This two-part series explores the learnings and findings from award-winning coaching programme Coaching through Covid and Beyond, which offered pro-bono coaching to health workers during the pandemic. Last issue, Liz Hall reported on enhancing coaches’ capacity to coach in challenging times.
Part 2: Learnings and recommendations for those setting up and running similar programmes.
Lindsay Wittenberg reports
Coaching through Covid and Beyond, an online pro bono coaching programme, was set up in March 2020, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, essentially as a
start-up with zero preparation: an inspiring idea put forward by Mark McMordie that resonated with the values of the co-founders, a first meeting of the core team just a matter of days later, and the immediate launch, with no infrastructure.
All the co-founders and the core team felt passionately about it, and equally none of them could know how it would evolve, and how much learning was in store in an emergent system in crisis.
Infrastructure
Most immediately there was an urgent need for a clear articulation of the programme’s purpose, structured and secure record-keeping, promptly updated data as coaches and clients were matched and started coaching, suitably equipped coaches who could work in an environment of extreme uncertainty, anxiety, pressure and trauma, and for a means of reaching people who could benefit from – and wanted to engage with – the programme, most of whom had never before come into contact with coaching.
The programme was launched through a pilot site at a London teaching hospital – the Royal Free Hospital, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
The need became clear to support the coaches in their practice and in what was becoming a virtual coach community. Reflective Practice groups provided an opportunity to share experience, explore new situations, be held by skilled and committed professional supervisors, reflect and learn. Resilience workshops (which evolved into Joy workshops to help restore the spirits of coaches who were also struggling from time to time with the impact of Covid) and trauma pods were born, offering practical, insightful and informed support to understand trauma, exactly when it was needed. Two Compassion Cultivation Training programmes equipped coaches, the core team and members of the Royal Free Anaesthetics department to hold themselves and others more compassionately.
Context
In the context that CTCaB was operating in, the parallel process between clients and coaches turned out to be significant. Issues of boundaries, burnout, moral injury, politics, personal resilience, self-care, mental health and trauma were absorbed by both coaches and supervisors.
The provision of these offers was resourced by expert support – leading practitioners in their fields, who offered their services to the programme. The programme was supported too by the leading coaching bodies.
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Besides the technical and logistical infrastructure, the latent infrastructure will depend on a programme’s ethos and purpose, and may also call on the generosity and goodwill of all those – coaches, reflective practice facilitators, the core team and the wider team – who make the programme happen and deliver it on a day-to-day basis.
Ethos and culture
The core supporting framework was the ethos and culture, which informed the delivery and development of the programme, the selection of the coaches, and the approach to the clients and to broader relationships.
This ethos was characterised by a very high level of psychological safety, collective intelligence, agility, flexibility in all respects, and adaptability, and compassion and care for each other, in the core team and more widely within the coaching community – as well as, of course, the clients. This was particularly marked in a virtual environment. The shallow leadership and management structure also both influenced and was influenced by the ethos: the team was characterised by low hierarchy and a no-blame culture.
Being flexible in terms of how long coaches continued with clients (up to 12 sessions were allowed for, after which the coach could make their own arrangements with clients if both wanted to continue), encouraging coaches to be as flexible as possible around when they met with clients, and forgiving if clients then couldn’t make a meeting because of being on call, for example, not over-policing, and just offering guidance, all strengthened the resilience of the programme. It was able to respond to clients’ needs and, trusting the coaches, allowed them to use their own judgment.
Team meetings
The regular team meetings were daily to start with, and gradually extended out with longer and longer intervals between them. These were a very important part of the culture of CTCaB, as were the manner in which those meetings were run. They all opened with a mindfulness practice, in which everyone participated, followed by a check-in, so that team members understood what was going on for their colleagues. The check-ins reinforced psychological safety, which in turn enabled ideas to surface. Team members were also able to learn effectively because of this ethos.
All team members in team meetings participated in a process of respectful turn-taking with no interruptions. Only then, when all team members had heard how everyone was, was any practical business addressed. Equally, team meetings, or part of them, might be dedicated to an enquiry or an exploration of a chosen question. Everyone’s contribution mattered, and everyone had the opportunity to be listened to without interruption.
One core team member reflected: “Remote teams can sometimes lack cohesion, but there was a real sense of unity, of pulling together in shared purpose (even with people leaving/joining). The team also supported one another well and ensured there was backup if someone was ill, away or lacked capacity.’”
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The ethos and culture of the programme reached into all its aspects. It’s critical to be clear about this, and to live it with integrity.
