Reflections On 'The Black Voices in Coaching & Research Conference' 2024

Where to start!??

During my coaching training, I asked a lot of questions about the lack of diversity in the mainstream of philosophers, theorists, researchers, anthologists, and trainers, as well as practitioners and beneficiaries of coaching. So as soon as I saw the advert for the inaugural Conference on LinkedIn, I knew that it was something that I just HAD to attend and be a part of.?

As per my LinkedIn post style, I have split this article into bitesize chunks -?

1. Helpful tools and resources - for practicing coaches and leaders but to be honest, more broadly useful for all!?
2. Lingering key takeaways
3. Questions for me (and potentially for you too) as a coach

1. Helpful tools and resources

The P.I.E. theory for career success - Harvey J Coleman’s book Empowering Yourself, The Organisational Game shares that career success is based on three key elements - performance, image, and exposure. Game changer tool for me to be able to bring into coaching. Throughout my career I have met so many, totally grafting and performing, aiming to transition from a delivery role into a more senior strategic role and not quite understanding why the intention wasn’t reaching the outcome. Not sure I totally agree on the percentage of performance but I definitely agree that this is a helpful model to consider when exploring leadership development.?

Communities of Joy Model - Pamela Larde, Ph.D. shared with us her model ‘The Four Practices of Joy ’. There is a lot of research on happiness but certainly, not joy, and the conversation was SO refreshing. I love the thought of joy not only being an emotion but also an act. I particularly engaged with Pamela’s ‘Communities of Joy’. The conversation here explored the need for leaders to remember to hold onto joy as they potentially may become more isolated, both with a core and inner community but also be mindful of the parts of your community which might potentially be sucking away.?

Dynamics of coaching within high/ low context culture - Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek shared with us the Zangra Framework which adopts adapting international best practices in coaching across work environments in Africa. The work popularised by Edward T. Hall’s - ‘High Context and Low Context’ culture was new to me, and the value of developing strategies to integrate cultural consideration effectively within the coaching process, to ensure that cultural contexts are respected without overshadowing the core objectives feels so obvious now!

Decolonising coaching - This incredible piece of research by Charmaine Roche Coach and Supervisor - really spoke to me, touching on the coaching system and its relationship with capitalism, structural inequality, and social change.?

Colonial influences in coaching - I learned for the first time about William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. An incredibly inspiring philosophy and many say - the true father of philosophy.?

2. Lingering key takeaways

Where are your joy gaps? - I feel like joy is absolutely a tool for resilience - whether small or large, both physically and emotionally nourishes us. As people develop and get more power and responsibility, it feels like it’s even more crucial to be mindful of joy gaps and prioritise joy.

What are the risks of being a 'unicorn' – I talk a lot about being authentic but also feeling the weight of feeling different or underrepresented. The emotional labor of that is pretty draining.

There are challenges of social class, even within a community with similarity - I talk a lot about class on my LinkedIn and it was so refreshing to have it raised at the conference. Even within the spaces of similarity, there are still differences that mean people’s life outcomes or experiences are different, particularly when it comes to the relationship between money and education.

How digestible am I and how digestible do I want to be? - The concept of being more socially desirable in a space of power came up a lot and I love the analogy of becoming ‘digestible’ but then causing a rumble at the right time, to really make change within a system.?

Bread-crumbing your work - the incredibly inspiring Remi Ray talked about the idea of someone picking up your work when you’re not around, whether now or in the future.? A great reminder of my own purpose and goals. Where are you leaving breadcrumbs, why, how, and what for purpose??

Being aware of the glass cliff effect - I have seen this happen so many times to women around me but never knew that there was a description for it! The Ryan & Haslam, 2005 theory provides a metaphor for more women being promoted into more precarious leadership roles than men and as a result becoming at risk of falling off a cliff and failing. There are so many times I have seen excellent women but particularly minority groups being given the risky, hard, failing projects to pick up, with little support, time, and more pressure. This isn’t supporting, in particular, black women to thrive in leadership.??

3. Questions for me (and potentially for you too) as a coach

• How do I continue to expand my skill set to serve a diverse clientele better, bearing in my cultural context?
• How do I sit in my truth as a coach to elevate my likely Eurocentric expertise with more global theory and embrace my ancestry??
• What is the relationship between supporting an individual and that wider effect on social change?
• How do I think about engaging with tech and AI in coaching with an aim to challenge the elitism or ‘newness’ of coaching? Embracing tech to provide a pathway for some, who it could really benefit.?
• Where do I sit within the wider coaching ecosystem and how do I affect change with my identity as a coach in that space, to create more inclusive coaching spaces and practices??

#blackvoicesincoaching #coaching

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