Awards, 2021

COACHING AT WORK AWARDS, 2021

24 November 2021

A host of coaching practitioners and researchers received accolades for their contributions in the Coaching at Work Editor’s 2021 Awards on 23 November, announced at the end of Coaching at Work’s annual conference, held virtually.  Coaching at Work editor Liz Hall presented the awards.

The winners

  • Clare Norman, Michelle Lucas & Sebastian Fox (joint)
  • Charly Cox
  • Nicolas Caesar
  • Charmaine Roche & Jonathan Passmore (joint)
  • Premala Nadarajah
  • Mission INCLUDE
  • Mark McMordie
  • Coaching through Covid and Beyond
  • Lorenza Clifford
  • Lis Merrick
  • Dr Siobhain O’Riordan
  • David Lane

Highly commended

  • Tammy Tawadros, Debbie Wayth & Preeta Cooley (joint)
  • Dorothee Stoffels
  • Diana Tedoldi & James Farrell (joint)
  • Zoe Cohen
  • Linda Aspey
  • Diana Tedoldi
  • Lucy Daykin
  • Naomi Schwabe
  • Carol Braddick & Alexandru Popa (joint)
  • Premala Nadarajah
  • Michelle Lucas
  • Henry Campion
  • Jackee Holder

Who won what and why: The Coaching at Work Editor’s Awards 2021

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

For Best Article/Article Series

This award recognizes an author or authors who have contributed a well-written, accessible, inspiring and impactful article or article series in Coaching at Work magazine.

JOINT WINNERS:

  • Clare Norman, Michelle Lucas & Sebastian Fox for their article series (curated and mostly written by Norman & Lucas, with a contribution from Fox on team coaching) on fees in coaching and coaching supervision

Part 1 https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/03/01/charging-point/

Part 2 https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/05/07/for-what-its-worth/

Part 3 (Sebastian Fox): https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/07/04/name-your-price/

Part 4: what next? A call to action: https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/09/02/fees-time-to-step-up/

HIGHLY COMMENDED:

  • Tammy Tawadros, Debbie Wayth & Preeta Cooley (joint) for their series on race equity in coaching, curated and mainly written by Tawadros, exploring, for example, the ways in which our coaching arrangements, practices and conversations are ‘radicalised’ and how we can choose to become a race-conscious coach

https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/03/01/race-consciousness

https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/05/07/a-critical-perspective/

https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/07/01/inform-your-perceptions/

https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/09/03/conversations-of-difference/

  • Dorothee Stoffels for her article on role clarity in team coaching and other team interventions, as part of a series from Ashridge Business School on team coaching. She explored the boundary between team coaching and team facilitation, with the help of a case study, highlighting criteria that team coaches can consider to find their own way of working. https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/09/02/role-clarity/
  • Diana Tedoldi & James Farrell (joint) for their article on working with Nature in coaching, proposing that being nature-connected, rather than being separate from coaching practice, can be an integrated part, valued and embodied by all of us in the coaching experience
  •  https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/06/30/call-of-the-wild/

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

For Contributions to Climate Coaching

This award recognizes an individual/individuals/an organisation who have/which has made a significant and impactful contribution to the growing arena of climate-related coaching.

WINNER:

Charly Cox For her courage, creativity, passion and drive in getting climate coaching a place at the coaching table. Even in the face of push-back from others, the systems coach and former photojournalist launched herself as a climate change coach, at a time when it still wasn’t a thing. She set up Climate Change Coaches in 2018, has been a key driver in helping to equip coaches to coach around climate crisis, not only through her business but through free events, such as for Climate Coaching Action Day, the initiative Coaching at Work launched in March 2019. She’s currently completing a book with Sarah Flynn for McGraw Hill Open University Press about the role coaching can play in enabling our collective sense of capability and resilience. “Charly is inspiring, creative, humble and generous.”

