The Capable Group Coach: Bridging Knowledge and Practice for Transformative Learning and Change in Groups

Written with clarity and warmth, this book is a transformative guide for professionals determined to create learning-rich, trust-filled environments where people and organizations not only grow—but thrive together.As group coaching rises as a leading and cost-effective tool for leadership development, organizational learning, and personal growth, many practitioners remain unsure how to distinguish it from team coaching or facilitation—or how to deploy its full power. Erek Ostrowski, blending original research and two decades of real-world expertise, offers a groundbreaking capabilities-based model that moves beyond checklist competencies and rote interventions. With an emphasis on flexibility, responsiveness, and adaptability, coaches will find practical guidance for working with complex, ever-changing client systems and fostering authentic human connection, learning, and transformation. Practical frameworks, vivid vignettes, and accessible theory anchor the book’s approach for facilitating psychologically safe, reflective, and accountable group experiences. Readers will discover the five key group factors—exchange, vicarious learning, belonging, role flexibility, and peer accountability—that enable deep insight and sustained change.Whether you are a leadership or executive coach, OD practitioner, educator, or supervisor, this book equips you with a research-informed, real-world toolkit for designing, facilitating, and teaching effective group coaching. Ultimately, Ostrowski’s work invites coaches and organizations to embrace the complexity, relational depth, and unique human potential that only group coaching can unlock.

About the Author

Erek J. Ostrowski , PhD, PCC is Chair of the Leadership and Organizational Coaching master’s concentration at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads curriculum design and instruction for one of the field’s premier graduate coaching programs. As a board member of the Graduate School Alliance for Education in Coaching (GSAEC), he plays an active role in advancing standards for coach education globally. He is also a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a certified coach supervisor (Oxford Brookes), and the owner and principal of Verve Coaching.