A Coaching Culture Benefits Nonprofits

Imagine your neighborhood association is discussing the budget and spending priorities.  Without coaching skills, each neighbor voices and advocates based on personal priorities.  With coaching skills, each person is asked for their ideas and thinking, pros and cons are discussed as a group, consensus is reached in most areas, and a vote is taken on a few items.  Specifically, the coaching skills of exploring the options and strategizing support a neighborhood working together to achieve the best outcome for the greatest number.

A group of volunteers for a nonprofit were asked to collaborate and develop a program.  To facilitate, the various sections of the program were identified, and everyone was asked to volunteer to complete some of the work.  They listed individual tasks.  A few volunteers then compiled the efforts of everyone into one program.  One volunteer was not at the meeting and they created their own version of the program.  That volunteer did not want to use the program developed by the other volunteers because they weren’t involved.  The volunteers that did meet were happy with the program they created together.  With coach training, the leader of the group will have the skills to engage the volunteer who missed the meeting. 

These examples demonstrate the value of coaching certification.  Increasingly people resent being told what and/or how to do something, and instead prefer to know the end goal and figure out how to get there independently.

• Giving the plan takes the power away from individuals.
• Figuring out and providing a plan assumes the individual is not capable of doing it.
• Developing the plan assumes knowing better.

Coaching is based on the premise that each person is their own best expert.

• While others do have insight and experience, they have not lived the individual’s life, so the insight and experience come from a different place and may not include all of the influencing factors.
• Each person has different values and priorities.
• An individual knows the people in their life and whether they will support a plan, fight it, or not care.
• Each person knows their own skills, resources, habits, opportunities, and realities at a deeper level.

Coach training makes sense for nonprofit leaders.