Submitted by Annalisa Bardi, ACC, ICF Italia
Coaching provided to individuals

When the pandemic emergency arrived, ICF Italia started brainstorming and asking ourselves what we as an ICF team could do. We defined a few activities to respond to the situation, targeted both internally to our ICF coaches and externally to the larger community of Italian people.

To support the community, we provided everyone interested with pro bono coaching, promoting it through a website, ICF communications channels and by partnering with few magazines and newspapers. We offered our ICF members a peer coaching activity where they could support each other as they planned for how their businesses would operate once the emergency period ended. We also joined forces with coaching, mentoring, training and consulting associations to start a dialogue with the government to be included as a qualified partner in the strategy to relaunch the country.

Our “We Care” initiative included 169 coaches and offered more than 1,900 hours of pro bono coaching — three sessions for each participant — while peer coaching supported 65 ICF members for a total of approximately 360 hours of exchanged coaching. Both initiatives received great feedback from internal and external clients achieving high marks in the follow-up survey we conducted. The community appreciated our coaches and how they helped them through such a challenging event. ICF Members enhanced their self-awareness, focus and ability to give and receive constructive feedback while getting the opportunity to expand their network.