Submitted by Cristina Muehl, PCC

The desire to make a positive impact on the social environment motivated coaches Cristina Mühl, of ICF Germany, and Vlad Dutescu, of EMCC Romania, to offer pro bono coaching to the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) UK Chapter. The pair focused on increasing awareness around the positive impact of coaching.

The pro bono hours they offered to HBA include team coaching sessions for the Board, and individual sessions focused on the leadership team of the organization. The ongoing initiative for HBA aims to identify areas for improvement and increase the effectiveness of the leadership team whose work is volunteering.

There are three phases of the project. The first one was discovery, and it was based on understanding the context, identifying challenges, and finding the best way to increase the leadership team effectiveness. Interviews and surveys were used to measure clarity of the mission and role; the effectiveness of the Board; transparency, accountability, appreciation and fulfillment; personal satisfaction, and advocacy. There were check-ins and observing several board meetings as well. At the end of the phase, they set monthly sessions with the team and bi-monthly individual sessions with the team leader. They were able to provide a comprehensive view of strengths, challenges, and best hopes for 2021 with a focus on people, processes, and results to work on.

The second phase is delivery, implemented April-December 2021. Three sessions for the team are already completed — vision, strategy, and getting more fun (serious play), as well as 16 individual sessions for the team leader. As a result, there is a clear framework for the whole team. The second part of delivery includes being a support the team on implementing and getting more involvement.

The third part is planned for the first three months of 2022, the sustainability phase. This final part has the aim to support the team taking over the team coaching and deploying further with their one team of volunteers, including a survey to measure the whole impact of the team coaching initiative.       

Project kick-off was in December 2020.

Impact:

• People: At this level, HBA discovered there are two main things they had to work on as a team – clarity on their own roles and the need for some of the team members to get some skills as first-time managers of people.
• Process: On the process front, they improved by grouping all events opening under one person, which meant a lot of efficiencies. The decision to regroup as a broader team helped a lot to rebuild relationships.
• Results: The team discovered that the process in place to measure progress and success was lengthy and hard to put into action. They decided to simplify as much as possible. Now that they managed to do that successfully, they have clarity on how the organization is progressing monthly.