Bucks Coaching Pool update

I run an in house Coaching Pool to develop organisations’ ability to build Coaching capacity, rather than to have to source external Coaches. I helped set up the Bucks Coaching Pool over a decade ago, which has a Local Authority and an NHS Foundation Trust as participants.

This “pool” involve in house Coaches offering coaching support to clients from other participating organisations. I work with the organisations by running initial training for Coaches to support them towards accreditation, regular Action Learning sets to foster their growth as Coaches, as well as an annual conference for all Coaches. Obviously since spring 2020 these sessions have been run virtually. We have also had monthly drop in sessions to help Coaches connect with each other throughout the pandemic.

Both schemes are growing and flourishing. We have just had our hundredth 1-1 coaching client through the scheme for the year for the Bucks Coaching Pool and 21 people who have participated in team coaching.

In terms of a recent scheme evaluation:

  • Next steps people took as a result of coaching: several respondents mentioned starting new posts or looking at possible new posts, undertaking further training and development, having a greater sense of ownership and responsibility of their future, growing in confidence, and the coaching work supporting them to make changes that they had put off for some time, and encouraging others to seek assistance via coaching
  • Effectiveness of the coach: asked to rate the effectiveness of their coach on a scale of 1 to 4, 33 scored their coach 4; 19 scored them 3 and 1 scored them 1. 33 of the clients scored 4 and 17 scored 3 in their evaluation of the benefits (66% a 4) No -one scored less than 3