Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2020/2021
the pandemic has pushed us to overcome self-made obstacles and to embrace technologies that were already available to us
A reluctance from coaches and coachees to do anything other than face-to-face coaching prior to the pandemic, has led us to examine our beliefs about how and where coaching conversations are carried out. Jessica Reekie describes the adaptation and transition process to managing coaching conversations and delivering education courses online.
The Leadership Coaching Programme at Wits Business School (WBS) in Johannesburg, South Africa, was started by Dr Viveka Christierson in 2009. The concept is a simple but highly effective one; WBS MBA alumni are invited to complete a brief course in effective and ethical leadership coaching and, in return, they act as mentor coaches to the current MBA students.
The programme is popular with MBA alumni who are not only given an opportunity to learn a new skill but also have an opportunity to practice it with the MBA students. In addition, it gives the alumni coaches an opportunity to give back to the next generation of leaders in South Africa, and to their alma mater. The MBA alumni are invited back to volunteer as coaches on an ongoing basis where they experience the benefits of volunteering, enhancing their emotional well-being (Elias, Sudhir & Mehrotra, 2016) and improving their coaching skills. From the business school perspective, the programme serves the purpose of strengthening ties with their MBA alumni and also provides the MBA students with an opportunity to receive leadership coaching in support of their leadership development.
The programme also includes a one-day Leadership Development Workshop where the MBA students are given an opportunity to reflect on their leadership development goals.
This year, Leadership Development Workshops were held with three MBA classes, in February and early March. As usual, these were held in a classroom, at the Business School campus in Parktown, Johannesburg. The coach training was scheduled to take place later in March, also in a classroom, on campus and the coach allocations were to be done in early April. Like the rest of the world, we did not foresee the disruption to our lives that was just around the corner. On 23 March, South Africa was put into a strict lockdown and all non-essential activities were prohibited due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As the lecturer and programme director, I was faced with a stark choice; either convert the coaching programme to an online virtual delivery or cancel it.
it gives the alumni coaches an opportunity to give back to the next generation of leaders in South Africa, and to their alma mater
Like many educators around the world, I quickly discovered that converting the programme to online delivery would require a complete revision of the learning material and a crash course in how to manage a classroom using available technologies. As so many other working parents experienced, the task was more daunting due to school closure and the evaporation of the childcare that I relied on, to be able to work. After experiencing the full cycle of Kübler-Ross and Kessler’s (2014) grief and loss stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance (DABDA), I mustered up enough energy. The material was prepared, and the class was re-invited to attend the course, now delivered online using Zoom.
To my surprise and delight, the virtual online delivery went exceptionally well, and many of the concerns anticipated about online teaching were unfounded. The Zoom ‘breakout rooms’ worked well for small-group practical coaching exercises and the ‘video on’ classroom began to have the same feeling and camaraderie amongst the classmates as one normally experiences in the classroom.
And then there were the added benefits of not having to fight the traffic to get to class, or to spend too much time getting dressed into business attire to go into the business school. In fact, since only the top part is visible, no-one would know or mind if you wear your smart business shirt paired with your walking shoes and tracksuit pants! The savings in time is in fact only one of the savings that online education offers. Other costs such as the printing of course material, venue booking, and catering are no longer relevant resulting in a considerable saving for the programme overall. Another benefit was discovered when I sent out the invitation to MBA alumni to apply for the second coaching class, which was to be delivered online only due to the ongoing pandemic. WBS MBA alumni resident in other parts of the country and even other parts of the world including America, Mauritius and the UAE who had previously been excluded from participating due to the requirement to participate in person, were now able to be part of the coaching programme.
Never Let a Good Crisis go to Waste
The success of the online coaching course led me to think long and hard about my own development as a coach which led to online searches for programmes that were available for virtual delivery. After reviewing and comparing several programmes around the world, I found the Kingstown College, Advanced Diploma in Personal, Leadership and Executive Coaching which was due to start in June. It met all my selection criteria for a coaching course and beat the other programmes that I reviewed, easily. I persuaded my husband, Barclay, to sign up with me and we embarked on the intense, learning journey together.
The moment that I joined the Kingstown College course, my expectations were exceeded. From the remarkable support and service orientation from the Kingstown College staff to the knowledge, experience, and expertise of the Faculty. I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this programme. The experience has broadened my outlook in terms of global work and learning opportunities, which I believe will be an enduring outcome of the pandemic.
