Your views
Coaching in the community
Coaches and mentors are taking their skills out of the boardroom and into the community.
The Coaching the Community campaign looks at how coaches and mentors can use their skills to help those in the wider community who may not usually have access to these services.
There was a time when coaching was the preserve of senior business people with their eye firmly fixed on the boardroom. While life coaching has gained significantly in popularity since then, helping to broaden the scope of the profession, the voluntary sector and broader community have until now largely missed out on these valuable services..
As a result the International Coach Federation, the professional association for personal and business coaches worldwide, recently launched ‘Coaching the Community’, a campaign created in response to a growing interest among its membership.
A joint survey by Coaching at Work and the UK chapter of the International Coach Federation discovered that nearly two-thirds of its members believed it was very important to make a contribution to the wider community.
A large number of case studies confirm the potential benefits of this approach. Wendy Glassock, independent coach and mentor at Aiming Higher, volunteered as a mentor for the National Probation Service. One of Glassock’s clients there, Tracey, was on probation for failing to ensure her children attended school, suffered from agoraphobia and had been on anti-depressants since she was 17.
Subsequently, Glassock has seen her develop from, as she says: "Someone who believed she was capable of nothing, and that the world was against her to someone with a thirst for life…who is enjoying the rewards of better communication and increased confidence and self-esteem."
Coach in the community
Encouraging organisations to allow their employee coaches out into the community is a key strand of the campaign, which also brings significant benefits to the businesses involved, according to Catherine Sermon, community director at Business in the Community (BITC).
"For employers there is both a business and a moral case," she says. "Companies have the power to raise people’s aspirations and to provide support to those who face particular barriers to work. We know many companies that run successful programmes mentoring people in community and workplace settings. These firms engage and develop their staff while equipping people with the motivation and experience to enter the workforce."
One of coaching’s pre-eminent writers, Sir John Whitmore, who delivered a key-note speech at the BT-sponsored launch event in October, believes that the principles of coaching, self-awareness and self-responsibility are sweeping through society.
He says: "We need to retrain people’s way of thinking to a whole systems way of thinking. Coaching is the only industry specifically geared towards building self-responsibility in people."
Richard Cullen is a corporate coach in BT and has been working in the field for over five years. First introduced to coaching through his interest in Neuro Linguistic Processing, he has helped dozens of people to improve their professional performance and attain their career goals.
Richard says: “Coaching is an incredibly rewarding field. There’s a great satisfaction from seeing someone fulfil their potential and it’s a great benefit to the business too.”
In an era when personal and corporate responsibility are increasingly important concepts, helping others through life coaching is a prime example of both concepts working together for the betterment of society.
Article taken from an original by Liz Hall