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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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.

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.”

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.”

“The major challenge is not having the patience to listen and let the mentee or the other people formulate a position or take full charge of the situation, and endure or enjoy the consequences. It requires an ability to both pull back and to be strong and frank giving an honest assessment, whether this is praise, compliment or correction. I have a tendency to “smooth over” some circumstances, adopt a protective posture or just do it myself.”

The mentor training methodology used the Creative Leadership Conversations toolkit to help participants learn to engage others in a constructive, appreciative and developmental way that builds shared ownership and leadership. The program provided the public health leaders with the opportunity to learn and practice essential coaching and mentoring skills, and equipped them with key leadership concepts and simple yet powerful assessment tools they could use for mentoring and collaborative work. The program wove together coaching demos and practice sessions so that the participants had the immediate opportunity to practice new techniques in peer- based learning groups as soon as they learned them.

The participants found the experience powerful, personal, and practical. In the closing reflections we heard that it was an “enthralling, inspiring” experience that used practical methods that were “perfect examples of adult learning.” The peer discussions, participants said, brought forth “issues of significance that were hidden.” We were urged to “continue to promote this new paradigm of mentorship” and use the low-tech, high touch methods that characterized the program.

With programs conducted in India, Ethiopia, and Jamaica, we’re delighted by the power of this methodology to transform people’s ability to think more expansively, engage respectfully, and seek collaborative outcomes.

Source: Leadership Beyond Boundaries

There are 13 BioGems throughout the Americas, but this is the first time that an entire country, instead of a region, has received this recognition. So while that is impressive and should be a model to countries everywhere in the world, how does that relate to the world of life coaching?

Countries, national parks, and cities often have places called preserves. Think about that word. Preserve in coaching could mean the act of pre-serving – or creating a designated way to save your energies and human resources so that you are ready to serve when you are called. So preserving is actually preparation for serving in whatever way you are called to in the life you live.

How much of yourself, your energy, your resources are you protecting? How much of YOU are you wasting, misusing, or depleting? We are a system just like a rain forest, and we also coach our clients to move toward optimal living that requires a commitment and an understanding of the value of personal reserve.

Coaching is a service industry and you must have the resources to serve. We as coaches must engage in and value self-care as way of life, and encourage our clients to do the same. We cannot live fully if we are living unconsciously and wasting the resources (from our SOURCE) that are God given.

You may be inspired to visit Costa Rica because it is very unlike anyplace else. There are no high-rise hotels, none of the cookie-cutter resorts you see elsewhere. Every eco-lodge and hotel is unique to Costa Rica (with few exceptions) and the country is not being ruined by traditional tourism, yet it’s tourism that supports the biodiversity preserves. Costa Rica tourists must see, feel, smell and touch the beauty by being willing to be wet, hot, drive on bumpy roads, and hike trails in the middle of jungles, waterfalls, rainforests, and beachside villages. They must be willing to tour places that are often not easy to get to – yet this is the only way to witness nature’s majesty in this unique country

But my ponderings are not intended to be a commercial for Costa Rica. I have traveled to many beautiful places of nature around the globe; but this one left me inspired in a new way – seeing the earth as it was centuries ago – alive with volcanoes, rich soil from earthquakes, and a land that breathes spirit and inspires me to do the same. I am not the same person as I was before these ten days in Costa Rica.

I encourage you to pick a place where you can be so rejuvenated. It could be near where you live – a state park, a preserve, a botanical garden – or maybe it’s many miles away. Wherever it is, go there – be unplugged from cell phones, computers, television – and listen to nature, it has much to teach us…

The effort was profiled on the Coaching Commons newsletter which also spotlighted the Leadership Beyond Boundaries effort to make leadership development more affordable and accessible to more people. We are jointly exploring the creation of a toolkit that can be used to develop coaching skills in a more scaleable way.  In the article, Pat states:

“Using coaching skills, we think, in a purposeful way, would make it more likely that people could come up with solutions for themselves that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, whether the problem is drought, conflict, or disease.”

This potential for creating shared leadership through coaching is underscored by a compelling perspective from Margaret Wheatley on the Coaching the Global Village Web site:

“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone. I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again — simple, honest, human conversation. Not mediation, negotiation, problem solving, debate, or public meetings. Simple, truthful conversations where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well.“

Used with the permission of http://leadbeyond.org

Pat Williams wants to build a toolbox—a basic coaching kit that could be delivered to the smallest villages in the most remote parts of the world. The toolbox, he believes, would give people in those places an enduring gift—a chance to use coaching to change their lives.

“Here’s the essential coaching skills that you could use in purposeful conversation with people when you’re struggling with the biggest challenges of your village,” says Williams, whose nonprofit, Coaching the Global Village, aims to use coaching to “create innovative solutions to pressing global challenges.”

The mission makes sense, Williams believes, even if the money isn’t there just yet. “I’m sitting here struggling as most startups. I picked the worst time in life to start a nonprofit, I think…it’s very difficult to get money. But I’m optimistic.”

Williams has just returned from a series of meetings with representatives of the Center for Creative Leadership, which has a “leadership beyond boundaries” program in Africa, Asia and India. Williams says he and the CCL might “create some collaboration on creating that toolbox.”

According to the CCL, Leadership Beyond Boundaries “aims to make leadership development more affordable and accessible in the world…extending leadership development to underserved populations in Africa, Asia and North America, encompassing social sector and educational institutions, as well as young and lower-income populations.”

With a fully equipped coaching toolbox, Williams believes this effort could become a seed that could take root anywhere in the world. “We don’t want money to have to keep going into a program to support coaches. We want to train the local people to understand the coach approach and use it in their daily lives.”

What would a coaching toolbox look like?

Williams says not unlike a very well-reasoned and equipped fishing kit. “You might have some hooks, and some string, and maybe a foldable pole and all those sorts of things, and that’s what this is going to be—it’s going to be a box with modules that people can sit under a tree and teach without PowerPoints and learn how to direct a conversation toward visioning or toward action plans or whatever.”

Williams and Coaching the Global Village have already partnered with NGOs (non-government organizations) in remote parts of the world, with the NGOs using coaching. “NGOs currently using coaching have a better understanding of their clients and can position themselves as experts in their field,” Williams says. “Our partners across the globe are using coaching to generate innovative solutions in partnership with the communities they serve.”

The toolbox would take things to the next step—delivering coaching without the need for a visiting coach. “We’re not trying to train people to be coaches. We’re not trying to provide them with coaches, although CGV would provide coaching to the trainers of the process. Our conduit would be, let’s train somebody in the process and then they train the local citizens to use the process.”

The program would provide follow-up for villagers who take the toolbox, perhaps via Skype—a kind of ‘how’s it going?’ checkup. Williams says he’d be curious to know what form coaching would take in different places—and what different groups or tribes would call it.

“Using coaching skills, we think, in a purposeful way, would make it more likely that people could come up with solutions for themselves that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise,” whether the problem is drought, conflict, or disease.

Coaching the Global Village will return to Nepal in October with a team of volunteers, but a collaboration with CCL would vastly expand the reach of the coaching toolbox, as the CCL already has operations in places like Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. “If I could partner with them, it’s just a matter of having a coaching kit that’s brought to the local citizens.”

Can coaching be boiled down to modules packed in a plastic toolbox? And if it can, what are the essentials that you’d pack in that box?

NOTE: The Harnisch Foundation was a founding funder of Coaching the Global Village. The Coaching Commons is a project of The Harnisch Foundation.