Sometimes being able to put your heart on your sleeve and speak about something you truly love is all that is needed to see the world through different eyes.
Yesterday I delivered a 3-hour introductory session on coaching as part of VSO Cameroon’s “In-Country Orientation” of the newly arrived volunteers (read more about it here). Though only one small part of a 2-week process, this was a special session for me personally. While I see a great opening within VSO Cameroon to develop a coaching culture, this was an opportunity to share skills that would help other volunteers use coaching in their work, as well as to plant the seed that coaching has a place in development work.
The later is probably the one aspect that I have been really been thinking more and more about in these 6 months in Cameroon. Although there still remains a space and a need for technical assistance and service delivery, the ability to push capacity building a little further towards creating true transformational change just cannot be ignored.
When one solely fills a gap in the service delivery within any type of development work, they also tend to create a dependency. Once the person, or the service, ends or leaves, the gap remains (may even widen!) and whatever work was done in the interim is essentially lost. But once one builds the capacity of others to fill that gap, then a greater likelihood of long-term change is possible.
Coaching teaches us that we must be accountable for our thoughts, actions and behaviours. We have to take ownership of what we do. We have to be the people we need to be to succeed. So why not transfer and capacity build this into development work?
I cannot imagine that there is even one organization in Cameroon (or indeed elsewhere) that could not benefit from increased empowerment of its workforce. I cannot imagine that an overall outlook towards greater sustainability would be shunned. Coaching offers a way to encourage our counterparts to take greater ownership of the development agenda, empowers them to look to themselves for answers, and ensure a durable effect of positive change.
If my personal passion for coaching reached these new volunteers in a way that incites them to think “coach-like” and to use coaching tools in their work – then great! But if my passion for sustainable development through coaching had any impact at all as to their thinking on how to work in the field, then we are miles further along in meeting our goals in poverty alleviation.
A little coaching can go a long way… and with some patience and determination, this coaching culture might just become the norm, here and elsewhere.
[...] just felt good about sharing why I think coaching is a good addition to the development toolbox (read more about this here). And it felt even better to be providing my fellow volunteer/colleagues with new tools of their [...]