Medley Co-Founder and CEO Jordan Taylor shares the science behind why group coaching is essential for leaders navigating today's critical transitions.
I’ve always had my most formative and powerful growth experiences in group spaces. As a kid, I played every sport under the sun, and was the rare student who loved a group project. In college, I missed being part of a team so much that I joined the varsity rowing team as a junior, and it was the highlight of my college experience.
Entering adulthood and the working world, it confused me that there weren’t spaces where I felt that sense of teaming and room to practice with others. But in my last semester at Harvard Business School, I had a full circle moment. I took a course called Authentic Leadership Development, and the bulk of the learning happened in small groups of six students who met for two hours every week over the semester.
It was transformative in multiple ways. On a personal level, I learned so much about myself and about others’ experience, and on a professional level, it sparked an insight that so many more people could benefit from a group experience like this. And so I began to go deep into research on groups in various formats.
As I was beginning research approaching graduation, I was keeping my mother in the loop on what I was seeing. It was clear that groups were proven for impact in several other contexts such as for senior executives (like YPO forums), for supporting addiction, and even in religious communities.
I knew there was something there. I even had a name, “Medley,” which came to mind because Medley was the last name of my favorite high school coach, O’Neil Medley. The word also represented a mix of things coming together, and had positive connotations related to music, sports, and food.
After one of my update calls to my mother, she called me right back afterwards and said, “I think we should build Medley together.” (I often remind her that it was her idea to jump into building a startup with me!)
Edith was coming out of a 30-year career in financial services, including 10+ years as Head of Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs. She saw immediately where this could go. She understood that the missing piece for organizations was in harnessing the power of their people and peer connectivity to drive continuous growth. They needed a way to help their leaders show up differently, especially in times of transformation and change.
Since launching Medley together, we have brought the transformative power of group coaching to thousands of leaders across organizations navigating their most critical transitions.
Seven years later, Medley has successfully embedded group coaching and cohort-based leadership development into a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, and we have witnessed firsthand what we set out to prove: group coaching is the most powerful facilitator of real and lasting transformation for individual leaders, their teams, and the organizations where they work.
In 2025, we received our highest average satisfaction ratings across all partners to-date. Over 90% of participants reported being “very satisfied” with their Medley experience, 96% reported improved communication and listening skills, 90% applied learnings to their day-to-day work, and 94% reported stronger self-awareness as leaders.
We also see 2x promotion and retention rates for those who have completed a Medley program, in comparison to others in the same organization.
In today’s era of unprecedented uncertainty and AI-driven disruption, organizations need leaders who can think clearly, connect authentically, and adapt with presence. Those capabilities don’t come from skills-based training. They come from research-backed group coaching where leaders can relate to one another, practice new ways of thinking and lead alongside peers navigating similar challenges. This access to the power of human connection is what drives substantive and lasting growth and behavior change.
As we run into 2026, I am excited to share more about why groups matter now more than ever, how to harness their power of organizational transformation, and why partnering with Medley is a strategic move for your business.
So if you’re leading through this moment of disruption, or if you’re thinking about how to help your leaders navigate it with presence and clarity, I’d love to hear from you. Reach out and let’s talk about what's possible.
Jordan Taylor, Co-Founder and CEO of Medley
Imagine a soccer team where the players only practice with individual coaches, versus a team that actually practices together. On the first team, the athletes would come together on game day with little idea how to engage with one another or work as a cohesive unit.
This analogy holds for group versus individual coaching in business as well.
One-on-one coaching has real value. A coach offers undivided attention and personalized guidance tailored to an individual’s specific needs, challenges, or role transitions. For senior leaders navigating a critical inflection point, or for any manager working through a key development area, that personalized focus is powerful. And Medley offers it.
But our primary focus, which is what we’ve built our methodology around, is group coaching. Groups are where people learn coordination, communication, and how to read the field around them. This is especially crucial given the technological shifts underway due to advances in AI. We’re energized by the potential impact of AI tools on the way we work and how organizations function, but what’s clear is that certain operational or technical abilities like creating spreadsheets, running analyses, even writing emails are no longer differentiators in the workplace.
To have influence, leaders need to motivate and connect with others, operate in rapidly shifting contexts, and navigate complex interpersonal dynamics. It’s like watching a soccer team play well. The players are constantly adapting, reading the field, responding in real time. In the workplace, the differentiating skills are self-awareness, deep listening, and the ability to influence across differences. And these skills develop best in groups, which enables participants to see themselves through the perspectives of multiple peers, something we call a “relational mirror.”
