A range of public-sector organisations are sowing the seeds of coaching networks, growing a support system that is proving to be highly cost-effective too. Sarah-Jane North finds out how they are faring
Great oaks from little acorns grow,” noted Robert Baden-Powell, war hero and founder of the scouting movement, a global phenomenon which grew inexorably from modest beginnings. On a slightly lesser scale, a small acorn planted in Kent in 2003 has grown into a coaching network from which many organisations in the county are reaping the benefits.
It was sown by the human resources director of Kent County Council (KCC) who decided that all staff in HR should receive coaching. Among the first was Coral Ingleton, KCC’s learning and development manager. Her experience opened her eyes to the impact that coaching could have on the entire organisation of 46,000 staff. It presented an opportunity to generate income for HR – part of its remit – while making the coaching pay for itself.
Ingleton, herself a qualified coach, was pursuing a manager-as-coach strategy within KCC when she commissioned a trainer to deliver a coaching and mentoring qualification programme to all council managers who wanted it. “We struggled to fill the first course, mostly because coaching wasn’t well known and because many in the public sector have qualms about costs. But we ran with 10 candidates and it snowballed from there,” she says. “Our waiting list grew and those who had been on the course were wanting more.”
Growth industry
With the programme’s popularity soaring, Ingleton decided to approach other local public-sector organisations to join it. Soon managers from KCC were being trained as coaches alongside those from the Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) and Kent Police, as well as managers from county health and voluntary organisations.
Ingleton’s team already had links with their counterparts at the KFRS and it wasn’t long before the organisations decided to combine their coaching skills and ambitions. The pool of coaches grew rapidly, prompting Ingleton to take another giant leap forward with the project and form the Kent Coaching and Mentoring Network. Anyone who qualifies as a coach on one of the training programmes is automatically eligible to become a member of the network. It has more than 80 qualified coaches, with a further 40 in training.
“The main benefit of the network is that a culture of coaching is being implemented in a range of organisations, which can access the services of qualified coaches and mentors at no cost,” says Ingleton, who believes that such networks offer an economical approach to coaching for organisations under pressure to cut costs.
“It’s a good way to offer coaches the chance to coach in other organisations and to offer cheap coaching and supervision, all of which is a good way of approaching it at the moment.” All requests for coaching come through Ingleton’s office and her team is responsible for matching those wanting to be coached with suitable coaches.
Embedded culture
Although both KCC and KFRS are pursuing a manager-as-coach strategy to embed a coaching culture, the fact remains that KCC is a local authority with a multitude of departments each with its own service focus, while KFRS is an emergency service whose staff focus on one area of service delivery.
Despite these operational differences, however, Ingleton and her counterpart at KFRS, Paul Flaherty, head of organisational development, feel the fit is a good one. In fact, the differences between the organisations are almost more important to the success of the network than what they share. “When we undertake management training we use external providers because that way our people are exposed to other organisations, new ways of doing things and new thoughts, which they bring back and apply,” explains Flaherty.
“The same principle was behind the coaching. Our managers are working alongside others undergoing the same [change] process and issues and are being exposed to different management styles and processes.” At KCC, the coaching network primarily supports the authority’s performance management process and its talent management programme for young employees.
Established managers use their coaching sessions to reflect on their performance, while younger staff, who are each assigned coaches from the pool, are guided on their progress with the organisation. Radical organisational change was the main motivation for the coaching at KFRS. As a uniformed service, it had an established command-and-control culture, perfect for operational demands but not so effective for day-to-day management.
In addition, Flaherty was looking to influence managers’ behaviour towards each other and their staff, support the workforce at a time when the service is undergoing huge change and keep everyone engaged when a staff turnover rate of less than 3 per cent limits opportunities for career progression. Demonstrating Flaherty’s belief that top management support is crucial to the success of coaching and a coaching network, all KFRS directors coach within and outside the service, with the chief and deputy chief fire officers appointed to coach new appointees to these positions elsewhere.
