When Nick first came to coaching, its focus was clear: the individual client.
Coaching was still in its infancy then and, in many ways, it was setting itself up as a counterpart to traditional people-helping professions. Its focus on goals, actions and accountability made it a refreshing antidote to the more introspective practices.
But all practices evolve and coaching is no exception. Over the last 20 years, it has matured into a profession that has drawn influences from far and wide and attracted practitioners from every walk of life.
This diversity and richness have brought with it new ways of seeing. The individual client is no longer the sole focus of coaching and, increasingly, the systemic lens has begun to find a welcome place in coaching as coaches gear their work to have the widest possible ripple-effect.
Along with this systemic approach has come a different, yet complementary energy – that of coaching as a means to larger-scale change.
Alongside traditional practices, coaches are increasingly finding ways to collaborate and bring project-based coaching to hard-to-reach groups and organisations that normally can’t access costly coaching programmes.
Nick will suggest that we are only just at the start of a groundswell of change within the coaching community as the membership of the coaching profession changes, diversifying from traditional corporate recruitment pool to a more fully inclusive movement of people who share core beliefs of empowerment, compassion, courage and the belief in personal agency and collective action.
As the founder of Animas, and the host of this summit, he brings together a vibrant group of coaches today to share their work, explore the challenges they’ve encountered, and ultimately to encourage an ever greater movement to scale coaching to new communities.