It’s also worth noting that Medley’s group coaching is distinct from “team coaching” in a crucial way. Rather than working with intact teams on existing business problems, we bring together cross-functional peers who create a space where leaders can practice and explore their potential with people they trust, but don’t report to.
When Medley first started testing its group methodology, we had a strong hypothesis that “the who” in the group matters enormously, perhaps even more than the specific task (“the what”) that they’re engaged in.
Similar to a champion soccer team or an award-winning orchestra, success in these settings isn’t just about individual talent. It’s about the specific combination of people engaged in the task, and how their individual characteristics interact to create the conditions for collective performance.
Our initial thinking was that if the coach is incredible, the session structure is great, and expectations are clear, but the individuals don’t feel like they’re matched with others with whom they can be open, then the group likely won’t develop the kind of cohesion that drives real transformation.
That hypothesis has proven true, but what we’ve learned goes much deeper.
Our group matching approach is grounded in decades of academic research on group therapy and behavioral psychology. We draw from foundational literature on group selection and composition, meta-analyses on group psychotherapy effectiveness, and research on group therapy theory and practice. We’ve applied those frameworks, tested them against our data across thousands of participants and hundreds of cohorts, and built something new: a science-backed methodology for matching leaders in corporate settings.
The research is unambiguous about what matters:
Psychological safety and relational fit are non-negotiable. Studies on group dynamics repeatedly demonstrate that the most significant predictor of attrition, satisfaction, and outcome isn’t the group facilitator or the structure. It’s whether members feel genuinely matched with their peers. Cohesion (the degree to which group members like each other and work effectively together) is directly correlated with improved outcomes. We have applied this insight to Medley groups to ensure participants feel they’re with “their people,” which ensures growth becomes possible.
Effective groups are not just about similarity. The ideal group isn’t a collection of clones. Research validates that the most effective groups require both homogeneity and heterogeneity. You want people similar enough that they can relate to one another’s challenges, whether that’s a similar career stage, professional context, vulnerability tolerance etc. But you also need diversity in how people show up: in communication style, in perspective, in the roles they naturally take and interpersonal styles. Medley groups are intentionally diverse in ways that facilitate the greatest learning for all participants.
Based on an initial analysis of over 20,000+ data points, we identified distinct psychometric profiles that show up in groups: Leaders, Achievers, Entertainers, Thinkers, Independents, and Spectators. To understand what makes groups click, we need to understand the intentional mix of participants according to these archetypes, and how they interact.
Our internal analysis indicated that groups with higher proportions of high-extraversion participants (Leaders and Entertainers) show significantly higher satisfaction and lower withdrawal rates. These individuals act as “social catalysts” as they create conditions for others to show up more fully, model vulnerability, and draw others into conversation.
Conversely, groups lacking this dynamic become static, which is why we’ve built this research into our group matching process. Rather than leaving composition to chance, we use data-driven insights to ensure every group has an optimal mix of personalities and dynamics to drive real transformation.
Groups need to have strong social and task cohesion to succeed, and a successful group coaching experience is one that drives individual growth, greater connectivity in the system, and enables measurable transformation at scale for the organization. Social cohesion is the extent to which a group can connect with each other, and task cohesion is the ability of the group to effectively work together towards their leadership development goals.
We’ve built our matching methodology around five critical factors that, when balanced correctly, create the conditions for both social and task cohesion
When thinking about what makes Medley’s approach best-in-class and different relative to other providers, it comes down to our proven methodology in optimizing quality connections, designed for meaningful growth and impact.
Mathematically, it is a complex problem to optimally match a cohort into groups. For example, a cohort of 100 participants creates roughly 100 digits worth of potential group combinations into groups of 6-8. When you layer on top of that the even greater complexity of human dynamics, it takes both art and science to optimize group and coach matching for impact.
So to craft groups, we developed a proprietary AI-enabled matching algorithm that combines the rigor of data science with the expertise of human judgment and refinement so each individual within each group is set up for success.
Our process starts with gathering behavioral and psychographic data from our participants to help us understand where each person is in their leadership journey. Then our team layers in constraints and preferences from our client partners. For example, a partner may want to emphasize cross-functional mixing, geographic diversity, office cohesion etc.
