The year of COVID has taught the People & Culture function to re-think everything. Excitingly, many of us are finding that these new ways of working and thinking are providing new opportunities, and surprisingly good results. Front-line leadership development is a case in point.

Forced to deliver virtually, but also to an audience that has an even more elevated need for good leadership skills, many organisations are turning to training emerging leaders in small groups (say three or four leaders and one facilitator/coach). This works particularly well virtually.

Since traditional 2- or 3-days face-to-face front-line leadership training workshops are now difficult and risky to organise, curriculum-based small group leadership programs or management courses offer L&D departments several advantages.

Is this design COVID-ideal?

Small group training stands out as a COVID-ideal option in the following ways:

• They are COVID-safe. If organised initially as virtual, there is no direct contact between colleagues and the coach, no travel, and no rooms to be cleaned.

• Participants rate them highly. In exit surveys, participants of HFL’s small group coaching front-line leader program, Fastlead, particpants rate virtual pods higher than face-to-face pods (citing no need to travel, easy to have conversations in small groups on Zoom/Teams, etc.).

• They are very flexible. Coaching pods can begin as virtual programs and flex to face-to-face if circumstances change.

• They build coaching skills quickly. Because they are typically one part curriculum (facilitation) and two parts coaching, front line leaders get to see the power of coaching questions and empathetic listening directly in every session. There is a high transference of coaching skills – the bedrock of modern effective front-line leadership.

• They don’t require days away from the front line. Pods usually run with 2-hour sessions, fortnightly or monthly, meaning leaders are not away from their front line teams for days at a time.

• They fit in the comfort zone. Everyone is now used to working virtually.

Organisations such as Dulux, Genea and Metro Trains Melbourne have found small group leadership development designs ideal.

The ultimate guide to starting your own programs

In the spirit of sharing, HFL have distilled all of our seven years of experience in running small group coaching into a single document that helps L&D teams launch programs internally.

Download your white paper, 13 Rules for Successful Small Group Coaching here or read the entire whitepaper online here.

Or lean on us

If your L&D team is still COVID-lean, then you might want to explore HFL running pilots for you. Our Fastlead program boasts over 1500 graduates across the Asia Pacific (and is now operating in the UK too). Book a call with us here.

Special offer

Launch a Fastlead Pod with us before April 30, 2021 and we’ll give every participant a free license for our Virtual Leader programs, including access to our acclaimed Virtual Leader Playbook.

Other articles you may be interested in: Small group coaching is made for virtual delivery