This conversation with my guest, Suzanne Ford, covered her experience as a coaching client and was recorded two years ago at a picnic table in an allotment in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Listening back to it was poignant; little did I know then that two years hence I would be longing for the simple pleasure of a conversation at a picnic table.
Suzanne has two work roles as a dietician; one is with the NHS and the second with the National Society for Phenylketonuria (NSPKU). One of Suzanne’s reflections is that,
Coaching enabled me to reflect constructively about things where I was stuck, analyzing it quite fully in a constructive way; naming the fear, saying what I was frightened of or felt threatened by something and just exploring different ways of viewing that, different perspectives and then moving forwards to exploring different ways to proceed.
Suzanne describes how the coaching has made a sustained difference to her working life and leadership, as she juggles two roles, one in the UK’s biggest employer, the other for a small, specialist charity where she is one of just three employees. It offers vital support to families of children who have inherited Phenylketonuria a rare inherited condition.
Phenylketonuria is a build up of phenylalanine in the body. Phenylalanine, is a natural substance, a building block of protein. However, excessive amounts can impact on behaviour and if untreated – through a low protein diet – may lead to brain damage. PKU is looked for in all new-born babies in the United Kingdom by measuring phenylalanine levels in the heel-prick blood test. All babies should have this test as it allows treatment to start early in life.
Jo Musker-Sherwood, the Founder Director of Hope for the Future, is my guest on this episode of Coaching Conversations. Jo is one of the special people that I have been fortunate to encounter through my commitment to talking with guests who are supporting people to face into the climate and ecological emergencies. Hope for the Future, the organisation that Jo left just before lockdown last year, is an organisation dedicated to supporting people to engage their MPs on these issues.
As Jo explains, rather than taking an adversarial approach, which works in certain lobbying settings, Hope for the Future views 1:1 meetings with an MP differently;
It’s about cultivating empathy, taking a coaching approach, understanding the emotional blockages of an MP. Quite a lot of that is around eco-anxiety and training people to unlock those blockages is what we did.
Jo and I talk about how she came to be the first director of Hope for the Future and why, as it was becoming very successful, she left to establish her own business, Climate. Emergence. She had experienced burnout and seeing parallels with her own emotional collapse experience and the potential for earth’s systems collapse, she committed to sharing with others what she had learned. She now offers ‘a place where we can process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.’
I think that one of the primary tools that we have at our disposal when we try facing an issue that we can’t control [as I did] is to engage with that challenge by finding meaning in the process… It is one of the tools that we have at our disposal to build resilience for climate change, you know, where can I find my small bit of the jigsaw puzzle. I love writing and that’s part understanding our narrative and our story of what’s happening.
Jo publishes a weekly blog and mentors people to be able to continue to live fully whilst also living with the unfolding crisis. One of her beliefs is that we have everything we need within ourselves to halt catastrophic climate change. She recommends a four ‘Gs’ self-care plan for living with the climate and ecological emergencies:
Grace – truly connect with being enough as you are through a daily stillness practice;
Grounding – through daily contact with nature;
Gratitude – keep your heart open for the ten things that you’re grateful for each day;
Growth – by journaling as the story unfolds.
Jo’s own journaling means that that there is a book, a memoir of her recovery to look out for, though not just yet.
… a lot of this (Neil’s Wheel) is about a conversation with the child of the future …… ‘So grandpa, when you knew these old ways weren’t working, the animals were dying, the waters were rising and things were running out. What did you do?’ And wanting to feel that for that grandchild, I did something for them.
Neil Scotton
My conversation this month is with Neil Scotton about a deceptively simple coaching tool that he has designed and is now sharing around the globe, Neil’s Wheel. It is a vivid example of Neil’s generosity of spirit in action.
The wheel is available free to the world, there’s no obstacles to accessing it – no payments, no having to do a course or read a book or anything else around it. You just go to the site, print it off or copy it out and go.
In our conversation Neil, an award-winning coach of many years’ experience, explains how he has drawn upon his international standing and depth of coaching expertise, to create and refine Neil’s Wheel with the coaching community so as to make it available to change makers and concerned citizens worldwide – as well as to professional coaches.
Excitingly it was recently taken up by a number of church ministers across the US, and, one of them wants to look at the words to see, what changes, if any, need to happen so that he can work with the disenfranchised youth in America.