Read a profile of Cox here: https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2019/07/07/climate-hero-a-profile-of-charly-cox/

HIGHLY COMMENDED:

  • Zoe Cohen For her passion and unwavering commitment over many years to protecting the natural world and its creatures. It was her idea to ‘pen’ an open letter about coaching stepping up around the climate crisis, which was co-authored with Linda Aspey and Ali Whybrow in 2019, and which led to actions including the establishment of a climate coaching network (the Climate Coaching Alliance)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-coaches-coaching-psychology-professional-bodies-zoe-cohen/

  • Linda Aspey For her role along with Whybrow and Cohen in standing up and stepping up, penning the letter mentioned above, and making many contributions around climate including free webinars and workshops, and the development of her freely available model ‘With the Earth in Mind’ for coaching and facilitating climate conversations, which she has made freely available for anyone to use. She’s a media spokesperson for BACP on climate change, a speaker, facilitator and trainer with XR, also running coaching skills courses for people in XR organising roles
  • Diana Tedoldi In addition to her work with James Farrell writing an article for Coaching at Work, and speaking on coaching with nature, Tedoldi founded the Nature Coaching Academy where she trains ‘nature coaches’, including around working somatically – ‘ecosomatically’ and developing coaches’ connection to nature. She’s also written other articles : What is Nature Coaching?” and “The scientific power of nature

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

Internal Coaching Champion

This award recognizes an individual/individuals/an organisation who have/which has made a significant contribution internally within their organization around coaching, innovating, pioneering, modelling & inspiring best practice.

WINNER:

  • Nicolas Caesar (NatWest) For his work developing coaching and ensuring its impact, which has included aligning coaching to leadership and talent development, career transition support, executive team success and programme alumni support, plus tracking all coaching activity, partnering with the business’s behavioural science teams on key projects where coaching and nudges can work together, and undertaking inductive evaluation of 12 coaching assignments to get a sense of high level impact beyond goal attainment, Its deductive evaluation approach built with Henley Business School launches this month (November). Caesar will share his work in the next issue of Coaching at Work magazine (January/February 2022)

HIGHLY COMMENDED:

  • Lucy Daykin (Grant Thornton International- GTI) For her work professionalizing coaching globally at GTI, including through the Exceptional Coach programme for partners and senior leaders in the APAC, EMEA and Americas regions, pioneering the Apprenticeship Levy for a Coaching Standard in the UK
  • Naomi Schwabe (Deutsche Bank) For her work growing the coaching resource internally, including promoting coaching at a senior level, and growing a coaching culture, and supporting the business’s audit function to develop soft skills such as emotional intelligence and resilience.

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

External Coaching Champion

This award recognizes an individual/individuals/an organisation who have/which has made a significant contribution around coaching, championing coaching, innovating, pioneering, modelling & inspiring best practice.

WINNERS:

Charmaine Roche & Jonathan Passmore for contributions to social change in coaching (race equity), which has included Roche’s in-depth research which led to the publication with Henley Business School’s Centre for Coaching of the report, Racial Justice, Equity and Belonging in Coaching. It shares research with key stakeholders across the coaching eco-system, and is a call to action inspired by coaching practitioners, researchers and thought leaders seeking to deploy coaching in support of the global movement for racial justice and equity. It gives primacy to the marginalised voices of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour (BIPOC) who work as coaches in the industry. In addition, we interviewed senior leaders from professional bodies, university and commercial coaching training providers and coaching service providers. The research focused on four ‘case study’ locations: UK, US, Africa and New Zealand and was a global collaboration with academic colleagues from the US, UK, Africa and New Zealand (Māori) who supported the study by providing inputs, guidance and access to local networks. https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/-/media/files/schools/school-of-education/racial-justice-equity-belonging.pdf

