Here at Clore Social Leadership we partner with coaches that are passionate about delivering impactful leadership development across the social sector with our Find a Coach offer.

The benefits of coaching for leadership development are undeniable. Numerous studies have supported this, reporting that coaching boosts productivity by 44%; 80% of people who experienced coaching reported increased self-confidence, whilst over 70% benefited from improved work performance and increased communication skills.

But what is coaching? Whether delivered in person or online, coaching provides an opportunity to address day-to-day challenges, overcome strategic roadblocks, and seize new opportunities in one 1:2:1 environment. The sessions are used to interrogate your chosen topic through lines of questioning, leading to an exploration of the potential solutions and next steps that can be trialled in real time.

"Coaching has helped me to pause and ask myself the bigger questions before running headlong into big decisions, and I’ve used the open questions in lots of strategically difficult moments since to great effect!"

At Clore Social Leadership, we work with coaches from across the UK who specialise in a variety of topics that are commonplace in the social sector, including but not limited to, navigating uncertainty, seizing new opportunities, team wellbeing, future planning, women in leadership, behaviour change, resilience, goal setting and burnout.

If you are still on the fence about coaching, below you can learn more about the impact of coaching and how it can benefit you and your team:

Increased confidence: Coaching has been hailed for its positive impact on confidence; research found that for senior leaders coaching increased their confidence to navigate opportunities and challenges in their specific leadership role and increased their trust in their direct reports. With social sector leaders required to navigate ever increasing workloads, investing in your ability to delegate and communicate can only be a plus!

Emotional intelligence: Sometimes known as EQ or EI, emotional intelligence is commonly defined as the ability to show self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and social skills. Coaching provides you with the vital space to reflect on your own behaviour and how you read and react to the behaviour of those around you, equipping you to navigate a sector  where emotional intelligence is vital not just internally, but when working with your beneficiaries and stakeholders.

Career planning and development: If you’re feeling stretched it can be tricky to find the time to consider your next career move, relating to your initial passion for your organisation's cause. Making space to discuss what your progression looks like with a third party can be invaluable. Your coach can support you in exploring opportunities and help you find an appropriate route to your next career move, reestablishing your driving force behind working in the social sector.

Goal setting: For many, contentment lies in having something to look forward to. However, ‘keeping your head above water’ has become commonplace for so many in the social sector. Coaching can provide you with the opportunity to discuss what you really want from your career, considering what goals can support you in seeing the bigger picture, aligning your professional ‘why’ with your personal values.

Conflict resolution: Conflict in the workplace is almost unavoidable. You are bringing together a diverse set of strangers and asking them to work towards the same vision, and once you consider the sensitive and complex issues so many in the social sector are grappling with - there is bound to be a difference in opinion. When conflicts do arise, it is easy to make snap decisions in the heat of the moment. However, coaching can provide a unique time to step back and reflect, either in hindsight or before the conflict is resolved, allowing you time to holistically evaluate what is really happening. The intention is that you can then take these learnings with you to your workplace in realtime to encourage a more constructive dialogue.

Incredibly, these aren’t all the benefits of coaching, improved productivity, communication, accountability, motivation, collaboration and employee retention are just some of the other benefits of coaching that are commonly cited by coaches, participants and organisations who engage with this professional development tool.

So if you think coaching could be for you, why not begin by exploring the experienced coaches on Find a Coach, all passionate about supporting the development of individuals from across the social sector, wherever you are on your career journey.

Emily Lomax, Clore Social Fellow and Programme Director for our Emerging Leader Women & Girls and Experienced Leader programmes shares a unique insight into programme delivery and participant experience during the crisis.

It has been eight months since I read the awe-inspiring biographies from the 2020 Women & Girls Emerging Leader cohort and the Experienced Leader cohort. I was lucky enough to have been appointed as their Programme Director to ensure that they achieved, or hopefully exceeded, their learning priorities from the six-month programme.

I was due to meet them all at their first residential in May. As a Clore Social Fellow myself, and long-time facilitator for multiple Clore Social programmes over the years, I knew how much the participants would be looking forward to meeting each other and to forming the bonds which would challenge, inspire and support them not only in the months of the programme but for years to come.