In autumn 2020 Neil was awarded the Coaching at Work Editors’ Award for his contribution to climate coaching which included the creation of Neil’s Wheel. Neil is the co-founder of the One Leadership Project and many other initiatives mentioned in the podcast.
What if coaching was for a life-giving planet and the health of our biosphere rather than performance and organizational success?
Alison Whybrow
I was delighted to have Alison Whybrow, one of the founders of the Climate Coaching Alliance (CCA), as my guest for the latest episode of Coaching Conversations. Explaining the genesis of CCA, Alison said,
Zoe Cohen wrote an article in LinkedIn about where were all the coaches when the earth warmed by three degrees? I caught myself thinking ‘what’s the purpose of coaching’? And maybe if the purpose of coaching was different to what it is, then we might start to see a shift. What if coaching was for a life-giving planet and for the health of our biosphere, rather than for performance and organizational success?
She went on to say,
I think the Climate Coaching Alliance was an idea waiting to be discovered. And it just so happened that Eve (Turner), Josie (McClean) and I were the three to discover it.
In just over a year since they formed the Coaching Climate Alliance in 2019, they have created a virtual network space in which coaches, mentors and supervisors from around the globe can learn from each other and share their approaches to coaching from that perspective and supporting their clients to face into the climate and ecological emergencies.
How do we really open this space with scale? That’s really where so much of the learning is. Lots of people know they need to do it. Lots of people are making changes in their personal lives, but the question of how to really hold this with grace and scale is key. There’s so much learning there and there’s so much opportunity and possibility.
Never far from our minds during the conversation, was the UK’s hosting of COP 26 taking place in Glasgow in November. Asked about the role of the CCA in support of the action needed, Alison offered the following,
Our pre-COP 26 role (as coaches), is to create the conditions for our politicians and for those representing us in those meetings to have the bravest and most heartfelt conversations they can have in service of all of our futures.
She added,
One of the things we can do is create the landing strip for what comes out of COP 26. So how do we really ready ourselves and ready our clients and be available to enable people, enable those ideas to lean into them and to land and land well?
Membership of the Climate Coaching Alliance is free. On 4th March 2021 a 24 Hour Conversation is planned. This will be the third global event held by CCA, but this time locally hosted. The aim is to enable a broader and deeper conversations using shared case studies to take the work forward to the next level within the framework of the Eco Phase cycle that the CCA works with (see below).
This Episode of Coaching Conversation is dedicated by Alison to Josie, Eve and the joys of co-founding. All the ideas and thinking expressed have been crowdsourced from many conversations and many learning partners
Mentioned in this podcast
Alison Whybrow, coach and co-author with Alan Williams of The 31 Practices: Release the power of your organization’s values every day published byLID publishing.https://www.alisonwhybrow.com/
Polly Higgins, who sadly died in April 2019, campaigned for an International Law of Ecocide.https://www.stopecocide.earth/Earth Protectors take her work forward.
This episode’s conversation is with nature-based coach, James Farrell. As well as being the director at The Natural Coaching Company and founder at The Human Nature Partnership, James works in environment and climate change related fields and has done so for almost 30 years.
I’ve been on a search for the last few years, for that sweet spot between people, planet and human potential…. I’m a surfer and my pre-coaching prep five minutes before the session is to imagine I’m out there, sitting on the ocean. That brings the environment into it (the coaching session).
In our conversation about nature-based coaching we explore how rooting coaching practice in the natural world – literally and metaphorically – benefits coachees and nature. James cites a wealth of research to back up his commitment to his work.
This generation and the next are the ones to turn the corner to more just and sustainable planet, so that’s what nature-based coaching is about for me. I’m driven by the idea that to pull this off we need people who can be operating at their very best so that we’ve got a chance of make the biggest possible impact. That’s where coaching comes in – and coaching in all its forms is wonderful when it is done well.
Episode 6 of Coaching Conversations with Alison Whybrow (January 2021) explains more about the Climate Coaching Alliance mentioned in this episode.
James is offering a free ‘Coaching with nature’ guide to his subscribers. Get in touch via the Natural Coaching Company website or email hi. The details are below, along with information about the scientific research that he draws upon and mentioned during our conversation.
In this episode I talk with Tess Cope whose Transformation Agency specializes in transformational leadership and executive coaching for senior management teams and HR leaders across a range of diverse organisations.
