Coaching through COVID and BMJ Leader
I’m privileged to have had a blog – co-written with fellow coach Rachel Ellison – published in BMJ Leader, one of the publications in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) stable.
The blog focuses on the very particular leadership style that characterises Coaching through COVID, the pro bono coaching programme for NHS (National Health Service) and care sector staff who are directly impacted by COVID, and particularly for those who don’t nomally have access to coaching, from doctors and nurses to porters, cleaners, pharmacists, physiotherapists and many others, who are experiencing anxiety, uncertainty, threats to their personal safety and that of their families from contracting COVID-19, distress, trauma, exhaustion and much else.
As one of the co-founders of Coaching through COVID I’m part of a team characterised by high compassion, high psychological safety, high agility, ego-minimised and adaptive leadership, and the enabling of collective intelligence to constantly emerge (the intelligence of the team is always superior to the intelligence of any single person). I’m confident that this philosophy and ethos from the heart of the programme team convey themselves to our 260 mature and high-quality coaches and then to those being coached (460 people have so far benefited from being coached on the programme, and counting), who feed back that their coaching is sustaining and resourcing them in vital ways, and in some cases helping them keep going in continuously and unimaginably tough circumstances.
Perhaps there is something to learn more broadly from Coaching through COVID for leadership and cultures that enable a significant – and sustained – difference in health, wellbeing and therefore effectiveness, both for the leader and for their followers.
Photo by Anshu A on Unsplash
