“Leader as coach”

Build the skills of great coaching inside your leadership population. Develop a culture of coaching and ensure coach training, support and supervision is top quality, in groups and one to one. Be more curious and notice the lift in innovation, trust and listening.

If you are looking to develop the coaching capability of your own leaders, your internal coaches or your own L&OD team, call us!

There are three key ways that Clearworks supports STEM, Biotech and Pharma organisations with their coaching.

  1. Coaching supervision for STEM organisations’ internal coaches and L&OD teams
  2. Training programmes to upskill internal coaches
  3. Leader as coach: Developing skills and behaviours of coaching in leaders.

Coaching supervision

If you’re currently developing coaches in your organisation, you’ll likely be considering offering supervision too. Supervision will increase awareness and confidence, increase objectivity and build resourcefulness in your coaches. Coaches are telling us that 2020/2021 is taking more out of them than usual as they support pressured leaders through lockdown, and supervision is more important than ever. Put the oxygen mask on your coaches first, right?

Supervision can be said to have three key functions: normative, formative and restorative. Normative focuses on the managerial and evaluative aspects of supervision like quality assurance, ethical practice and public protection. Formative focuses on the ‘educational’ aspects of supervision, such as developing knowledge, skills and capability. Restorative supports coaches in their practice to feel valued, safe to explore their work and sustain the depth of reflection that is needed to be an exceptional coach. In restorative supervision, there is a critical focus on the wellbeing of the coach.

If you are considering providing supervision for your trained coaches, please contact Clearworks. Sally Bernham leads the supervision team here, and is highly qualified to do so. Please read more about her here.

Supervision can be accessed in groups or 121.

Developing coaches and coaching

Developing the skills of coaching can be transformational in any organisation, but in the STEM sector, even more so. Releasing the need to supply ‘right answer’ and staying curious, can be a heavy lift for those who’ve always been measured on accuracy. Starting with the idea that there is a linear scale with curiosity at one end, and judgement at the other is a great place to start.

If you’re starting to develop coaching, you may be wondering what track to take. To apply for accreditation, to build a programme bespoke, to buy off the peg, to build something internally..

We’ve helped clients with any and all of those combinations, and the Clearworks team is ready to take your coaches and leaders as deep as you’d like to go. For some organisations, an introductory programme is enough to get cracking. For some, there’s a wish to build an ILM Level 5 or Level 7 coaching pathway.

Book an initial consultation and explore the ways that Clearworks can help you build a coaching culture.


Recent examples…

Supervision for internal OD Team

An internal OD team in a large, global STEM organisation was starting to deliver at an increasing pace within the organisation. Each member of the team had their own expertise and sweet spots and each responded individually to requests from the business to deliver development and change initiatives. They felt they were increasingly reactive rather than proactive; were not learning from each other’s experiences and were unconvinced that their initiatives would stick. They committed to bimonthly group supervision sessions with a view to moving into a more consultative role with the business. They agreed their stance and ‘pitch’ with the business, and aligned on boundaries and scope of work. They became much more effective and less stressed, while receiving the feedback that they seemed to be having twice the impact.

Coach supervision for internal Coaches

A large pharma organisation had committed to wide development of coaching skills and was raising the capability and culture of coaching. They had not built internal supervision capability or practice at the same pace, and after some months, it became clear that there was a need for regular, affordable coach supervision, to support the development and safety of the internal coach community. We set up and ran internal supervision Circles with an invitation to drop in, which led to a coaching culture that continued to improve and deepen, maintaining skills and resilience in the leaders who coach. This also highlighted those with particular talent for coaching who now have deeper roles in developing their peers.

Developing Leaders Who Coach

We were contacted by an organisation who had a wish to raise the coaching capability across all their leaders. They knew that they wished to build a culture of coaching but were unsure where or how to begin. We worked with them to establish their own ‘why’ for this work and designed a development pathway to get there. A combination of training (to develop skills of coaching) and Coaching Circles (to enable leaders to use and receive their new skills in service of their own leadership challenges and real-life scenarios) led to an affordable and quick impact on their coaching culture. The skills of listening with curiosity, trusting people to have their own answers and removing judgement, gave a transformational boost to the leaders’ toolkits.

Developing Internal Coach Capability

No single coach training pathway is right for everyone. Enabling an organisation to access and deliver coach development programmes which fit their needs and investment is key. For some organisations we have developed coaches to ILM level 5, or ICF level accreditation. In other organisations, a short, internal coaching upskill is just what’s needed. Often the development of an internal coaching programme can be a cost effective and long-lasting way to transform behaviours and listening in an organisation, and it can be a clear step towards embedding a self-sustaining coaching culture. Just like a 121 coaching programme, every organisation’s coach development journey is unique.