Ninety per cent of the West Midlands Coaching Pool’s clients say that coaching has had a positive impact on their organisations.
The Coaching Pool, which celebrated its fourth anniversary in March, has worked with more than 550 managers, supporting improvement programmes across its 19 public sector partners.
Nearly all respondents to the Pool’s survey last November said that coaching had helped them respond more effectively to the challenges they faced, had improved their decision-making ability and had helped them grow and adapt their leadership style.
Samantha Darby, people and leadership consultant for West Midlands Councils, said this showed that the Pool has had a “positive and lasting impact”.
She said the original partners came together “to build capacity by developing a genuine performance coaching culture.
“No-one would have guessed that a banking crisis was just around the corner – or that the local government funding picture would change more quickly and more completely than at any time in our history,” she said.
“The Coaching Pool has given employees of the partner organisations a greater degree of resilience than they would otherwise have had, helping managers cope more effectively in this new and challenging environment.
“We shouldn’t think that coaching or leadership development is just about ‘doing more with less’.
“Changing customer demand and increasing expectations mean that the public sector will have to go about their business very differently in the future.
“The Coaching Pool is uniquely placed to help managers understand this culture change – and embed it in their organisations.”