Collaborative Coaching Skills at Work
Context
World Animal Protection is a charity which operates globally to end the needless suffering of animals, influencing decision makers to put animals on the global agenda, helping the world see how important animals are to all of us, and inspiring people to change animals’ lives for the better. The organisation moves wherever the need for animal protection is greatest, including treating more than 70,000 animals following the Haiti earthquake in 2010, training vets in Thailand, ending bear dancing across India in 2012, and investigating animal trafficking in El Salvador. Today World Animal Protection has offices in 15 countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, India, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, UK and the USA.
Objectives
With such a widespread workforce, World Animal Protection’s Global Learning & Development Manager, Carol Bull, contacted us to plan a training programme which would enhance the management style of its leaders with coaching skills, create new bonds and understanding throughout its departments across the world, and develop a team of internal coaches. Management levels ranged through the Executive team, Senior Leaders, Managers, Specialists, and Programme Leads, and the vision for coaching in the organisation was:
- All managers able to utilise and demonstrate enquiry led coaching skills.
- Peer coaching, becomes the norm and is driven by individuals.
- Staff able to access a skilled cohort of qualified, internal coaches.
- Internal coaches undergo coach supervision and CPD
- All staff understand how to be a “good coachee”.
- Establish mutually beneficial, cross-organisational coaching networks beyond World Animal Protection.
Previously, the managers had not had any specific coaching training and the understanding and skill set around a coaching style of leadership varied.
Particular challenges to the programme included:
- Managers had very busy roles and limited time to participate in training sessions.
- Training initiatives required to impart coaching skills with lasting and demonstrable behaviour change might be costly, especially given the geographical spread.
- For many staff, English was a second language, and for some taking a coaching approach might be countercultural.
- The organisation wanted to build interest and motivation among its leaders to attend.
- Some managers might believe they already had the core competencies required to be a good coach and might not be open to the training and support on offer.
Solutions
We designed an online training programme entitled ‘Collaborative Coaching Skills at Work’, working with World Animal Protection to define the content and the title . In addition we designed a top-up tranche of training for those who wished to go on to become fully qualified coaches, to start building an internal coaching cohort.
The virtual approach was innovative at the time, before the pandemic, and became essential after the events of 2020. We have found the training to be as effective as face-to-face, if not more so because time and expense are eliminated, both for participants and trainers, and participants do not have to spend whole days away from their offices.
As great animal lovers, we were very keen to support this charity, so included some add-ons such as free copies of Carol Wilson’s book ‘Performance Coaching’ and reduced fees.
The ‘Collaborative Coaching Skills at Work course aimed to:
- provide foundation coaching skills based on the GROW model
- introduce the “ask instead of tell” approach to problem solving
- integrate coaching techniques into the participants’ natural leadership styles, including listening, questioning and solution-focused thinking
- provide techniques and approaches for collaborative and constructive conversations
- enhance mentoring skills with a coaching approach
- generate innovative thinking and enthusiasm from teams and individuals to take responsibility and ownership of their day-to-day work and projects
- provide techniques for hosting generative thinking meetings
- create a culture of learning instead of blame
- sustain new habits during times of stress
- generate resilience in times of change
- enhance self-reflection, awareness of self and the effect of one’s behaviour on others
- increase the ability to provide effective and inspiring feedback
- enhance team building and relationships
Outcome
The training is delivered over six webinars, each lasting two hours, plus one day of assessments, where participants coach each other in pairs observed by our assessor. In order to win a certification of accreditation, participants must write a case history and provide a coaching log. The maximum number of participants on each course is 12. Our trainers are versed in special methods to avoid ‘Zoom fatigue’, keeping energy high through plenty of interactive participation and break-out sessions for pairs or small groups.
The key to achieving great results is that between modules, participants paired up to practise co-coaching with each other, thereby growing familiar with the skills and implementing them naturally at work. This also was an ideal opportunity for creating new unity and understanding across the world.
When a sufficient number of participants have been trained who wish to be coaches, they will join together to attend a top-up course in order to:
- learn techniques for delivering formal coaching sessions and series of coaching sessions
- raise awareness of ethics in coaching
- enable the coaches to provide each other and future trainees with basic skills in supervision
- enable the participants to become “lead coaches”, creating ideas and plans for extending and embedding a coaching culture, maximising the coaching and mentoring training provided to managers
- take the skills taught on the Collaborative Coaching Skills at Work programme to a deeper level
- practise real coaching scenarios, both with course partners and in the workplace, for:
- reflecting and acting on career goals
- enabling coachees to develop their thinking and creativity, and innovate ideas
- enabling coachees to take control of and improve personal performance
- building confidence by helping coachees to recognise, own and maximise their strengths, improving existing qualities rather than focusing on “fixing” weaknesses
- supporting coachees’ resilience in times of change and stress
- supporting engagement and empowerment of all staff
This top-up training will be delivered over four webinars, each lasting two hours, plus one day for assessments (in pairs, all on the same day). Successful candidates will receive an ILM Endorsed Certificate in coaching and mentoring, and our internal CfPAC accreditation (Coaching for Performance Accredited Coach), which celebrates the involvement of Sir John Whitmore in the design of our courses, and incorporates the title of his seminal book “Coaching for Performance”.
The Collaborative Coaching Skills at Work programme has been delivered to participants from the UK, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Nairobi, New Zealand, Australia, China, Thailand, Brazil, the USA, Canada, India, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
People loved the opportunity to interact with colleagues across the globe whom they might never have the opportunity to meet in person.