  • Mark McMordie For his work pioneering & developing psychological safety & compassion in coaching and leadership generally and at Coaching through Covid (now Coaching through Covid and Beyond), which he conceived and led for its crucial first six months. came about after he reached out to the coaching community at the beginning of the pandemic. He inspired the CtC team to consider its ethos, and modelled a compassionate, mindful, agile, adaptive and visionary leadership style, informed by coaching. Alert to every member’s wellbeing, Mark encouraged the team to create a psychologically safe environment where all ideas, thinking and experimentation were welcome (which was essential, given the standing start), and where it was easy to ask for, and offer, help. He built key alliances with entities such as the Compassion Institute at Stanford University, which led to the provision of pro bono Compassion Cultivation training for CtC coaches, and a parallel provision, also pro bono, for clinicians. Mark’s own profound and wide-ranging coaching expertise, compassion, big-picture thinking and continued inspiration has led not only to a totally new concept, which continues to inspire both a core team and a wider team of coaches working entirely pro bono, but has also enabled coaching to reach an audience that has desperately needed it, was not previously familiar with it, and benefited significantly from it, but who otherwise would not have had any similar support.  More widely, he has championed psychological safety in coaching and leadership, including through articles such as in Coaching at Work, in which he made the connection with mindfulness https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2019/07/07/be-safe-be-free/speaking at events including the Coaching at Work annual conference in 2021, and as UK UK strategic partner to Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organization. Read the profile of McMordie here https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2021/01/07/i-choose-love-a-profile-of-mark-mcmordie/

 

  • Coaching through Covid and Beyond (nominated by a number of people including consultant anaesthetists who heard about the Coaching at Work awards and who had benefited from receiving coaching from CtCaB) for its work bringing free coaching to key workers, and championing compassion, agility and psychological safety in coaching. “A tirelessly ambitious and passionate core team” rallied hundreds of qualified coaches and connected with clinicians to co-create an open access coaching service, that was up and running within days and sought to be agile and responsive to the needs of its audience. The presence of two members of frontline NHS staff on the core team throughout has enabled the project to remain client centred and distinctly fit for purpose. To date, over 500 NHS and key workers in 69 organisations have benefited from coaching. From porters to consultants, staff at the sharp end of the pandemic have had the opportunity to access one to one support which would otherwise not have been available to them. Coachees reported feeling calmer, more resourced and better able to deal with the uncertainties of their stressful working environments with direct benefits to their personal and professional relationships and ability to care for patients. Feedback describing the coaching as ‘life-saving’ and as ‘psychological PPE’ emphasises the profound and timely impact of the CtC programme and is testament to the remarkable vision and commitment of Mark McMordie, the CtC core team and the volunteer coaches.   CtC continues to respond and adapt to the evolving needs of NHS staff in the aftermath of COVID in the form of Coaching through COVID and Beyond (CtCaB) in 2021. The anaesthetists who nominated the organisation said, “The NHS has never needed this more.

HIGHLY COMMENDED:

  • Carol Braddick and Alexandru Popa for their in-depth work researching and embracing technology in coaching, including through the Future of Coaching Collaboration (FCC), a not-for-profit group with representatives from professional coaching bodies, academic institutions, workplace sponsors of coaching, and Coaching at Work. In the FCC, they have collaborated in its Disruptive Tech workstream, inviting stakeholders to work with technology, harnessing its benefits. They’ve shared the ongoing results in articles including in Coaching at Work.

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

Mentoring Champion

This award recognizes an individual/individuals/an organisation who have/which has made a significant contribution around mentoring, championing mentoring, innovating, pioneering, modelling & inspiring best practice

Internal Mentoring Champion

WINNER

Premala Nadarajah For championing diversity & inclusion through mentoring at the Royal Free London NHS Trust and beyond. A doctor who is committed and passionate not only about her own development but that of others, and feeling that there was more to be done to support people of colour in the NHS, given her own and colleagues’ experiences, Dr Nadarajah took it upon herself to do something about this. She approached Mission INCLUDE, and is now a programme partner for the organisation, champions the programme within the Royal Free London NHS Trust, and has helped to spread the word about the programme in the NHS more widely. At that point, Mission INCLUDE was in its second year, but “she embraced this, championed this, and has used this to drive such positive change.”

“She’s very generous of her time, not driven by ego and once she decides something should happen, she really goes for it.”