One of the important skills that we learn as coaches is to enable our coachees to understand that it is not what happens to us, but our attitude to it, that affects our experience of events and ultimately the responsibility that we take for our response, that matters most (Frankle, 1959). There is no doubt that the global Covid-19 pandemic is a tragic event with so many human lives lost already and the devasting impact on economies and businesses, will be felt for a long time to come. However, there is also no doubt that the pandemic has pushed us to overcome self-made obstacles and to embrace technologies that were already available to us. Consequently, the barrier of geographical location for many activities has been considerably diminished.
Coaching and Education: Disruption and Opportunities
The professions of both education and coaching will be permanently changed by this global event (Lancefield, Cable, & Clarke, 2019; Kandri, 2020; Prince, 2020, University World News, 2020). Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, there was a reluctance from both coaches and coachees in the MBA coaching programme, in South Africa, to do anything other than face-to-face coaching. The reluctance seemed to stem from a belief that the rapport, trust in the coach and the coaching relationship and the psychological safety required for such a personal and intimate conversation, could not be created effectively using a computer screen and Wi-Fi connection. The pandemic has clearly demonstrated that this is a limiting belief and that online coaching sessions can be as effective as face-to-face coaching sessions (Berry, Ashby, Gnilka, Matheny, 2011; Kraus, 2017). Similarly, another limiting belief is that we and our coaching clients need to be living in the same town or even country as us.
The final stage of grief or loss has been described as finding meaning in the loss (DABDA-M) (Kessler, 2019). I have found meaning in the crisis of this pandemic; viewing it as an opportunity to a re-evaluate my life from a different perspective. It has propelled me to take actions that expand my options both during the pandemic and after it is over. Crisis theory, Slaikeu (1990) posits that a crisis creates disequilibrium and an opportunity for equilibrium to be re-established at higher level of functioning than before the crisis.
Finding the Opportunity in the Crisis
Since the global pandemic has resulted in crisis and loss for all of us, are you able to find the opportunities and meaning in it for your own life? Are you willing to critically review your beliefs about online coaching to take advantage of the opportunities that online coaching presents? What freeing assumptions can you substitute for the limiting assumptions that you may have? Are there any skills that you need to develop to be able to take advantage of this opportunity?
References
Berry, R., Ashby, J., Gnilka, P., Matheny, K. (2011) A comparison of face-to-face and distance coaching practices: Coaches’ perceptions of the role of the working alliance in problem resolution, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232543820_A_comparison_of_face-to-face_and_distance_coaching_practices_Coaches’_perceptions_of_the_role_of_the_working_alliance_in_problem_resolution, accessed online, 19 October 2020
Elias, J.K., Sudhir, P. & Mehrotra, S (2016) Long-Term Engagement in Formal Volunteering and Well-Being: An Exploratory Indian Study, Behav Sci (Basel). 2016 Dec; 6(4): 20, Published online 2016 Sep 27. doi: 10.3390/bs6040020, PMCID: PMC5197933, PMID: 27690114, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5197933/
Frankle, V. (1959) Man’s Search For Meaning
Kandri, S. (2020) How Covid-19 is sparking a revolution in higher education.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/how-covid-19-is-sparking-a-revolution-in-higher-education/
Kessler, D. (2019) Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, Random House
Kraus, M.W. (2017) American Psychological Association, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 7, 644 – 654 Voice-Only Communication Enhances Empathic Accuracy, doi: 10.1037/amp0000147; https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000147.pdf
Kübler-Ross, E & Kessler, D (2014) On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief, Through the Five Stages of Loss
Lancefield, D., Cable, D. and Clarke, D (2019) How technology is transforming coaching https://hbr.org/2019/11/how-technology-is-transforming-executive-coaching, accessed 15 October 2020
Norman, C. (2018) The virtues of virtual coaching, https://coachfederation.org/blog/virtues-virtual-coaching, accessed online, 19 October 2020.
Prince, V. (2020) Executive Coaching in a COVID world: 5 predictions, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/executive-coaching-covid-world-victor-prince/?trk=portfolio_article-card_title
Slaikeu, K. A. (1990). Crisis intervention: A handbook for practice and research (2nd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
University of Zurich (2013) Psychotherapy via internet as good as if not better than face-to-face consultations, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130730091255.htm
University World News (2020), https://www.universityworldnews.com/page.php?page=UW_Main
By Jessica Reekie
Jessica holds a master’s in psychology from Wits University, in Johannesburg, South Africa, an MBA and a post master’s Certificate in Leadership Coaching (CPLC) from Wits Business School (WBS). She is the Programme Director for the certificate programme in Leadership Coaching which trains MBA alumni to coach MBA students. She manages the MBA Leadership Development Coaching Programme at WBS.
Jessica is a leadership development practitioner in private practice and has been helping others to reach their potential for over twenty years. She worked in various roles in banking for fifteen years before opening her own practice in the field of personal development.
