Reflections from my time with the British Red Cross

8th March was my last day of work with the British Red Cross. I’m thankful for the opportunity to have been part of an organization like BRC that so passionately challenges itself to live its values every day; to be courageous, dynamic, compassionate, and inclusive.

2022 and 2023 were not easy years for the organisation, with a continued increase in the frequency and scale of global crises. Internally we went through restructuring, headcount reductions in some directorates and the need to deliver more with less.

Despite these challenges, teams continued with their missions, focusing on developing our services to meet BRC’s future challenges.

I can’t speak for the achievements of everyone at the Red Cross, but I can share some of the things we did in the central L&OD team...

We supported several managers and leaders through the design and facilitation of team development interventions. These had various objectives, but in the main there was a desire to develop a greater appreciation of what each person brings to the team: their motivations, their fears, their strengths, the awareness of what sets them in conflict, etc.

This was one of the ways I feel I could add most value to the organisation.

We kicked started the process of coordinating the coaching provision across the organisation, identifying the overall spend on coaching. We felt that centralising coaching would enable BRC to leverage coaching as an Organisation Development intervention (vs merely benefiting the individual coaching client). A core pillar of this new approach were “quarterly coaching forums” with external coaches sharing key insights and themes emerging from their 1:1 coaching sessions, without trespassing the confidentiality agreements in place.

We scoped out the readiness of our leaders to be coached by internal, certified coaches. We identified a suitable partner to support us in upskilling a group of incredibly talented individuals who would become Red Cross’ inhouse pool of (EMCC) certified coaches, able to hold coaching sessions up to a director level.

We wanted to make sure that the coaching offer would be both accessible to anyone at the Red Cross AS WELL AS targeted to support critical business needs, for example supporting new joiners to the organization, people being promoted to a senior role and people being assigned strategic projects. Within 12 months of tracking data around the impact of coaching we had:

• a Net Promoter Score of 79;
• 62% of our internal coaches actively coaching managers/leaders at the Red Cross;
• a combined value of > ￡34,500 for internal coaches’ services offered + pro-bono coaching received from external coaches.

Beyond coaching, the team inherited a wonderful talent programme - which had been crafted by previous, skilled colleagues – called Ignite. We delivered this multi-month programme virtually for 45 future leaders, helping them develop greater understanding of self, and the kind of leaders they want to be become through a strong emphasis on reflection.

Whilst delivering multiple initiatives, there was a great energy and determination in the team to discuss the challenges posed by microaggression at work and the role we played – as the central L&OD team - in responding to this.

There were many more initiatives that my colleagues managed as you can imagine. I just want to end this post with some thanks.

Firstly, to Karen McDowell for the trust that she placed in me, and to Sally Dempsey for her support during moments of difficulty. Having been self-employed for many years prior to joining the Red Cross, I had got used to working on my own. And.. With my perfectionist hat on, this showed up in me grabbing hold of a project and not letting go until it was complete. This was a part of my shadow which I hadn’t seen.

Thanks also to my wonderful colleagues from the Central L&OD team for their determination and support. Thanks to the passionate L&D leads for their enthusiasm and professionalism. Thank you, Damion, and his team, at Catalyst 14 for being a great partner in the development of our internal pool of coaches. Finally, thanks to all the external coaches who offered vital, probing support to our leaders who needed that all important space for sense making during a time of change and challenges.

I hope that whilst being there for people in crisis, all of you who work for the Red Cross and are reading this post will continue to attend to your own needs, for these can be easily overlooked in high purpose driven organisations.

I also hope that across the organisation people will tap into the space offered by our coaches, so they can step back from firefighting, strengthen their ability to reflect and develop the courage to have meaningful, sometimes difficult conversations. In my eyes, supporting people facing devastating crisis requires this more than ever.