Update on progressing Diversity in Meyler Campbell

Thank you to all of you who took the time to fill in our survey questions sent out at the end of last year.  There were a lot of helpful suggestions, and we have taken the time to collate and consider the range of comments and feedback that were received.

It is clear that those who responded acknowledge that Meyler Campbell and our community can do something different in this area.  The responses ranged from near term tactical activities to some more fundamental and longer-term strategic changes, which will take time to implement and to bear fruit.

Our intent in reviewing the suggestions was to implement changes that would promote broader interest in Meyler Campbell from diverse groups, but in a way that will not be deemed as tokenism. Instead, we want to affect meaningful progress on this plan for two reasons.  Firstly, our Meyler Campbell community will increasingly face these issues in their coaching life. Secondly, as an organisation devoted to development, we need to be part of the solution to this pressing business issue.

In this update, we will provide four tangible actions that were spurred by the responses to the survey.  There are long term issues such as curriculum review and faculty composition that will be addressed in time.

A practice client whose life experience differs significantly from the student

We will ask every new student to have at least one practice client that will be completely outside their sphere of work or social experience.  We cannot mandate what such a “different” practice client will look like. Still, we will encourage students to search for a client who will challenge their world view; whose life experience differs significantly from their own.  We will support the supervisor to help learning on this practice client as it relates to coaching in “difference”.

To help, we are in discussions with the volunteer organisation Hera through MC graduate, Ann Waldron, about using the practice client scheme to support 20 women refugees who need business mentors and coaches.   These will be offered to new incoming students as practice clients or can be made available to alumni for pro bono opportunities. We would welcome introductions to other organisations who may be interested in setting up similar schemes.

Learning from those who do better

We will arrange a workshop within the next three months with HR and Diversity & Inclusion leads in companies in the UK who have been acknowledged as taking positive steps in this issue.  The intention will be to gather learnings – what works best? We also need to understand what they see as the challenges we should address as a coaching organisation about diversity.  It is essential to hear from our “buyers” as to why a coaching offer that incorporated diversity as part of its frame would be beneficial.

We will provide an update on the outcome of this workshop and the proposed actions.

Show the diversity of the existing alumni

While we are committed to having a different engagement with this issue moving forward, we want Meyler Campbell to demonstrate the full range of diversity that already exists amongst our alumni.  We have graduates who have come from such diverse backgrounds – various class and education backgrounds, geographic spread in the UK (and globally) and corporate, education and not for profit sector experience.  We need to showcase this – not as a defensive action – but as a way of highlighting the challenges that many of us might encounter in our own version of “difference”.  As a community, we might not know the vast range of personal stories and experience that is present in our community – the understanding of which would help us all to connect to the issue of difference.  We want to change that.

We are suggesting two ways:

• We want to have wider representation of the community at our information evenings. We will be actively inviting those of you who participated in the survey to attend and show the full range of MC alumni.  We will ensure that these events feel warm and inclusive.
• Further, we want to launch a campaign that shows off the breadth of background that currently exists through a communication programme that highlights “What is it like to be me?” We can do short pieces in our newsletter, features on our podcasts and videos on our website.  We will need your help with stories that we can feature.  If anyone is willing, please let us know, and we can work on getting this out as soon as possible.

Highlighting diversity in CPD events

Our CPD events provide a valuable point of access into helping us consider the issue of diversity.  We have consciously tackled this throughout the agenda in our forthcoming conference, but we don’t want this to be a one-off exercise.  We are looking for suggestions from you about the people invited to speak at our events as well as the topics that will enable us to explore this issue in more detail.  The combined network of the community is vast, and we know that there are people out there who can help us to listen differently or can provide us with a different perspective.