Branching out
Kent’s is not the only coaching network. In December 2006, civil servant Ken Smith sowed the seed for the Coaches in Government Network. Two and a half years on, there are now 112 members. Smith says: “The network exists to increase access to coaching by making more use of the available internal coaches working in each others’ organisations; to support members’ continuing professional development, and to promote a better understanding in our organisations of what coaching is.” Another fledgling coaching network is focused on helping managers to learn from other, more senior, managers.
The Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire (MKOB) Improvement Partnership, which involves 12 councils, was conceived to address leadership development issues. Such was the success of this approach that plans are afoot to develop a coaching and mentoring network across the partnership. The first batch of 24 coach trainees began their course in December and will complete it this June, gaining foundation-level accreditation with the Association for Coaching.
For Jeremy Beach, organisational change manager at the Vale of White Horse District Council and lead officer for the MKOB Partnership Coaching and Mentoring Programme, the advantages of being part of a large network are obvious: “For a small organisation such as a district council, we get to tap into a much greater pool of participants [and] share the costs and the administrative burden.
Participants get to be coached by someone who has no stock in their organisation, is neutral and offers knowledge and experience of different types of working.” The MKOB Programme is enabling small councils like the Vale of the White Horse with its 3,000 employees to tap into a pool that has the potential to cover around 40,000 people. However, an even larger network is growing in the Midlands.
Pooled resources
Beach has been following the work of the West Midlands Coaching Pool, which launched in 2007 with 13 local authorities employing several hundred thousand people between them, and with a potential 25 more authorities that could join. Each had identified coaching capacity as something they wanted to build in their organisation.
“The key objective of the pool is to create a coaching culture within the authorities involved,” explains Samantha Baker, senior regional projects co-ordinator with responsibility for the Coaching Pool Programme. “Through coaching and an awareness of coaching, people are more supportive and positive about what can be achieved, particularly in the face of huge changes. It gives them the ability to make the most of change and, if coaching is embedded, allows them to handle all sorts of challenges.”
So far, 70 managers from the various councils, including four out of the five big metropolitan authorities in the area, have completed coach training and the pool has around 150 coaches. This provides each authority with a valuable resource, says Baker: “All of the partner authorities have free access to coaching, which is a huge saving on what would otherwise be an expensive resource.”
Selfish time
Its early success is borne out in the testimonials of the coaches – and those coached – on the West Midlands Local Government Association’s website. One client from Warwick District Council reports: “The benefits of undertaking coaching are the opportunity to spend ‘selfish’ time reflecting on your skills and areas for improvement. It allows you the opportunity to discuss, with an impartial and detached other, your strengths and weaknesses.”
Another manager from the council says: “This is a real opportunity to explore, develop and improve your skills with the help of an independent, qualified coach. I am really enjoying working with my coach, we get on well, and have shared lots of ideas.”
Meanwhile, one of the network’s coaches, a manager at Wolverhampton City Council, says: “Coaching’s made me a better manager. By sharpening my listening skills, it’s helped me to understand more about the people around me and made it easier to connect them with the organisation’s objectives.”
Open door
The government may be pushing local authorities hard to work more closely together in all activities to gain savings for taxpayers, but with coaching they are pushing at an open door. “Coaching is such a good tool for personal development but it has been a popular tool for the chosen few because of the expense,” says KCC’s Ingleton. “But with a reciprocal, partnership approach it can be made available to so many people at little or no cost.”
• The CIPD has more than 133,000 members. Why not network with peers face to face at your local branch or in our online communities? To find out more visit www.cipd.co.uk/memberbenefits
How does your network grow?
Common coaching network traits include:
• Access to a pool of qualified coach/mentors who offer reciprocal coaching and mentoring across organisations at no cost.
• A shortlisted selection of appropriate coaches according to individuals’ needs and preferences.
• Access to resources through a coaching portal, including coach profiles, coaching agreements, best practice guides and articles.
• An exit strategy for when the coach/client relationship does not work for either party.
• Regular continuous professional development opportunities (the Kent and West Midlands pools have both run coaching and mentoring conferences at which top names from the coaching world have spoken about developments in coaching practice).
• Provision for group supervision and peer supervision.
• Access to the network through a community of practice such as in partnership with the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government.
• Access to a range of coaching and mentoring publications/books.
• Accreditation/qualification for the trainees/coaching programme.