I’ve always been interested in looking at the larger system and part of my work is doing organizational cultural diagnostics with the aim of helping clients understand what kind of culture would aid their strategic plans compared to where they are today – what’s the gap? So the hook that got me tuned into the systemic approach is that it’s another way of understanding the whole, a way of getting in tune with some of those invisible dynamics that other diagnostics can’t reach.
Horses can play a key role in the work and as a lifelong lover of horses this was an aspect of Tess’s practice that had to be explored – along with her application of the systemic approach.
I first incorporated the horses in what I would call classic leadership development work, helping leaders look at what’s their trust, what’s their energy, how do they build rapport? The horses are magnificent at simulating those scenarios in a very safe, but magnified way. I still incorporate that in my work with leaders if, indeed, that is the area that they need to work on.
Episode 3 of Coaching Conversation with Jane James explains more about systemic constellations for organisations.
In this episode Jane James, coach, coaching supervisor and educational catalyst talks with me about working with a systemic lens.
As other methodologies of coaching and leadership development seem to reach a ceiling in terms of how much they can achieve, this methodology, which taps into the invisible, the unseen, and something of the unconscious, is proving to be beneficial.
Our conversation covers the history of applying a systemic lens in organisations and the ‘orders’ – or principles – which provide a framework for the approach. The conversation is enriched with examples from Jane’s depth of experience to illustrate how this approach reveals otherwise hidden dynamics in organisations and teams to leaders.
Since recording the conversation, which took place before the Covid 19 Lockdown, Jane has finished writing her book, Families: revealing the hidden dynamics of parenting. She has also teamed up with fellow coach Nick Clitheroe and Mike Malig Group Director of nowhere to co-found Meeting Life as a Creative Adventure. This online programme teaches future leaders how to nurture and harness their innate creativity, how to thrive in uncertainty and lean into creating the unfolding future together.
Jane’s book can be purchased through her website.
If you enjoyed this episode do subscribe through my website or via your podcast host.
Mentioned in the podcast
Families: revealing the hidden dynamics of parenting written by Jane James, published November 2020.
The Field, by Lynne Mctaggart, published by Element, 2001
Systemic Coaching and Constellations, by John Whittington, published by Kogan Paul, 2012
Bert Hellinger, who died in September 2019, wrote extensively about the family constellations, the approach that he developed. https://www.hellinger.com
Talking with Sarah Rozenthuler about her book Powered by Purpose, which is so relevant to our time, the depth and breadth of knowledge she draws upon is self- evident.
Sarah was, in part, motivated to write Powered by Purpose in order to address
the Financial Times’ description of purpose as ‘a black box with all its
workings hidden from view.’
I wanted to see if there was a way of laying out what
those mechanisms were and then translating them from that into really practical
tools.
We converse about her own underpinning
personal purpose, and It is impossible not to admire Sarah’s heady mix of
compassion, drive and determination to write in order to support the corporate
sector to be a force for good.
I think orientating a business, an organisation so
it’s truly of service to people and the planet, so it’s really creating value
for long term well being, is going to be one of the key factors of
organisational success going forwards.
Esther Foreman of the Social Change Agency,
describes Powered by Purpose as ‘compulsory
reading for any leader searching for purpose and looking to authentically
transform their organisation, people and planet for positive impact.’
I hope that listening to our conversation
has you reaching to obtain your own copy of Powered
by Purpose.
It is available to order from your
favourite independent bookseller, Waterstones and in both print and kindle versions
from Amazon. Likewise, Sarah’s first book, How to Have Meaningful Conversations.
Sarah Rozenthuler can be contacted via her
consultancy, Bridgework Consulting https://www.bridgeworkconsulting.com/ and on LinkedIn. Together with
Alberto Gonzalez Otero and Chris Blackwell, she has created the Purpose
Collective.
Georgia Boon, CEO Allsorts, shares the benefits of leadership coaching for her and the charity she led.
Coaching Conversation podcasts come in monthly episodes. You can listen to people sharing their experience of leadership coaching with me to help you decide if coaching is for you. You’ll also be able to listen in on my conversations with other coaches who are alive to how our profession is well-placed to support people, teams and organisations through the waves of challenges we are experiencing.
You can listen to the podcasts here or go to platforms where you can subscribe and receive a notification when a new episode appears.
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