#016 (March 2024): Coaching…making the difference

Hello friends

We hope this finds you well. As it’s spring, we’re looking forward to longer days, new ideas and exciting work with you.

Coaching…making the difference

We think people working tirelessly across our north east voluntary, community and social enterprise sector — who are under considerable pressure of one sort or other pretty much all of the time — deserve access to coaching support. In fact, we’d say, “if not them, then who?”

We also think a coaching approach within organisations creates great culture where people can grow and thrive.

We’ve therefore been on a mission to move towards this vision — creating a coaching culture in the VCSE sector in the north east — over the last eight years. We’ve collaborated with others to

• run the ILM Level 5 Coaching and mentoring certificate programme in collaboration with Cath Brown between 2016 and 2020 — four programmes with 40 people
• set up and hosted the North East Coaching Collective, offering coaching to leaders of social change
• run Leader and manager as coach one day programme — six programmes with 48 people (three open programmes, three internal)
• offered free coaching to people working or volunteering in small VCSE organisations or working independently for social change in 2020 (Supporting our sector through COVID-19) and 2022–23 (Coaching for social change 2022)

And, for a few years now, we’ve felt celebrating coaching in our sector during International Coaching Week is an obvious way to raise awareness and increase understanding of coaching, and how it is making a difference to social change and social leadership in the north east.

We are excited to finally be in position to shout from the rooftops about the important work we all do! Please join us in May to hear what we and lots of others have been up to.

Join us for Coaching…making the difference Tuesday 14 May, 13:00 for 13:30–16:00 at St James’ View, Newcastle University Business School, 5 Barrack Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4SE

You’ll hear inspiring stories of coaching being used in different ways in our region

• growing a coaching culture in our organisation with Tyne Housing
• coaching for service improvement in South Tyneside led by coaches with lived experience of learning disability and/or autism with Your Voice Counts
• coach training for people from Black communities, an initiative to empower Black communities to achieve their full potential through coaching with The Phoenix Way North East and Cumbria
• coaching women, learning from the podcast series with Julie Scanlon

This event is hosted by Yes We Can with North East Coaching Collective, North East Together and Newcastle University Business School.

A few good things to share…

01: to help prepare for the future

NCVO’s The road ahead analyses major trends and issues for 2024 to help chart a path through the year. It will come as no surprise NCVO is predicting another year of considerable change for both our sector and our society with an election coming up, tough times continuing, and adapting to political, social and technological shifts. If you’re not an NCVO member, you need to register to access the free report.

02: to understand the state of the sector in 2024

NPC’s State of the Sector 2024 explores the views of charity leaders, charity users, and the public on where charities are. They hope the results represent a chance for charities to press the ‘reset button’. To rethink strategies and approach. And, in an election year, to reset relationships with government and politicians. This is the report that estimate that charities prop up state services by £2.4bn a year.

03: to learn how to champion diversity on boards

When fewer than 3% of trustees are under 30, we know board diversity is an issue. Join the Young Trustee Movement online on 10 April for their free 1 hour workshop on how to champion diversity — including young trustees — on boards.

04: to create brave spaces with psychological safety

Listen to Lisa Gill talk with Tirzah Enumah and Mike Arauz from August Public Inc on the Leadersmorphosis podcast all about psychological safety, equity and inclusion. Also read August Public Inc’s white paper Looking at psychological safety through an equity lens.

What’s in our diaries

• The essence of leadership? NET Pop-up event 07 with Austin McNamara, 16 April
• Lead and manage spring-summer 2024 — our leadership programme with 3 x full days (1 May, 5 June, 3 July) and 2 x half days (17 April, 17 July)
• Coaching…making the difference, International Coaching Week 2024 event, 14 May
• North East Together event 26: More than you imagine is possible, 21 May
• Lead and manage autumn-winter 2024 — 3 x full days (24 September, 22 October, 26 November) and 2 x half days (10 September, 10 December)

And finally…a bit about our purpose

We’re working on sharing more about what we’re about and how we want to make a difference in the region. We’re using our strategy tree process we use to help others develop their strategies to help us develop our own. We realise it’ll be handy to actually share it rather than keep it trapped in Canva.

Our vision is a thriving north east with an impactful, resilient and influential civil society supported by a healthy ecosystem that supports, grows and develops social change leadership and positive social change. The contribution we make to this healthy ecosystem is our mission, which is to collaborate to grow and develop social change leadership in the north east.

Need help doing your best work? For you, your team, organisation, network, system

We offer internal and open training programmes, networks and communities of practice. We offer coaching, mentoring and action learning sets. We work one to one with VCSE organisations to help them think, learn, plan and change. We work on leadership, governance, collaborating, coaching, and more. Talk with us

Cheerio for now.

Stephanie, Robert, Cath, Duncan and Marie

PS If you’d like to get this by email, join the Sowing Seeds mailing list.