North East Coaching Collective: Coaching for social change in the north east

This week is International Coaching Week, a week all about celebrating coaching. And we in the north east are joining in.

North East Together: the leaders’ network for social change is a big supporter of coaching as a way to help people develop, grow, gain insight, become more self-aware and achieve their goals. We believe coaching can help unlock people’s potential, to help people be at their best, just what we need in a time of uncertainty, change and difficulty for many in our region.

We’ve worked to embed coaching practices within the network and offer pathways into coaching almost since the start including

• Introduction to coaching workshop — three series of three half-day workshops across 2015 and 2016 with 31 network members
• ILM Level 5 Certificate in coaching and mentoring — a professional qualification organised by network co-founder Robert Laycock and run by Cath Brown Consultancy with support from VONNE. So far, since November 2016, 30 network members across three cohorts have taken part in the programme. The fourth programme starts in July 2019
• How do leaders experience coaching? — a coaching-themed whole network event in October 2017 with Bob Garvey, one of Europe’s leading academic practitioners of coaching and mentoring

And now, we’re delighted 13 North East Together network members have come together to form the North East Coaching Collective to offer coaching to leaders and managers of small and medium charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises, and to others working independently for social change in the north east.

The coaching collective coaches all have a coaching qualification to at least level 5, work to a shared code of practice (the Global code of ethics for coaches, mentors and supervisors), take part in regular supervision and are members of the Association for Coaching voluntary and community scheme. Many of the coaches were inspired via the Introduction to coaching workshops to learn more, then became qualified through the ILM Level 5 Certificate in coaching and mentoring, and now practice through the collective. All the coaches are committed to the region, to the social change sector and to coaching social leaders to be their best.

To overcome a common problem of coaching costs being out of reach of smaller charities or the perception coaching is only for large organisations, the collective is working to a fixed price point. The collective is also actively seeking funding to subsidise the costs further to offer 50% to 100% bursaries for smaller charities based on income levels. We’ll keep you updated about this initiative.

What next?

• if you’re looking for a coach, visit the North East Coaching Collective
• if you’d like to learn more about coaching and gain a coaching qualification to practice as a coach or to use in your leadership and management roles, join the next ILM Level 5 Certificate in coaching and mentoring starting in July 2019