Paying attention to the culture meant that people felt included, multiple perspectives were expressed and heard, and the high level of psychological safety enabled people to share concerns and feel more able to contribute. There was a strong sense of being part of a team, helping each other out and supporting each other, and also calling on self-care at difficult moments.
The significance of working in an emergent and psychologically safe way as a core team meant tuning into the system, and not always coming in with pre-held ideas about what should be done, and being able to discard ideas when they didn’t feel right, or no longer felt right. It meant that team members were creative, sharp, in tune with what the system (clients, coaches, and the sector) might need: the team was able to access its agility, creativity and responsiveness.
The clarity of approach, together with the values of the programme, made for a very safe and non-judgmental working context, which allowed all members of the core team to say without hesitation when they were struggling, and also allowed for the ability to flex constantly in response to what was emerging.
The underpinning of compassion (coaches and core team members took part in compassion cultivation training, and compassion practices were included in some core team meetings) potentially meant more coaches, Reflective Practice group hosts and core team members could practise self-care, as it was part of the fabric of the organisation. Compassion seemed also to have rippled out to coaches’ work with clients – encouraging clients to be self-compassionate, sharing where appropriate compassion development tools, and potentially reducing empathic distress in the wider system.
The CTCaB coaching approach was systemic, eclectic, relational and compassionate, offering generative attention and unconditional presence, while leaving coaches free to choose their own approach.
The aforementioned flexibility with regard to the number of sessions per client meant that not only did the core team not need to spend time enforcing policies, but also allowed coaches to be intuitive and responsive with any particular client. Some coaches reported a sense of freedom and more creativity than usual in terms of how they worked.
The programme being entirely pro bono, with all those resourcing it providing their services free of charge, offered a significant advantage as it allowed the programme to be independent. However, it also meant that it was not scalable because of lack of resources.
Community
Cultivating community in the wider ‘organisation’, particularly among those offering their services – coaches, supervisors (Reflective Practice group hosts), etc – showed up in generosity with resources and the organisation of free CPD and coaching cafés, drawing on the resources of the community.
The Reflective Practice groups, workshops, resilience and joy sessions and webinars were well received. They helped, in turn, to develop and sustain a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded, thoughtful practitioners who were being careful and intentional with their engagement with the health system. Coaches remarked that they noticed that goodwill, commitment and loyalty were reinforced. Members of the community, in turn, were more likely to be generous with (but not promote) their own resources, which contributed to a sense of support when everyone was going through their own difficulties associated with Covid and lockdowns.
Feedback from the coaches revealed that, of all the aspects of support provided by the programme, they found ‘community’ to be the most valuable.
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The sense of community not only created – and came from – a sense of belonging, but also helped create meaning, particularly significant in a totally virtual environment and at a time of fear and potential and actual isolation. This both contributed to, and was a result of, the culture, and led to opportunities for collegiality, best practice, and information-sharing.
Representation of the overarching client system in the core team
Having NHS doctors participating in the core team helped it to keep a finger on the pulse of what was really going on for clients rather than any imagined or news-gathered scenarios. This meant the team was more able to tune into different rhythms and think creatively about how to respond. These doctors were a highly valued part of the core team, helped keep it humble, and reminded us that clients are human.
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The importance of having the system that was being served also present in the core team cannot be overstated. It allowed the team to ensure that it stayed ‘real’, and that the parameters of CTCaB corresponded to the evolving reality on the ground.
Values and purpose
As mentioned in Part 1 of this series (C@W 19.1, 26-35), the values lived by the core team were: to be of service, to reduce suffering, to do no harm, to “do the right thing”, to check intentions, to be agile (particularly in responding to the changing situation), to be courageous, to collaborate, to exercise compassionate leadership and to bring systemic awareness and a systemic frame.
The programme’s purpose (again as mentioned in Part 1 of this series) was: “To be of service to NHS front-line staff by offering high quality professional pro-bono coaching and timely, demand-led resources which are bespoke to individual needs and schedules in a way that is relational, tangible and sustainable, in order to support NHS staff to find meaning, learning and growth from their experiences, attend to their own wellbeing and deliver sustainable care to those they serve.”
This clarity of purpose, which defined the client group too, enabled alignment, clarity on what the programme and the team stood for and how members wanted to work, motivation, greater ease in staying on track, and working together effectively, against a backdrop of openness, honesty, care, compassion and support.
The programme purpose and its ongoing relevance were questioned frequently to ensure it continued to meet the need and to do this well. When changes were needed, flexibility was an advantage.
