How Can I Run Great Group Calls?

Today I’m talking about how to run engaging and effective group calls in your signature program, rather than calls that leave people bored or frustrated or just not showing up.
When I say PROGRAM, I’m talking about a niched, outcome oriented, structured container. Your program might be a workshop, retreat, group coaching program, course, or some hybrid of different formats.
These are the kinds of programs that are always in demand because they actually help people make significant transformations. I’m not talking about flimsy self-led courses here. I’m talking about programs where your participants get to interact with you in a meaningful way.
Therapists and healers make the best programs. We’ve got training and experience in how to help people get from point A to point B. We know how to work with resistance, emotions, and all of the other things that make change difficult.
If you’ve been a participant in a lot of programs, you know that some group leaders have no idea what they’re doing!
You as a therapist or healer have the potential to be a very skilled group leader for your program.
BUT there’s some stuff that therapists also need to learn about running calls in their structured, niched and outcome oriented programs.
A question I get a lot is: “How can I facilitate group calls well in my new program?”
And I’m excited to share my answer with you here.
THE TROUBLE WITH THERAPISTS
Our biggest mistakes as therapists are that we tend to run our program calls like group therapy sessions when we need to be doing something different.
I’ll use myself as an example. I really fucked this up at the beginning.
In the beginning, I ran my program calls a lot like group therapy sessions, and that wasn’t what my business coaching program needed.
I tended to go towards depth and bigger emotional material because I was comfortable there and that’s what I was used to doing with groups. I had been moving that way during years and years of working as a therapist.
If a person brought up feeling stuck in perfectionism or imposter syndrome, I’d expand and encourage that conversation to the point that it took up most of the session. Then I’d try to rush through some business concepts.
I didn’t know how to balance that beautiful depth with the need to direct the group towards the goal of the program.
My group calls left people feeling understood, bonded to others in the group, and probably with less shame about their experiences. The calls didn’t give the participants enough help with taking strategic steps in their businesses.
Were the calls bad? It depends what you think the purpose of the calls was. People who primarily wanted space to process about their emotions about their businesses probably thought the calls were great. People who wanted to move forward with strategy probably felt frustrated.
Lots of participants probably felt pretty good about the calls while they were happening, but then bummed out at the end of the program that we hadn’t gotten enough business stuff done.
As therapists, we still get to use our attunement skills, but we need to harness them differently.
The problem was that I hadn’t chosen ONE clear purpose for my calls.
CHOSE A PURPOSE
That brings me to one of my favorite thought leaders around running groups: Priya Parker. She’s an author and a facilitator, and she’s NOT a therapist.
Her book, The Art Of Gathering, has changed how I think about groups forever.
Priya Parker says that for any gathering, you need to choose ONE clear purpose.
You definitely need one clear purpose for your program.
The purpose of your program is the outcome it helps people move towards.
For example: Let’s pretend your program helps couples in blended families to strengthen their relationships. (That’s a juicy niche by the way. Grab it if you want!)
This program is designed to get the couple from point A to point B.
Point A is where the couple is now, feeling distress in their bond. point B is feeling stronger in their relationship.
Every single decision you make about your program should be in service of helping your couples towards the goal of a stronger relationship.
Your whole program has a purpose.
Within that program, each of the group calls needs to have one clear purpose as well.
For each session, you can ask yourself: “What is the one thing that this call needs to do well?”
Is the purpose of each meeting to internalize a concept? To feel connected to other participants? To hear each other’s stories?
Choose ONE purpose to build the call around.
Yes, they’ll get additional benefits out of those meetings too.
But choosing just one purpose saves us from this bias we all tend to have. We overestimate our ability to prioritize lots of things at once and do all of them well.
That’s when calls get boring and...