keep up with each other; on the other hand, it may come across as a competition and discourage some members of the group to continue. This would be a situation that you need to watch out for. As a coach, you can position yourself as the facilitator and drive the group towards positive motivations rather than unhealthy competition.
Interactive Chat
Important engagement tips alert: don’t leave your clients in the dark! Even though live sessions play a heavy role in engaging with your group coaching participants and that is the space where you will focus your coaching the most, constant communication with your clients is equally important. This is even more crucial if your group coaching program lasts for a longer period of time. Uloo’s model of group coaching allows the group members to stay active with your guidance throughout the whole period of the program.
The best tool to keep your group in the loop is through an interactive chat. As opposed to email blasts which are most likely to be a one-way type of communication and in a format of long-form texts, instant messaging or chat tools are more open for two-ways conversations and easier to participate in. By using messaging tools, you get to announce tasks, share content or knowledge resources, and start a group discussion from your prompts in a way that is constant and keeps the positive motivational vibe going. This is useful to keep your group engaged in-between live sessions, for you to monitor their progress and strategically plan for the upcoming sessions.
There are many messaging or chat tools that are available to support you. Whatsapp and Telegram are commonly used as messaging tools as they offer group chat and most people would already use it for daily communication purposes. However, these tools are not entirely suitable for coaching, mainly for the reason that your group members might get distracted from their personal chats on the same platform.
Using an interactive chat tool that is specifically designed for coaching like Uloo chat will lift a lot of workload from you. Uloo chat allows your group members to focus only on your coaching program while being in the app. With the integrated activities pinned in the chat, it is easier for you to highlight important announcements and tasks with files or resources attachments for the group members to focus their attention on. Your group members can also interact with each other by texts, reacting to each other’s messages, as well as sending their files and pictures.
All-in-One Platform
The good news for you is that with Uloo, you can have all these group coaching engagement tools in one platform. With Uloo, Zoom live sessions can be integrated into the activities, progress tracking is designed for you to monitor both individual and collective progress, and the interactive group chat is dedicated as the central safe space of your group coaching.
If you are looking to boost your group coaching engagement, you can have all the perfect coaching tools with Uloo. Running your group coaching practice will be so much easier with the help of these coaching tools, so you get to focus your commitment and dedication to actually helping your clients be the best version of themselves and achieve their life goals.