But, as we all know, the World was to turn upside down. Not only was this residential cancelled, the whole viability of the programme was put into question. Would people have the desire or capacity to participate whilst juggling home and work – both envisaged to put them under pressure that we had never seen before. How would people cope and how could the programme fit?

In considering the next steps I frequently reflected on the centre of the Clore Social model – something that has become a mantra for me ever since I did the programme myself, guiding me through difficult decisions as a CEO and then in establishing my own organisation; the importance for social leaders to KNOW YOURSELF, BE YOURSELF AND LOOK AFTER YOURSELF. Now, more than ever, these things felt so important if social sector leaders were to be able to rise to the challenges ahead. Clore Social, in my mind, felt even more important than it ever had done before. These people are the front-line of making sure that social change is a priority and that people stay at the heart of decisions – we had an obligation to support and challenge them.

"Clore Social, in my mind, felt even more important than it ever had done before." Emily Lomax

The other thing that was in my head was how this wasn’t our decision alone – the Clore Social model goes on to talk about ‘working with and through others’. We needed to engage them in deciding what to do next. We therefore conducted a survey in early April asking for ideas and for an honest response on whether or not they would want to continue to be part of the programme – with no judgement if the answer was no. 91% of participants on the Women & Girls programme and 64% on the Experienced Leader programme said they wanted to continue and 33% on the Experienced Leader programme decided to defer until 2021.

Delighted that the programmes would go ahead, we now had the daunting task of re-shaping the content to be less dependent on the face-to-face elements, and to try to find ways to bring the magic of Clore Social relationships to life through virtual means. Louise Obi-Drake, Clore Social’s Director of Innovations and Learning, is brilliantly creative and knowledgeable and together we shaped a new way of doing things. The key changes were:

• Establishing a new programme of e-learning to support participants’ journeys and to help them to feel connected to the programme
• Re-writing the programme handbook so there was clarity of expectations and timings amidst all the uncertainty
• Being clear about what could be flexible and co-created, for example, the placement element of the programme is unlikely to be a week of being hosted within an organisation face-to-face
• Kicking off the action learning and coaching elements of the programme as soon as possible so participants could build relationships and seek space and support
• Re-shaping the residential into a series of online sessions to be held in May, where possible at the same time as the original residential, to aid planning

"This is the conversation I have been waiting to have all my life." Programme participant

Five months on and I am astounded by how much energy the participants have put into building connections and supporting each other. On a daily basis the programme’s instant messaging channels are buzzing with questions, suggestions, shared inspiration, honest requests for help and sharing when times are tough. These are unique times and participants have responded by stepping up and supporting each other. They have instigated new instant messaging channels to start specific conversations, have attended additional, optional webinars that we have arranged to add additional support and instigated so much supplementary learning.

Last week I asked for some informal feedback and was astounded by the flood of positivity – “This is the conversation I have been waiting to have all my life,” and “I finally feel like a leader.” These people are stepping up and out amidst all the chaos around them in order to make a difference to people’s lives. I am humbled.

They are also incredibly busy and at times struggle to find the space to focus on themselves and on the programme. And that is ok. They, I hope, are learning to be kind to themselves and that one of the joys of the Clore Social programme is that it is self-led and that you create your own path – focusing on the elements that will make the biggest impact for you – it isn’t about pleasing me, it is about what makes the biggest difference for you.

"I finally feel like a leader." Programme participant

A few observations of thing that have helped these inspiring leaders during these unstable times:

• Taking the time to plan
• Being kind to yourself if things don’t always go according to that plan. Not chucking the plan out at this point, but adapting and evolving – dealing with ambiguity is a really important skill as a social sector leader and this, in itself, is an opportunity for learning
• Being vulnerable and ask for help
• Collaboration is key. Ask for shared resources and ideas, no need to spend time reinventing the wheel when you have such an awesome network to draw on
• Finding ways to fulfil your learning priorities through your day job, and through your home obligations to save time and to connect parts of your life together. We only have one life after all so why not learn whilst being a parent to a reluctant toddler as well as when chairing a board meeting.
• The Clore Social model is relevant today and every day. Return to it when times are hard.

