How Do You Assign Coaches? Life-Stage? Geographic? Random?

I love a great question…and I got a really great question yesterday.  Such a good question, a puzzle shared by so many, that I thought it’d be better to answer it here.  It’s about coaching.  See what you think:

“How do you group your groups?  By life-stage?  Affinity?  Geography?  We currently have approximately 128 groups and need to ‘divide’ them into categories for coaching.  About 40 of our groups are new in the last 2 months.  We’re moving at light speed playing catch-up.  Most of our leaders were trained with the understanding that a coach is essential, but the window is closing.  We’re having only limited success with more generic grouping.  What categories or life-stages do others use?

There are several great questions wrapped up in that one paragraph!  Can you see them?  Let’s unpack what’s here.

First of all, we should nail down a two assumptions:

• Span of care is an essential idea in grouplife.  “Everyone needs to be cared for by someone but nobody should be caring for more than about 10.”  So far, so good.  I like what you’re thinking when you recognize that you need to group your groups in smaller units.
• I’ve said many times that one of the most difficult and least effective things to do in grouplife is try to assign coaches to existing small group  leaders.  Once a group has survived longer than 3 or 4 months, they know they don’t need a coach for technique.  What they don’t know is that the real long-term role of a coach has very little to do with communicating technique!

Second, with that out of the way, let’s look at how to tackle the issue.

• The most pressing issue is providing coaching and care for the 40 new group leaders.  You might consider using a short-term approach, just ensuring that they’re getting attention right out of the gate.  My article, Recruiting Additional Coaches for Church-Wide Campaigns might give you an idea or two about finding enough to provide coverage.  Allen White’s, Recruiting Coaches without Resumes is also very helpful.
• Next, how you group leaders with coaches depends on several factors.  Since there will be fewer and fewer on-campus meetings and effective ministry will become more decentralized (pace of life), it might make sense to group leaders with coaches geographically in many cases.  At the same time, certain affinities (women’s, men’s, etc.) might make sense to group together.  Equally, some life-stages will occasionally make sense to group together (i.e., empty nesters or young couples).  The key is to recognize that there is no problem-free solution and think ahead about how you’d like them to connect in the future.
• Finally, I’d feel much less urgency about assigning coaches to existing groups.  Rarely do existing leaders take to the idea of a coach.  Much like transplanted organs are sometimes rejected by the body, retroactively assigning a coach to an existing leader almost always leads to rejection.  Instead, I’d work to implement a series of decentralized get-togethers hosted by coaches disguised as experienced leaders.  They can be geographic or by affinity.  Designing the get-togethers to help connect leaders and give them an opportunity to provide mutual care goes a long way toward meeting their needs.  And, when designed properly, the experienced leader is seen as a resource as opposed to a meddler.  You might find some additional help in my articles, How to Implement Coaching for Existing Group Leaders and What to Do When Your Leaders Don’t Want Coaches?

Want do you think?  Have a question?  Want to argue? You can click here to jump into the conversation.