Introducing CoachAccountable Groups
Today I am delighted to announce a new major piece of the CoachAccountable platform: Groups.
Groups is CoachAccountable’s answer to supporting group coaching, designed to promote communication among group members, joint accountability, and a very real experience of shared accomplishment and community support.
Let me show you around.
Groups for Team Efforts
Actions and Metrics are usually single-person affairs, but Groups take this to a new level of shared accountability and results.
With Group Actions you can create assignments for everyone in the group to tackle individually, and enable everyone to see how the group is doing as a whole.
When everyone can see what everyone else has or hasn’t done, people have a tendency to do their part.
With Group Metrics every member tracks their own result and the overall team performance can be seen, as either the sum or average of all of the individuals.
Metrics of individual clients are lumped together to reveal the overall performance of the group.
Groups for Communication and Collaboration
Easy sharing and messaging among group members is baked right in. Messages can be posted to the group, items from individual coaching experiences can be shared with the group, comments are allowed on everything (easily added either when logged in or by replying to group email notifications), and coaches can even allow group members to send private messages to one another through the system.
Fine-Grain Control for the Coach
Coaches who setup their coaching groups can set a number of permissions regarding what client members can and can’t do. At any time new client members can be added, and existing members can be deactivated or purged from the group all together.
You are free to set whatever is appropriate for your group coaching situation.
If needed, coaches can protect the relative anonymity of group members among one another. Names can be masked and all communications among group members are handled by the system, meaning personal contact details are kept hidden by default.
Groups for Passive Oversight
Your coaching might not be suitable to have your clients talking and interacting amongst themselves, but perhaps they’re all up to the same thing and you’ll like to see a collective overview of how the team is doing. With the option to make groups that are visible only to you, you can do just that. Closed groups enable you to create Group Metrics and Group Actions just as in regular ones, leaving individuals with their individual assignments but only you with a view of the group’s aggregate performance.
All told Groups are ready to take the supporting structures of 1-on-1 coaching offered by CoachAccountable, and extend them into the realm of group coaching. In the coming weeks I anticipate further evolving the system as coaches put Groups into real practice, and for now I’m excited for what’s newly possible in causing connection and accountability within group coaching.
More recently: Delightful Collaboration IV – A Spiffy, White-Labeled Login Screen
Previously: Reaching out to People is Awesome
Hey John
Congrats!!!
Now we’re trucking :-) Flexibility to work individually and in a group. This year’s groups have worked well even without it, but the added extra boost to ‘motivation’ using group actions – oh the pressure :-)
Since my groups are wrapping up on the next two weeks, sadly little time to find out just how useful this will be right now… better get out and get another group going then :-)
Great job
John
October 9, 2013 @ 8:00 pm
Thank you!
Yeah, I remember you saying you were having a fine time of enacting group coaching back in February with what was already there. I was surprised to hear as much, and reckon the new support for your clients to be in touch and keep up with how they’re all doing relative to one another will be a big leg up.
Please let me know how it goes!
October 10, 2013 @ 10:09 am
Hey John,
What are the maximum number of groups we can create in CA?
July 6, 2015 @ 1:32 pm
Hi Lisa,
There is no limit: you can make as many groups as makes sense for the collection of clients you have. Also, if it makes sense to do so you can have a given client be a member of more than one group.
July 6, 2015 @ 1:34 pm
Thanks so much!
July 6, 2015 @ 1:35 pm
I would like to create a group of people who are not clients, to do some free group coaching in an effort to get more paying clients. Do you a plan that allows me to create groups that are not paying clients.
January 19, 2017 @ 5:06 pm
Hi Greg, you’re certainly free to create groups with non-paying clients but those clients would still count towards your own subscription plan–I can think of no way for the software to really know the difference!
February 22, 2017 @ 6:08 pm
Hi John,
I am about to use the group feature. Any major updates/changes done since this article?
Or any best tips
Warm regards
Glenn
May 15, 2018 @ 3:39 am
Hi Greg,
So you want to use FREE group coaching to fuel your 1-0n-1 coaching?
Did you go for it?
Warm regards
Glenn
May 15, 2018 @ 3:40 am
Hi Glenn,
There have been plenty of refinements since the initial release but CA Groups remain true to their original essence. “Best tips” is a broad subject indeed, but one good place to start is to effectively wield Group Metrics! This write up will get you on your way:
https://blog.coachaccountable.com/2015/11/why-group-metrics-are-awesome/
Cheers!
John
May 15, 2018 @ 4:48 pm
Hi John,
I love your CANI attitude! Yes I will dive into that..
Thanks
Appreciate it
Glenn
May 16, 2018 @ 12:50 am