Our interactive algorithm leverages AI to generate recommended groupings based on the data points collected, participant and client preferences, and even hard constraints like scheduling and time availability for coaching sessions.
Our 100+ coaches, all professionally credentialed through the International Coaching Federation or equivalent programs, are much more than skilled facilitators. Each coach is highly experienced in both group and individual contexts, and has worked with groups for a minimum of five years. They also complete Medley-specific onboarding and partner-specific onboarding ahead of each engagement.
Needless to say, coaches are not just managing the conversation or ensuring people “get along.” They’re blending three kinds of expertise: coaching mastery, group facilitation, and contextual intelligence about the organization.
Group coaching remains the core of all of our solutions for partners, and as a full-stack leadership development company, we then layer on other coaching modalities across 1:1 coaching, coach-led workshops, and AI-enabled peer groups to build customized programs, strategically integrated and sequenced to meet the needs of our partners and the leaders we are working with.
Our design process with our partners identifies which coaching modalities and in what sequences are best-fit for a given audience and organizational goal. We believe the most powerful unlock for leadership development is when coaching interventions can be strategically prioritized and integrated.
That often means starting with workshops to build broad awareness and shared language. We layer in group coaching for the leaders critical to transformation, leverage one-on-one coaching for senior leaders or individuals who would benefit from targeted, personalized support. And we sustain momentum with AI-enabled peer groups to keep people connected and facilitate practicing long after the formal program ends.
Here is a breakdown of Medley’s various offerings:
Group Coaching: In groups of 6-8 peers, coaches facilitate transformation where people practice new behaviors, hold each other accountable, and build lasting relationships that extend far beyond the program. The combination of expert facilitation, peer accountability, and relational depth creates the conditions for real behavior change.
Coach-Led Workshops: These are focused on driving awareness and collective learning on critical topics including navigating change or building psychological safety, and perhaps most timely: developing an AI-ready mindset. Best deployed at the start of a transformation journey, or as reinforcement across broader talent populations.
Individual Coaching: This is particularly powerful for high-potential talent navigating a critical transition, or for leaders who need targeted support with executive presence, decision-making under uncertainty, or role-specific challenges.
AI-Enabled Peer Groups (our newest offering): After formal coaching ends, peer-led groups keep people connected, accountable, and practicing. They embed a culture of peer coaching into the organization, which means development becomes an ongoing practice, not a program event.
The specifics of what’s disrupting leadership has changed several times in the last seven years. It has included shifting to a hybrid model of work and responding to volatile cultural and political moments. And now, it’s adapting to working in an AI-powered world. But no matter the specific nature of the disruption, the underlying challenge remains the same. Leaders need to understand their own relationship to change before they can lead others through it.
AI transformation is breeding both anxiety and unprecedented opportunity. Two types of disruption are happening simultaneously: structural and individual.
The structural disruption is the obvious one defined by reorganizations, layoffs, changing roles within teams and departments. As companies are figuring out what their workforce looks like in an AI-enabled future, the burden on leaders intensifies. They must manage the logistics of restructuring while simultaneously supporting their teams through the uncertainty and fear that comes with it.
What Medley is increasingly helping organizations solve is supporting their leaders in adapting an “AI-ready mindset.”
An AI-ready mindset isn’t about mastering specific tools. It’s about helping people examine their relationship to change itself, and adopt the mindsets and skillsets to explore ways of integrating AI into their work strategically. It’s about building the adaptability to look at disruption and say: “This is happening, it’s scary, and I can figure out how to move forward.” It’s about developing the presence and self-awareness to ask: “How does this serve the work I do? How does this serve the leader I'm becoming?”
This kind of mindset shift happens best in groups, in a space where people can be scared, uncertain, and still show up authentically with other people who are scared and uncertain too.
As a transformation partner, we go deep into the challenges organizations are facing and the goals they have, we design coaching strategy and supporting programs and curriculum to support the organization in meeting those goals, and we measure impact iteratively along the way to evolve programming.
If you’re a talent and business leader at an organization wrestling with AI integration, a restructuring, a cultural shift, or all of the above, we’d love to talk.
Reach out directly through the Medley website or on LinkedIn. But more importantly, share what you're solving for. We look forward to hearing from you.
.png)
.png)