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The clarity of the programme purpose, which was explicitly revisited and reviewed from time to time, provided essential, clear and constant parameters within which it, and the core team, worked, using the values too as a reference point.
Spreading the word and fertile relationships
The fact that the programme was championed within the pilot site initially by a Royal Free consultant anaesthetist, who was also a member of the core team helped with attracting clients. Over time three other consultant anaesthetists joined the core team, all committed to their employed roles and to CTCaB. These doctors played an important part in helping to spread the word in their own and other hospitals, and to hone the marketing material.
Champions in a small number of other trusts also helped to spread the word, as did ‘focal points’ (members of the CTCaB coaching community who volunteered to act as liaison points between the core team and organisational development and learning and development departments within trusts).
The programme was extended over time to about 130 NHS trusts, care homes, dental practices, hospices and other healthcare providers. That process highlighted the importance of fertile relationships within hospital trusts, and contacts were established and nurtured with OD and L&D professionals. However, on the whole (albeit with some notable and important exceptions) they proved rather less fertile than relationships with the end users, and potential end users, themselves, many of which happened through word of mouth. These direct relationships were the most effective of the ‘marketing’ approaches, as they nurtured trust in the value of the coaching and the programme’s independence.
The programme website and social media were key in projecting the professionalism and trustworthiness of the programme and in spreading the word.
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When people are overwhelmed and burned out, they find it hard to prioritise self-care, and it was a struggle to get the message consistently out to, and land in, a broader audience, despite the blend of word of mouth, champions on the ground, the CTCaB website, social media, published articles, and participation in conferences and in a Twitter conversation set up by the British Medical Journal. As a result, an unknown number of individuals who could have benefited from the programme were not aware of it.
It was very hard to reach some groups – especially those who do not gather together as teams or groups, eg, porters, caterers, and also those working in care homes, who for some reason were difficult to access.
It became clear that it’s important to spend lots of time and resources on designing, shaping and putting together an offer, and on marketing and promotion.
Independence
Independence from any organisation (and especially the clients’ employers) seemed to inspire trust in clients. They could be sure that the coaching and the coaches were free of any agenda that might pose a threat to their psychological safety and freedom to be open and honest.
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Although becoming funded by an external party would potentially have allowed the programme to do more and carry on for longer, not going down this route allowed freedom to approach trusts as the team saw fit, and to work directly with end users rather than getting tied up in paperwork and bureaucracy. It also allowed the possibility of moving with agility and speed, and of forming alliances with a number of organisations, including a range of professional coaching bodies, which helped spread the word and recruit coaches, and provided added credibility.
Resourcing
The circumstances in which the programme was born and implemented were, of course, unique: the first UK lockdown started on 23 March 2020 and was followed by a number of other lockdowns in the next two years. This meant that many coaches suddenly found themselves short of work and with time to spare, but also with a strong desire to use their skills to ‘give back’ when the need was becoming so apparent. The programme received hundreds of offers by coaches, particularly at the beginning, and needed to select those who were appropriately equipped.
Especially in the light of the disproportionate impact of Covid on BAME communities, it was disappointing that the programme was never able to access enough BAME coaches to meet the demand.
Within the core team, administrative, IT, marketing, and strategic skills were needed from people who could work to the programme’s ethos, as well as support from external IT professionals. It was important to respond quickly and accurately to those asking for coaching support and to maintain and monitor records of coaching sessions provided (which was done meticulously). Core team members’ roles were clear, and encompassed programme management, project management, coaching, operations, IT, marketing, data evaluation, and risk assessment. Throughout the programme core team members were reliable and dedicated self-starters who were trusted to deliver autonomously. They were open-minded and willing to learn from each other, and the ethos of collective Intelligence meant that everyone’s view was welcome. Each one committed to a Volunteer Agreement when they joined the programme.
The core team was fortunate to include people with excellent administrative and marketing skills, and a risk specialist, who contributed importantly to ensuring that the programme implemented and sustained measures to protect itself from a variety of risks, notably through the creation of a risk register.
Clients joined the programme through what became a standard enrolment and participant confirmation process which was very user-friendly and undemanding for them. They were also sent information on what to expect from coaching and how their own coaching programme would work.
Processes were well thought-out and reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure they continued to work well, data was carefully monitored and reported, and attention was given to potential risks.
Data recording proved challenging in some cases, as it depended on coaches proactively informing the core team when they had delivered each session, which didn’t always happen. It took considerable work to monitor the small number of clients who were dormant or not proceeding, or who had been mistaken by the team for active clients, which meant that the data was distorted.
