By Liz Hall
Coaching is helping boost entrepreneurship in Turkey, which is vital to help create jobs in its large and fast-growing young population.
Istanbul-based Institute of Executive Coaching and Mentoring (IoECM) recently delivered individual and team coaching through a programme led by non-profit body Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum (MIT EF) to enhance local entrepreneurship.
Turkey’s population has an average age of below 30. Around a million new jobs need to be created each year just to sustain the current unemployment levels. Coaching can play a key role, said Gamze Bayraktaroglu, who co-founded IoECM in 2010 with Riza Kadilar, chairman of EMCC Turkey.
The initiative selected 30 teams from thousands of entrants, each receiving team coaching from IoECM alumni and associates at a half-day event on 24 May. The overall winners presented a project to create employment for high functioning people with autism and Asperger syndrome in the IT sector.
Seventeen participants also received free individual coaching from IoECM, a subsidiary of training and coaching company Motiva International and business thinktank eXec Turkey.
MIT EF Turkey chairwoman Gulsun Bozkurt said: “We integrated team coaching with IoECM to align all the competing teams with common values… We strengthened the finalist teams’ action plans with one-to-one coaching, keeping our support after the competition.”
IoECM offers training approved by the International Coach Federation, ensuring its tools and coaching models are suited to local business and cultural needs.
Bayraktaroglu said: “Thanks to the widespread support given to newly established companies and SMEs, an entrepreneurship culture has evolved rapidly.”
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 5