Coaching helps individuals and teams to understand what needs changing and why change is needed, and what the benefits of the change might be. This clarity can reduce resistance and foster a positive mindsettowards transformation. This clarity often helps people that are ‘stuck’ to feel ‘unstuck’ and move towards realising their ambition and goals either personally or professionally.

Coaching improves self-awareness, can identify blind spots of the client and can assist with improving relationships in teams. I have seen personal transformation happen with individuals, which makes my job incredible rewarding as people find their purpose and get their ‘mojo’ back.

Team coaching improves communication and teamwork across the team and can complement other formal training that then helps apply new skills and processes that are needed for the transition into new arrangements.

My experience as a coach can help people to identify their goals, work with people on their personal accountability to deliver these goals and set out a plan with the client on how to realise their ambitions, one of my areas of expertise is to build resilience with clients.

I have worked on many large-scale change programmes across the public sector over many years and my five top tips to overcoming resistance are:

1. Listen and learn: we need to actively listen to both the people that draw on services and those that deliver the services, there are always genuine concerns when change is to happen, and there has been a significant amount of change over recent years – the workforce and those experiencing services feel it is constant. Using empathy through listening helps to build trust and can help us achieve understanding of the root causes of challenges, this in turn enables mutually acceptable solutions to complex challenges.

2. Focus on the here and now: It is important to communication the desired outcomes of change, but it needs to be flexible, if we can help people to engage in the process through co-production approaches this fosters ownership of the challenges and potential outcomes – this reduces resistance to change, plus making small stepped changes can lead to large transformation, if we are all in it together. Often focusing on the ‘here and now’ and people’s immediate concerns builds the trust.

3. Remove Barriers: Working with all your stakeholders to identify and eliminate structural, procedural and psychological obstacles that hinder the change process can really assist the transformational change to happen. I have done this many times across the transformational and improvement work I have completed.

4. Make it simple: It is very difficult to make complexity simple, but it has been done and can be done. Making your communication accessible and engaging is key to help deliver this. Setting out straightforward options with a transparent outline with clear outcomes can really help people to decide the change goals and what is expected.

5. Show the benefits – In my experience showing the benefits of change through real-life examples, testing out new approaches and projects, developing case studies to increase buy-in are all great ways to showcase work to all stakeholders. In my career this has been an important element of the change process and requires building in at the start of the journey.

What you will see from the work I do will be measurable shifts in leadership behaviours and service outcomes. This could include 360-degree feedback improvements in communication and decision-making. Plus, improvements in Leadership Capability (increase in confidence, strategic thinking and stakeholder management). Increase impact through better self-awareness and emotional intelligence, that will lead to better resilience and stress management.

All these areas can be measured before and after my services are applied.

My approach is very much about building a learning culture within your organisation so ‘learning while working’, with reflective practice at the heart of what you do, this is supported by developing coaching approaches in all tiers within the organisation. This creates a learning feedback loop that is intentional and will need to be built and acted on as part of the system of change, this is where innovation sits (people’s knowledge) and the transformation programme is the mechanism (systems and processes) to lever in the change that is needed.

I have covered much of what I’m going to say here with the previous answers in the FAQ sheet, for me the three big risks for delivery are:

1. Not having a clear vison and strategy for leadership development, a common problem is not linking the programme to the organisational priorities and real challenges faced by leaders today.

2. Leadership Development is not just for Christmas (one off event) by for ever, it needs to be structured, one-off events and learning fade quickly – this is why learning environments and cultures are very important.

3. Organisational and Leadership buy-in is critical to success if the organisation and executives are not participating in or role-modelling the learning and behaviours then why should anyone else bother to change.

Step 1

Any type of change – personal, professional or organisational – requires a self-assessment it needs to be honest and challenging. Why does this matter? Because learning about where we are now helps us to build the foundations for our future.

Step 2

Define 3-5 priorities / or behaviours that you want to see change – successful organisations / people link values – behaviours – outcomes. Having too many will failure because they are too broad or abstract.

Step 3

Start with leadership behaviours – role-modelling is everything, culture starts at the top with how a leader behaves. What helps this is coaching, challenge sessions, internal and external feedback – leaders must model desired behaviours, misaligned leadership is a major reason for change failure.