I am so excited to see what the next few months of the programme will bring and am so grateful to spend virtual time with these inspiring people – I just hope we get to meet each other sometime soon!

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Connect with Emily Lomax on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Our comfort zone – jobs we know well, things we’ve done before, relationships which are easy and well established;
• Our stretch zone – this is where the learning happens, we are learning new things, stretching and challenging ourselves a bit, making new connections, achieving new things;
• And then there’s the panic zone - this is where we are in fight or flight mode, it’s all quite overwhelming, and our performance starts to dip as we are stressed. Right now everyone is probably oscillating between stretch and panic. And that is not sustainable.

Do what you can to find space to sit in your comfort zone every day. Even if it’s checking in with a trusted colleague for a chat, or ticking off something straightforward on your list. Step out of the panic zone when you can. See point 3 for one way of doing this.

2. Everyone is dealing with this change at a different pace.

You’ll have heard of the change curve – the journey we all go on when there is change in our home or work. It’s often talked about when departments go through restructures or when we may experience bereavement. Right now, we are going through change on a very grand scale and the change is happening very quickly. Every day there are new guidelines, guidelines which often it is us who stayed up through the night to write!

Everyone goes through change at a different rate, and crucially not in a linear fashion. You may feel you’ve assimilated the new way of being quite well, and then another set of guidelines comes up and suddenly you feel angry or depressed again. This is normal. And everyone is going through it. Be kind to those who finding today difficult. Don’t expect everyone in your team to get with the programme straight away. For team members who are struggling – buddy them up with someone they can talk to. Signpost to other support available (employee assistance programme?).

3. Focus on what you can influence or control.

Stephen Covey, in ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ talks about the circles of influence. He talks of three concentric circles:

1. The smallest is our circle of control – the stuff in there we can do something about.
2. Slightly bigger and around the first circle is our circle of influence – things go in there which are not directly within our control but certainly something we could influence if we worked out how.
3. The final circle represents that which we can as individuals neither directly control nor influence, like a global pandemic for example. It’s called the circle of concern. The more time we spend in that circle of concern, thinking about things which we cannot control or influence the more stressful it is, and the less agency we feel we have.

However, the good news is that the more time we spend on what we can influence or control the more resourceful we feel. And, crucially, the more our circle of influence expands. (Fraud angle – focus on tightening up processes in YOUR area, don’t worry about what other teams are doing over there. Be in your sphere of influence by making sure everyone in your team are aware of what to look out for to mitigate fraud, etc.)

4. Find moments for wellbeing amid the high performance.

Some definitions of resilience talk about it being a balance between high performance and wellbeing. However, if we think about elite athletes, they have moments of very high performance and long stretches where they are focusing on wellbeing. That focus on wellbeing gives them the resources to be able to perform when they need to. You cannot consistently expect high performance from yourself without putting something back into your tank.

What can you do each day to focus on your wellbeing? Whether it’s a chat with a friend over Zoom, a nice food delivery, cuddles with your kids, a yoga workout, don’t expect you can run on empty.

5. Boundaries.

Just because now we are all connected via Zoom, Teams, Skype, WhatsApp, Slack etc., etc., doesn’t mean we should be 24/7. Create boundaries for you that work for you. Talk to your team about who is able to cover what and when, and when it’s not your turn, put your work phone away, shut your laptop and do something else. No one has their most creative ideas staring at a blank Word document. You’ll feel better and be more creative for getting away from your inbox. And creativity is what we all need right now!

What could you to do get out of your circle of concern and into your circle of influence, so you can have impact in the world? (Interestingly, spending time in our circle of concern is very likely to tip us into our panic zone.) What boundaries can you put in place to safeguard your wellbeing? What conversations do you need to have to check in on those you work with?

Stay safe and well and be the change you want to see.
Jen

You can follow Jen on Linkedin (Jennifer McCanna PCC), Twitter @jenthecoach and on Facebook at McCanna Coaching. Visit Jen's website for more information and useful articles: https://mccannacoaching.co.uk/