by Jennifer Britton (Canada)
Remote work is growing. With benefits ranging from the enhanced flexibility, to reducing carbon footprints, to providing support for caretaker activities, remote work is becoming more commonplace in organisations.
With this in mind, coaches will want to consider how to provide support for virtual leaders and team members, remote groups, and entire remote teams. Coaches in the remote space may leverage many different coaching modalities – from coaching the individual remote worker, to supporting groups of remote members from across an organisation on issues of common interest, to coaching an entire team.
This article explores three areas. First, what is unique about support for coaching those who operate in part, or whole, in the remote space. Second, what are some of the more common coaching areas for coaching groups of remote workers versus remote teams. The third part of this article explores techniques for ‘avoiding the death by conference call’ and creating interactive virtual conversations.
What is unique about support for coaching remote workers
Like most contexts today, remote work is being buffeted by change. One of the greatest needs for remote workers is a yearning for connection. This is where coaching many – group or team coaching – in the remote space may provide a great benefit. Peers may help to level-set that ‘feeling isolated’ is a part of remote work but does not need to be a definer.
Source: iCN Issue 28 (Corporate Coaching); pages 31-33
About Jennifer Britton
Jennifer Britton is the author of five books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching and From One To Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2010). Her books are being used by multiple coach training schools globally. Jennifer provides a wide range of supports for coaches, and other professionals who are working with teams and groups, including ICF-CCE approved programming via her company, Potentials Realised. She is committed to helping coaches create engaging and impactful work with the teams and groups they support, while creating a thriving business.