External Mentoring Champion

WINNER

  • Mission INCLUDE For championing diversity & inclusion through mentoring.
    Founded in 2019 by Moving Ahead Founder and CEO Liz Dimmock Rupal Kantaria of Oliver Wyman, it’s the first cross-company mentoring programme focused on broader diversity, including ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, identity and also behavioural and background diversity. Through enabling these powerful relationships it aims to improve the inclusivity of organisations and the diversity of executive teams around the world. Now entering its third cohort, and still in partnership with the 30% Club, the cross-sector, cross company 

continues to champion the advancement of diverse talent. Mentees are those who identify from being from an under-represented group – mentored by a more senior leader from another organisation. The programme is “about all that we are, our intersectionalities and not about the ONE diversity strand we may represent – and also going beyond the nine protected characteristics – from race, socio economic background, neuro diversity -and beyond”. Participating organisations have included/ include EY, John Lewis Partnership, Nationwide, Ofcom, Oliver Wyman, Premier League, Tesco, and Tetra Pak,  and of course the NHS via Premala Nadarajah. Its community has 2,963 mentors, mentees and 115 companies total in the three cohorts.  This year it has 53 companies, 952 mentors and mentees, 32 countries and 20 sectors . Quotes include “ I found a truly amazing mentor through this programme. I think we have built a strong relationship based on trust and openness. She brought balanced perspectives and at the same time has challenged me at the right times to push myself harder to achieve my ambitions.” (a mentee from the 2020 cohort) and “Since joining this programme, I have gained an understanding of imposter syndrome. I joined the programme wanting to gain confidence but my mentor identified that it was my self-belief that was low” (mentee from 2020 cohort). Impact measurement headlines

73% of mentees say the programme provides them with time and space to think about their career

69% of mentees feel more confident or empowered because of their relationship

64% of mentees and 53% of mentors see their workplaces differently because of their relationship, and similar numbers were inspired to create change in their organisations

80% of mentors and mentees would strongly recommend the programme to a colleague, and 78% would seek out a mentoring relationship again

These effects are consistent across multiple demographic groups (gender, ethnicity etc.)

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

Contributions to Coaching Supervision

This award recognizes an individual/individuals/an organisation who have/which has made a significant contribution around coaching supervision, championing coaching supervision, innovating, pioneering, modelling & inspiring best practice.

WINNER

  • Lorenza Clifford for her work championing coaching supervision in coaching which has included creating containers for important conversations in the last few years, her volunteer work in the Association for Coaching hosting group supervision experience calls so that coaches can learn from their own experiences what supervision can bring in benefits and value to their own practice, participating in the AC special interest group on supervision for some years and in the Discovery team for the Association of Coaching Supervisors (AoCS), for both of which she’s carried out action research and designed conversations to share the results, and reported on these in Coaching at Work: https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2020/03/01/supervision-on-the-way-to-market/ In the Climate Coaching Alliance, she’s drawn on supervision to inform efforts to help coaches develop climate coaching and develop themselves. At the AoCS, as signatory of the Joint Global Statement on Climate Change, she’s brought the voice of supervision into the group, working alongside hosts in the webinars, in a piece of Transformative action research: https://www.jgsg.one/jgs-webinars/ which has led to the creation of a website with Prof Stephen Palmer to share the resulting rich information for coaches and supervisors https://www.jgsg.one/jgs-webinars/research-findings/including supervision style questions to encourage reflection.

HIGHLY COMMENDED:

