Coaching The Global Village – Empowering local citizens

By Patrick Williams, EdD, MCC

Many corporations are using coaching in the global arena to assist with cultural diversity, international offices and transfer of employees, and an everchanging global business environment. At the same time, there are many efforts, sometimes supported by corporate partners or by social enterprise, to bring the benefits and power of coaching to the underserved,
resource-poor citizens and communities around the globe.

In 2005, I was inspired to write a thought paper on the idea that became Coaching the Global Village. These are some of the ideas contained in that vision:

Purpose: Coaching the Global Village, Inc. (CGV) was created in 2005 to partner with world-change leaders, non-profits, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in using professional
coaching techniques to bring about sustainable social change in local communities throughout
the world.

Mission: Coaching the Global Village utilizes professional coaching
techniques to empower communities around the world to develop sustainable solutions for pressing human and societal needs.

Vision: Coaching collaborations drive sustainable social change worldwide.
Values: The wisdom, knowledge, solutions and energy for creating sustainable change already reside within the leadership of local communities. CGV partners with NGOs and nonprofits to draw on the wisdom and motivation of their clients and employees by leveraging coaching techniques into their work to reach targeted outcomes. This human capital is the source of leadership that
will sustain change efforts long after the project cycle has completed. CGV’s partners across the globe are using coaching to generate innovative and long lasting solutions in partnership with the communities they serve. Mutual learning, utilizing a coaching approach, comes in the form of empowering conversations using inquiry, powerful questions, and a future-focused vision for change by evoking wisdom from the people who desire social change.

Program: Through individual and group coaching, CGV utilizes a team of successful and visionary coaches throughout the world to provide community leaders with consultation in strategic planning, cross-sector partnerships, team building, leadership development, and building a network of NGOs.

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Ready, Set, Coach!
April 21, 2011

Integrated Development Foundation (IDF) is happy to announce that in May 2011, Caroline Spira, executive coach from Canada, will be working with IDF on behalf of Coaching the Global Village. Caroline will work with IDF staff, board members and volunteers to empower them with coaching skills using to the Coaching Essentials Toolkit.

IDF is looking forward to acquiring knowledge on coaching which it feels can render its staff and trainers more productive and effective.

BY BILL WILSON
The Wichita Eagle at Kansas.com

One of the pioneers in professional development coaching is in Wichita this week, helping a Kansas-based leadership organization fine-tune its own coaching skills.

Wichita native Pat Williams, founder of Coaching the Global Village in Palm Coast, Fla., will spend this week as a guest faculty member at the Kansas Leadership Center, 300 N. Main, motivating a team of leadership coaches whose goal is to strengthen civic leadership in the state.

Williams will work with the KLC’s coaching team, headed by Julia Fabris McBride, the center’s director of coaching and alumni engagement.

Williams said his job is to help leadership coaches fill a gap with their clients — primarily businesspeople and civic leaders — to help put leadership theories to work.
“In the leadership or executive coaching arena, it’s how do I manage more effectively?” Williams said. “It’s a work-life balance, but the manager as coach is an overarching philosophy now.

“Micromanagement and command-and-control leadership don’t work well with the new generation coming forward.” ‘
At the KLC, Williams is coaching the coaches, helping the group advance its core goal of developing civic leaders.
The leadership center is one of the few in its nation with a statewide reach and an emphasis on growing civic leadership, officials said.

It’s leadership that requires a mentor — a human sounding board — to develop, McBride said. Otherwise, the implementation of leadership training can be difficult.

In the business world, the obstacle is a reluctance to change, she said.

Williams compares his role to the approach John Wooden used coaching UCLA basketball to 10 national championships.

“The best coaches are known for what they do during the game,” he said. “They’re no longer teaching, but they’re trying to bring out the best ability and performance at each moment from that player.

“John Wooden was known for taking a player out and sitting next to them asking, ‘What could you have done better? You really did this well.’ He’s not watching the game, but he’s coaching the person.”

The art of leadership coaching has been around since the 1970s in the executive business arena, although it’s fairly new to the public and civic arena. Today, there are 18,000 members in the International Coach Federation in 104 countries.

“People come to me mostly to talk about their work,” Williams said.

“What opens the door to coaching is generally something work-related, but the larger conversation is how this fits into your overall life.

“You’re a human being, not a human doing, and we get that confused sometimes.”

Date: April 7, 2011
by: Mike Cavaliere | Staff Writer – PalmCoastObserver.com

Pat Williams is giving back through his nonprofit, Coaching the Global Village.

In Pat Williams’ home office, hung on a wall to the right of the doorway, is a map of the world. In it, dozens of red pins freckle the mock-antique paper, from sea to tea-colored sea. Beijing, Jamaica, Ghana — each pin reminds him where he has been.

Williams has had a fortunate life — nice upbringing, good family. His relatives are lawyers and CEOs. He used to be a psychologist; he has published four books. He is happy, healthy. In short: Williams is lucky.

That’s why he formed Coaching the Global Village, a grassroots nonprofit aimed to, as he says, “empower people to do what they want.”

He has worked in fields as diverse as healthcare, childcare, career counseling and AIDS clinics.

“It’s really for the people who don’t have anything ‘wrong’ with them,” he says, comparing it to psychoanalysis. “They don’t have anything ‘broken’ … (Coaching) is for people that are good but want to be great … people who want to live beyond mediocrity.”

The movement started in executive leadership training, then moved into one-on-one private coaching.

“A lot of people can feel empowered if they’re asked, ‘What are your ideas?’” Williams says. “A coach asks questions. A coach does not give answers.”

In Ghana, Williams coached Christian missionaries how to use their role to uplift the community — not teach them how to be missionaries.

You can give a lot of these villages books, Williams says, but what if the people living there can’t read? Coaching fosters “tribal councils,” he says. “… If you ask the right questions, brilliant solutions come from that.”

Then Williams realized there are plenty of “underserved” right here in the United States. The project he is most proud of is a youth diversion program in Colorado. According to Williams, after his sessions the group rebranded itself, changing its label from “at risk” to “at choice.” Graduated members returned to coach later generations. They franchised their model.

“In coaching, we do a lot of language changing — we call it re-shifting,” Williams says. “ … It’s to teach people to respond to life rather than react to life. If you pause and realize that you’re always at choice, you might brainstorm … what else are my alternatives? What else could I do?

“You’re always at choice. It’s never one or the other.”

In Flagler, Williams will work with the Florida Foundation. He hopes to find other local nonprofits and partner with them, as well, to bring coaching to the youth and perhaps create a high school peer-coaching program.

“There’s a lot of people that want to help, but they don’t know where to go,” he says. He says he hopes to connect the dots.

Next week, Williams will be training the Kansas Leadership Council. In July, he’ll be working with the Native American Women’s Council of Phoenix.

“Coaching is my calling,” he says, “… because I think people can have richer lives than they know, if they get outside the box of their limitations … This is my legacy … I want to be the instigator, the inspirer … My dream would be that someone picks up this idea, then wins the Nobel Peace Prize — and I’m there to cheer them on.”