Building an Internal Coaching Culture That Lasts | Interview with Vanessa, HR Leader | S02 E01

So today's conversation is, um, a really important one for, for MRA.

So obviously we support organizations through executive coaching, team coaching, but one of our key primary drivers, as you well know, is embedding really good quality coaching qualifications, and ensuring that they're well embedded within the system that they operate.

So, [inhales] um, I think it'd be really lovely to hear from you on your experience of what that's looked and felt like, the disciplines that are required, how you get the system ready, the stakeholder engagement, the lessons learned.

So this podcast is all around embedding a really high quality, high standard, high ethics approach to internal coaching capability, both for internal coaches, but also leaders who want to become, um, coaches in their own right.

So that's the purpose of the, of the conversation.

Sophie, you've led a lot on this work with this organization, so do you want to kick off?

Yeah, for sure.

So I've been lucky enough to be the lead tutor on each of the four CWC cohorts, so we've worked together now for four years.

Mm.

We've put nearly 30 people through the program.

Um, 99.9% of them have become accredited level five coaches, which is fantastic.

And I often will sort of, because we also run supervision with you, and we'll talk perhaps a little bit-

Absolutely

... about that-

Mm-hmm

...

in terms of, um, holding and maintaining the standards.

I think one of the things that really stands out the most for me when I think about particularly your internal cohort of coaches, is that they're not necessarily put in the same bucket as some of the others that we work with around even when the pressure is high in your current world, your internal professional coaches still make the time to be coaching.

And that, for me, tells me about the standards that have been set internally as well as externally from the program that we've partnered with everybody on.

So talk to me about what does highest standard really mean for you in the world of internal coaching?

Ooh, good question.

I think fundamentally, when you give somebody the role of internal coach, you need to be able to give them the skills to do that effectively.

And so the training program, the learning environment, and the vision of what that looks like for people can be quite diff- different when they start on the journey.

And so small cohorts has been part of the power of that, so bringing that picture to life and allowing people to ask questions around what does that really look like, um, is really, really important.

And then the support.