Progressing Diversity at Meyler Campbell

As you are aware the Meyler Campbell Diversity Taskforce was established to help us to become more inclusive and diverse as a community of coaches, to help to develop our awareness of issues relating to diversity and inclusion, and to enable us to work effectively with leaders to support them on their own pathways to greater inclusion diversity and equity within their organisations. This month seemed a fitting time to give you an update on our activities as it is a year since George Floyd was murdered in the US sparking outrage and action across the world.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE DIVERSITY TASK FORCE

Since our last update we have been delighted to welcome two new members to the Taskforce, Meyler Campbell Faculty members Saiyyidah Zaidi and Keith Krasny have both now joined the group. As a reminder our membership also includes Jo Minns (Chair), Sheldon Daniel (Special Advisory Board) and Catherine Devitt (CEO).

DO YOU HAVE TO BE LIKE ME IN ORDER TO COACH ME?

Sheldon Daniel and Lizzie Cho recently hosted a webinar exploring how to manage difference in a coaching relationship. You can read Sheldon’s summary of the session below.

BUILDING A DIVERSE CLIENT GROUP

As part of our commitment to equipping our coaches to work with as broad a client group as possible, we will continue to ask every new Mastered participant to work with at least one practice client who is completely outside their normal sphere of work or social experience. We don’t mandate who that client should be, but we encourage coaches in training to search for a client who will challenge their views and whose life experience differs significantly from their own. To support you with this we are actively forging partnerships with other organisations so that we can help you to find practice coachees.

Meyler Campbell alumna Jo Minns reflects on a recent discussion with her supervisor and her experiences of working with a broader range of clients, see Appendices 2. As the Meyler Campbell ‘Coaching the NHS’ scheme draws to a close, we would love to hear from those of you who have experienced the value of coaching someone unlike themselves through the scheme. Please let us know your experiences and we will include these in the next Digest.

THE BIAS AWARENESS TOOL (BAT): HELPING COACHES TO RAISE OUR OWN AWARENESS AND CHALLENGE OUR ASSUMPTIONS

Using the concept of Meyler Campbell’s tried and tested Performance Evaluation Tool (PET), we are developing a series of thought-provoking questions that we hope will allow coaches to develop and deepen awareness of our biases and our unconscious reactions in the context of anti-racism. We hope to use this Bias Awareness Tool (BAT) as the basis for open and constructive conversations about anti-racism. We firmly believe that Meyler Campbell coaches are perfectly placed to enable these conversations with our clients and that, to do so, we must first learn to have these, sometimes uncomfortable conversations ourselves as honestly, courageously and skilfully as possible.  If you would be interested in taking part in a workshop to help us further develop and hone the BAT, please let us know at info@meylercampbell.com.

UNLEASHED FOR INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP

We have been working on a version of the Unleashed programme specifically designed to develop a coaching skillset in leaders to enable them to become more inclusive in style and promote a more inclusive culture. If you would like to know more about this programme please call us on 0208 4604790 or drop us a line at info@meylercampbell.com.

WHAT’S NEXT?

• Tunde Banjoko, CEO of Making the Leap and Mastered graduate has recently founded a new organisation called Black Charity Leaders and we are working with Tunde to understand how Meyler Campbell can partner with the charity and support the leaders. We are also looking to work with Anne Waldron and HERA, the charity supporting women refugees and seeking to support them into employment.
• The Meyler Campbell faculty continue to address their own learning needs on the questions of diversity, inclusion and belonging and the next session on this topic will take place on 6^th

We know that diversity is an ongoing challenge, for us as an organisation and for the organisations with whom so many of us work.  It took many years to build the system we are challenging, and we recognise that it will take many years and a lot of work to dismantle it. At an individual level, we each have a role to play, and as an organisation we are committed to supporting systemic change. If you have any ideas about what more we could be doing, we would love to hear from you.

Warm regards,

Jo Minns

On behalf of the Diversity Taskforce

APPENDICES 1

DO YOU HAVE TO BE LIKE ME TO COACH ME? 

This was the topic of the webinar hosted by Lizzie Cho and me on May 11, 2021.  A recording of the session is available on Connected for members of the Meyler Campbell community here: Do You Need to Be Like Me In Order To Coach Me?