  • Michelle Lucas for her passion about the value of supervision and reflective practice in general in coaching. This has been clear in her work in the AC and AOCS on coaching supervision, her book, 101 Coaching Supervision Techniques, Approaches, Enquiries and Experiments (Spring 2020) and her own business. She’s participated in the AC special interest group on supervision, setting up and running pro-bono Co-supervision Space (A new member benefit service with the AOCS), with Yvette Elcock. In each monthly session, the focus is on a different philosophy, she shares three individual supervision techniques and participants have 75 minutes to practice in triads.  This speaks to her desire to ensure supervisors are practising ethically as they get a chance to try new approaches out with peers before with clients. Her business is predominantly supervision- she has a portfolio of over 60 supervisees (both independent and internal coaches and supervisors), running many different kinds of groups including a paired arrangement she is pioneering: a hybrid of individual and group supervision – each coach is supervised in turn, by her in the presence of the other and then the observer is engaged in the de-brief. Trainee supervisors in particular benefit as they are encouraged to question Lucas on why she intervened the way she did.“Always a joy to collaborate with, is passionate and pragmatic in equal measure, encompasses complexity yet down-to-earth and unpretentious.”
  • Henry Campion for” generating lots of interesting ideas for coaching supervision, and writing and presenting about them for everyone’s benefit. Contributions including his emphasis on self-understanding, reflection and learning from client work within a relationship of deep trust, infused by a tone of curiosity, creativity and a sense of playfulness and enthusiasm for work, and bringing his medical and psychosynthesis understanding and experience to the question of how best to do this. He has been particularly interested in relationship on coaching and supervision, with an emphasis on the social motives of attachment, power and (currently) intimacy. He is a supervisor for CoachActivism. Articles include ‘From Who I am to How I am’, using observable behaviour as feedback in development. Coaching at Work Volume 15(5) Sept/Oct 2020, p.16, a ‘Know Thy Power’, reflections on power in the coaching and co-vision/supervision relationship. Coaching Perspectives, Issue 31, October 2021, p.10-13, and ‘A Shift in Terminology’, the case for re-branding supervision as ‘co-vision’. Coaching at Work, Vol 15 (3) May/June 2020, p.18/19.
  • Jackee Holder for her ability to be creative and take supervision to new pastures. She runs workshops on using nature as inspiration. She’s contributed to the field many times through articles and chapters including “Creative Forms of Reflective and Expressive Writing in Coaching Supervision”  in the 2019 (Turner and Palmer) book “The Heart of Coaching Supervision” and in Michelle Lucas’s book , 101 Coaching Supervision Techniques (2020). “people just love the freshness she brings…. she has been contributing to coaching and supervision for probably 20 years and she is a wonderful role model on many levels.” 

CATEGORY: Coaching at Work Editor’s Award 2021

Lifetime Achievement Awards

This award recognizes an individual/individuals who has/have made a significant contribution around coaching or mentoring over many years, perhaps carrying out trail-blazing research, pioneering new approaches, authoring books & articles that have shaped the profession, launching impactful initiatives and so on.

Lis Merrick

For her contributions to mentoring and social change. She has now developed and delivered over 250 mentoring and coaching programmes globally, training many thousands of internal and across-organisational programme mentors, mentees and coaches. She’s worked with over 120 different organisations in a diverse range of sectors including financial services and banking, manufacturing, service industries, universities, NHS, Fire Service. “she works tirelessly with the 3rd sector to develop huge international programmes.” And the regular columns she wrote for many years in Coaching at Work on mentoring demonstrated and generously shared” practical wisdom on the topic of mentoring acquired from many years of practice. Her other publications on the subject of mentoring, mostly with Paul Stokes, show insight and again, practical applications.” Contributions include:

  • In 2015 she set up an across organisational mentoring programme in the humanitarian and aid sectors, which now has 13 organisations participating, going up to 15 organisations in 2022. Organisations include Save the Children, UNHCR, Tear Fund, War Child, Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières. She is developing a Women in Leadership version of this programme for 2022.
  • Her work in conservation and the environment – she has worked closely with WWF since 2005. Its mentoring programme for the conservation practices now boasts 450 members. In addition, she works currently with members of the Arctic and Oceans programme, as well as with Greenpeace on its mentor development.

-UNOCHA commissioned her to develop an innovative approach to training managers in the humanitarian field in Africa in coaching skills. Through the Humanitarian Leadership Academy this programme is now offered across the humanitarian sector.

– She has worked with Save the Children since 2015 on various projects, currently looking at how to use mentoring and coaching during humanitarian surges in a variety of ways to make the Response Team and Home Leadership Team more effective and resilient in their crisis reaction.