All this support was voluntary: the design of the website and its hosting were generously provided by Hype London and 23x.net, and both serendipitously and in response to social media appeals, people came forward to offer help in other fields.
Because the programme had no financial resources, it was unable to pay for the software that was really necessary, which meant there were a number of glitches in the recording of data, which took some effort to resolve.
The coaches served a key role in the resourcing of the programme. Their roles and responsibilities were defined and communicated to them when they joined: this was their contract, and was important in defining expectations and boundaries.
However, even a rigorous coach selection approach didn’t wholly guarantee that all coaches coming through were of the calibre that was hoped for, very much in line with what large organisations experience.
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Having specialist skills in the core team, so generously given, was invaluable and vital. The matching of need to resources was often a juggling act: an effective administrative function was the hub on which programme delivery depended, and there were moments when there were serious concerns about the team’s administrative capacity, and also about the coaching capacity, as of course there was no way of anticipating demand. At one time more than 70 coaching requests over about three days were received from a single trust. However, the administration and the responsiveness of the programme was the aspect that most commissioners (organisational contacts) found most valuable.
Programme management
Basecamp – a one-stop independent, confidential repository of information – enabled systematic and secure storage and reference. The use of this was kindly donated free of charge by the Academy of Executive Coaching, and enabled the systematic creation and preservation of key data and records, including clearly defined standard documentation and processes, smooth handover processes between old and new administrative team members (which enabled continuity), ‘How to do’ manuals, templates in place for consistency and a Communication Protocol, and a Doomsday document.
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Basecamp proved an invaluable single location for record-keeping, and was the point of reference for all documentation and the development of ideas. This helped the programme to be effective in providing thoughtful and helpful guidance to coaches, and in being responsive to queries.
Coaches commented that they felt the administration team were always there and could be relied on, creating a sense of belonging.
Coming to an end
No thought was given at the start of the programme to when or how it would end, or what the conditions would be for its ending. This was due partly to its emergent nature, and in fact the programme drew to a close when the demand for it waned and when the energy of the core team waned too, partly because other, pre-Covid demands on their lives began to resume. It also became clear that the need was chronic, whereas the programme had been conceptualised, motivated by, set up and sustained as a response to a crisis. Two years after starting it seemed to the team the right moment to draw it to a close.
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It may be appropriate to plan an end to a programme of this kind when it begins, although the emergent nature of CTCaB meant that it wasn’t appropriate in this case.
Recommendations for those setting up and running similar programmes to CTCaB
- Ethos and culture
An ethos orientated around compassion, psychological safety, collective intelligence, low ego and high collaboration will nurture a team which can initiate action and respond collectively, creatively, with curiosity and agility, and will be happy to experiment in the interests of evolving and developing. This – together with constantly reviewing and learning – is particularly important in the context of a programme which is set up as a crisis response.
Be rigorous about quality and quality assurance, record-keeping and evaluation, and be flexible, adaptive and responsive to what arises in the system.
The ethos of the programme will influence not only how the core team functions but also the nature and approach of the programme itself, which in turn is likely to attract coaches and partners who live the same kind of ethos.
- Values and purpose
Aim to address a very specific need and a clear focus/theme to give impetus. Be clear about the purpose and the boundaries, and on the purpose of the coaching offer and the criteria for clients wishing to sign up.
Carefully consider ethical questions over what should be supported if there is no facility to change the underlying issues in the system you’re addressing. Might your initiative constitute ‘papering over the cracks’ in a poorly resourced and managed monolith which might actually require major reform, and if so, does this impact on your motivation and raison d’être?
Spreading the word
- Promotion and marketing
Any programme will need to be promoted and marketed consistently and in volume, using clear messaging that covers the purpose, how the programme works, and what makes it different from other similar offers. Building extensive and strong networks will pay dividends, as will recruiting local champions and link people between the core team and local representatives.
- Champions
Gaining active commitment and buy-in from senior leaders will be a significant benefit, with champions at the highest possible levels, with the aim of giving high-level credibility and visibility to the project, and creating practical ways people could be released to participate.
Independence
A programme’s credibility will be significantly enhanced too if it remains independent of clients’ employers, and not part of the organisational offer. It will benefit from giving clients the reassurance of absolute confidentiality and impartiality, especially in a situation where much is demanded of them at work and when they’re bringing their own vulnerabilities to coaching – vulnerabilities which they fear may not be regarded in a positive light by an employer. This independence is helpful too in terms of neutrality and the ability for clients to talk freely. It may also enable a broader range of topics and options to be discussed.