This session was initially due to be a workshop at the cancelled 2020 Meyler Campbell Conference.  Both Lizzie and I reflected on how different the world was since we originally planned the flow 15 months ago.  The intervening time has made the session’s subject appear prescient, making such a discussion very relevant to coaching and leadership in general.

Neither Lizzie nor I wanted to pontificate on the answer to coaching in a situation of difference. Instead, we tried to use the session to show the importance of exploring the client’s world when you are beginning a coaching engagement.  We sought to create a psychologically safe space (despite the remote environment and an audience of 30 people) with Lizzie using the concept of the “Human Library.”  Lizzie focused on getting to know my world in a section entitled “What it is like to be you”, guided by a “book title” that I gave myself.  The intention was to explore the areas of the client’s world experience that might affect the ability to have an effective coaching relationship.  We asked participants to consider if anything they heard about the client’s (mine) story can affect the ability to create a relationship of equals or impact their “clean listening”, be non-judgmental or non-directive and ask insightful questions.  We also asked those attending to reflect on the need to factor difference when they veer into advising clients.

The discussion that followed allowed for the participants to share their views on working with difference.  Much of it revolved around inclusion and how to get workspaces to listen and include and encourage different points of views, perspectives, and people.  Notably, there were three men present of the 28 participants and led to a question about how we as coaches can positively raise this with our male clients in leadership positions.  Finally, there was some discussion around how to create “safe spaces” that allow coach and client to raise issues of sexism, racism, sexuality, ageism etc., within the coaching relationship.  This more in-depth exploration of the world of the coaching client might enable the coach to go beyond elements of identity that we wear “on our sleeves” and get to ones that might not be so obvious – but which might be critical to their understanding of the world and relationship with others.

This should be a crucial part of the contracting phase – to explicitly allow for deep appreciative enquiry into the world of the client as necessary and to challenge assumptions that might be based on bias, prejudice, or misinformation.

It is clear from the feedback that allowing more opportunities that throw the spotlight on the world of marginalised groups might be helpful as coaches.  It can create insight, build confidence and spur new actions in our coaching practice.

Sheldon Daniel

APPENDICES 2

“YOU DO REALISE THAT YOU’RE COACHING IN YOUR COMFORT ZONE, DON’T YOU?”

As usual, my coaching supervision session provided challenge, a different perspective and an opportunity to reflect. However, I wasn’t expecting such a direct piece of feedback from my supervisor.

I realised that (as always) he had a very valid point.  Unwittingly, I had reached a point where almost all my clients were “like me”: white women in traditional corporate roles. While this meant that I could easily empathise with their challenges, it also left me at risk of applying my own assumptions to their situations and, without my supervisor’s question, my coaching could have easily become lazy and stale.

My supervisor set me a challenge: to actively seek out clients who were different to me in some way, to notice the impact they each had on my coaching style and the techniques that I used, and to understand what this meant for their coaching outcomes.  This did not mean that I had to stray from my target market, but I needed reminding that “people going through a career transition” or “those whose working relationships are holding them back in their careers” was never intended to have the subtitle “provided that they’re also professional, white women”.

I quickly realised that it is far easier to be non-directive when you are more aware that you are dissimilar to your client; there is less temptation to offer advice when you have clearly not experienced a similar situation yourself.  By truly listening to my new clients’ situations, not assuming what they were going to say, I was able to offer a different perspective and fresh insights.  My questions became more curious. My energy in coaching sessions remained high. I tried out new skills.  And, most importantly, my clients were better able to find their own answers because I openly acknowledged that I could not do this for them and they had no expectations that I might.

I now ensure that I do the following with each of my coaching clients:

• Explore early in a coaching relationship how my clients describe themselves, listening to the words that they use and understanding how this may impact their biases and also my own. I may not yet feel quite ready to use Sheldon and Lizzie’s “Human Library” analogy, but I will practice it, and in the meantime this conversation forms a crucial part of my contracting.
• Using this conversation to check my assumptions around where I may be similar to my clients, and where I may be different, and what impact this could have on our coaching sessions. It is not always a comfortable discussion, but it enriches the quality of our conversations.

I think there is also a crucial role here for coaching supervisors. This is partly around making us think about the type of clients with whom we choose to work, and why. Our supervisors can also provide that safe space to reflect on the coaching relationships, to build our confidence in addressing some of these areas of difference and ultimately to challenge us on what we are saying (or not saying) to our clients.

Jo Minns