– In the homeless sector, she has supported Crisis over the last few years and is currently providing a reciprocal mentoring programme for its senior leaders.She has previously supported mentees with lived experience of homelessness into employment.

– Working to support women in male dominated environments through mentoring. This has been a theme through her entire career since her MSc dissertation: ‘Mentoring women through the concrete ceiling in the construction industry.’ For example, this year she is working with the women scientists at CERN and supporting women in Investment Management in the City through CityHive

– Using mentoring to help during the pandemic, to provide trusted professional friends to support individuals working from home or dealing with pandemic induced stressful work situations. Organisations, which have really been under pressure and who she has helped to use mentoring at this time include: the International Olympic Committee and pladis (used to be United Biscuits). Both organisations have been really impacted by the implications of the pandemic on their work- thankfully the Olympics did take place and the biscuit factories met demand!

– In association with Bob Garvey, the PGC they have developed in C&M for Leadership in Organisations has successfully supported Save the Children leadership development globally, and they are now on the fourth cohort.

“It is through examples like this that Lis is making a real impact in parts of society that really count and make a difference….Lis has largely gone unrecognised in this way and its time she was!” 

Siobhain O’Riordan

For her contributions to developing coaching psychology internationally.

Following completion of a doctorate in 2002, and throughout her career and professional activities, she’s aimed to actively support the advancement of coaching psychology and coaching both within the UK and Internationally.  As a volunteer, she has held many roles within professional psychology, coaching psychology, and allied bodies to support the development of the profession.  She has also contributed within academic and educational settings and worked as a coach, coaching psychologist and supervisor in organisations and with individuals.

Ongoing coaching interests are focused on the areas of stress, resilience, wellbeing, learning and development, performance, health promotion in the workplace and education. Siobhain is the founder chair (2008 to date) of the International Society for Coaching Psychology, and a past chair of the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Special Group in Coaching Psychology (SGCP)- now the Division of Coaching Psychology. She’s contributed many articles, chapters and in 2021 co-edited the new book an Introduction to Coaching Psychology (Routledge).  She is currently editor of Coaching Psychology International and the International Journal of Coaching Psychology, and she freely disseminated her work at a national and global level, most recently on topics associated with supporting coachees to navigate the COVID-19 context. To date recognition of her work has included a Distinguished Contribution to Coaching Psychology Award (BPS SGCP) in 2010 and the Coaching at Work External Coaching and Mentoring Champion Award, Highly Commended in 2019.

David Lane

“I often think of him as the “unsung hero” of coaching and supervision, quietly being radical in the background, but never being “pushy”. He was first talking and writing about the ecological crisis in the 60s/70s.  He helped with the formation of APECS and wrote about the type of accreditation APECS would do.  He has written widely about ethics and in May 2021 gave a keynote at the Oxford Brookes supervision conference called “Ethics as a way of navigating novel issues for practitioners” which called for a new relational type of ethics that paid attention to all the social issues of our time.  

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/uploadedfiles/faculty_of_business/iccams/site_assets/documents/10th%20anniversary%20coaching%20supervision%20conference.pdf As co-founder of the International Centre for the Study of Coaching at Middlesex University he contributed to leading edge research in coaching as well as supervising leading coaches undertaking Doctoral research with the Centre. David also developed a Masters programme in Executive Coaching, which is now available in the US, South Africa and the UK and the first Professional Doctorate programme in coaching. These innovative programmes are work-based and available to experienced coaches.Through his associations with other bodies he has created accredited programmes for work-based development in a wide range of organisations including major consultancies, multinationals, and public sector and government bodies.
He was chair of the British Psychological Society Register of Psychologists Specialising in Psychotherapy, and has served on committees of the BPS, CIPD and EMCC. David’s work with the EMCC has been concerned with Codes of Conduct and Standards and kite marking of coach training. Working with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches he researched and developed the standards for the Chartered Business Coach award. He co-founded the Global Coaching Convention.