This independence is possible when a programme is pro bono, but may be impossible to achieve in a programme which is funded and where coaches are paid.
Coach recruitment
- Quality selection
When a coaching programme is set up with a focus on the challenging nature of the context (or indeed the exceptional nature of the challenge) that clients face, it’s vital to pay careful attention to the quality of the coaches being recruited. They need to be experienced, professional, trauma-aware and highly skilled at sitting with the extreme difficulty, adversity, distress or uncertainty that clients may bring. They need to be warm, friendly and caring.
Particularly in a crisis situation, it’s important to recruit coaches with coaching maturity, accreditation and professional qualifications, a versatility of approach, and significant experience drawn from a wide range of sectors, who offer strong ethics and care for clients, and who are able to hold strong emotional issues, as well as having resilience, being prepared to be challenged and possessing the capacity to sit with any challenge that the client may bring.
Their coaching relationship may be the only impartial and safe space that the client has in which to share what they’re going through, and their true feelings about it. The coach may be the only person in the client’s life who doesn’t have a vested interest in the choices they’ll make about their career or their personal life, and coaches need to be able to recognise the client’s needs as they develop through the course of the programme, and adjust their delivery accordingly. Coaches will need a broad repertoire of approaches and also have the resources to deal with and manage their own fears and anxieties, especially if they’re going through the same situation as the client, which was the case with Covid. Each coach needs to have their own supervision in place.
Client recruitment
- Clarity and networking
Be clear about what and where your client base is. This may present marketing and promotion challenges and will require significant effort and volume via a website and social media, and particularly personal relationships and networks, and all the more so when prospective clients are unfamiliar with coaching and/or feel under pressure to create the time for it.
Depending on the nature of the system, it might be useful to create links with OD and L&D professionals, and the like, but this may not systematically be the case. Creative approaches to networking, using in particular contacts on the ground – and especially those who’ve experienced coaching and can speak from that experience will pay dividends. Liaison between what’s going on at the core team and local contacts is important too so that information can pass both ways.
It’s important to ensure that clients understand very clearly what the programme is for and what coaching is, what the contract entails, the logistics of how it’ll work for them and where the boundaries as well as the flexibility might be. They’ll need to understand any conditions attaching to the coaching, and it’s worth spending effort defining and distinguishing coaching from other talking services and interventions.
What coaches need
- Onboarding and maintaining community
It may be worth considering an induction process and a template contract for coaches to use with clients to help ensure consistency, and so that they fully understand the purpose and ethos of the programme, and any expectations of them. In any event, written material that they can refer to will be important, so that they’re aware of any boundaries, albeit when administrative arrangements are light-touch and there’s no mandated coaching approach.
Coaches are likely to need a variety of types of support, in the shape of reflective spaces besides their own supervision, and engaging, stimulating, stretching professional development on specific areas of practice, such as trauma or other themes emerging in the coaching (coaches may not realise how much the programme is taking out of them until much further down the line), as well as more light-hearted support.
Creating a sense of community, collegiality and collaboration in this way will enable the coaches to feel a consistent sense of belonging and mutual support.
The pre-coaching information needs to be both brief and clear, and coaches will welcome user-friendly updates on the programme, including on the flow of clients (for example, if insufficient clients come forward there’s a risk that coaches will become disillusioned without these updates) and any changes to target group requirements as the programme develops.
If resources and the provisions concerning confidentiality allow, it may be useful to share client feedback with the coach.
Administration and management
The administrative underpinnings need to be strong and robust, as well as scalable, user-friendly, efficient, easy to engage with, and with as light touch as possible, while providing constantly updated data on coach availability, the coaching being delivered, and to whom. In parallel, it’s important to be aware of, and adapt to, the nature of the coaching need or needs and how that might be changing.
Flexibility needs to be built in around the timing of sessions (to fit with work schedules and personal lives), the booking of sessions, making changes to bookings, and the frequency of sessions. Both the core team and the coach need to offer prompt and relevant responsiveness, especially when matching clients to coaches, and thoughtful and helpful guidance when required. The sign-up process needs to be simple, offering prompt responses.
If resources allow, it may be useful to screen applicants to ensure their interests match the purpose of the programme.
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It’s critical to reflect on, and record, learning, at every stage of the programme, including considering the wider benefits that the programme may offer beyond the target system and the target clients. To this end, conduct evaluation at regular intervals.
- Lindsay Wittenberg was a co-founder of CTCaB and is developmental reflector, executive coach and chief executive at www.lindsaywittenberg.co.uk