The ICF Foundation’s Partnership with Special Olympics to Support Future-Ready Leaders

Between April 2022 to April 2023, The ICF Foundation partnered with the Special Olympics through a Special Project to bring coaching opportunities as part of the Special Olympics Leadership Academy curriculum. Established in 2014, The Special Olympics Leadership Academy is an award-winning program dedicated to developing inclusive and future-ready leaders of the Special Olympics Movement. With a focus on developing inclusive mindsets, providing skillsets, and practical tools, the Academy aims to build capacity and strengthen leaders’ abilities to achieve inclusion globally.

During this Special Project, individual and group leadership coaching, from ICF certified leadership coaches, was tailored to the participant’s learning goals. Action plan coaching occurred during workshops to assist participants with developing SMART goals to implement their learning. The group coaching sessions consisted of both an Africa and Latin America cohort, for a total of 50 leaders having received 48 group coaching sessions.

Dr. Jaki Wasike-Sihanya, ACC, one of the participating ICF credentialed coaches for the Special Olympics Africa Region, explains, “The project’s objective was to support leaders of the Special Olympics Organization in Africa to tap into their leadership wisdom for improved effectiveness in running their national organizations. These roles are largely voluntary and therefore rely more on personal motivation of both leader and led, than many other leadership roles.”

She also dives deeper into the project, explaining that “A pre-coaching survey revealed the top three coaching needs to be giving feedback, partnership building and goal setting. The role of the coach was therefore to help the participants develop their capacities in these areas. Coaching was done in groups, and I had a group of five leaders from Francophone, Africa. I worked with the ICF Foundation on this project because I support its mission of accelerating and amplifying social system change through coaching.”

Charles Nyambe, President & Managing Director of Special Olympics International, Africa Region and member of the ICF Credentials & Standards Global Board said the ICF Foundation project was a great milestone. Assigning coaches to leaders helped immensely, providing growth to the leadership to be able to manage well. “There was a significant change for staff members. Coaching was more impactful than seminars – it targets one’s nature and character and makes tweaks to make the right decisions for the community they lead.”