Applied Coaching Research Journal Volume 1 | Page 49
APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018, Vol. 1
It could be you! Let’s take things up a level
Coaching Inside and Out may have been the first
organisation to do this in prisons, but we don’t
want a monopoly, we want change. We support and
encourage others to coach too, as we want everyone
to benefit. Our vision is that all people convicted
of offences, or at risk of offending, are offered life
coaching so they can help themselves and others.
This article is the next step in exploring how we
might all link up with people who are socially
excluded and tap into everyone’s potential to
change their own lives for the better, wherever they
may be. Mind coaching can transform the lives of
those we coach, their families and the communities
we all live in. So how much further might that
transformation be taken by coaches like you?
There’s no need to go to the extreme of coaching
behind bars either – you don’t even need to go into
a different environment, you can do it in the locker
room or at the side of a pitch. If people can do this
in the toughest of circumstances where you might
think they lack both the resources and the will to
change anything, then just how much might be
possible elsewhere? But if you do want to go into
prisons there are many organisations you can link
up with through www.clinks.org
Don’t be put off by the thought of a tough training
regime either. You can pick up useful tips and
questions online or you can read and train to
deepen your mind coaching skills. The coaching
community is a welcoming one, so you can benefit
from connecting and sharing approaches with
executive or life coaches too, whether they’re
working with high fliers in business or with clients
considered by many to be hopeless.
At its simplest level it can actually just be about
picking up the BALL:
We all have something more to contribute and
you can stretch yourself by expanding both your
repertoire of skills and those you help. With
different clientele you’ll also gain different insights
and rewards to reinvest in your work. The benefits
to us all of growing personally and professionally
are immeasurable, let alone the life-changing impact
you can then have on those you coach.
What could we achieve if we all challenge our
assumptions about what p eople can do and what’s
holding us back? We don’t have the answers to all
our problems, but we can all work out far more than
we realise, if we’re asked the right questions and
given time to think. Let’s take things up a level and
run with it.
References
Clare shares clients’ stories and her many mistakes
in the book Coaching Behind Bars: Facing challenges
and creating hope in a women’s prison (Open
University Press, 2015). This had the strange
distinction of reaching the top of Amazon’s
“Punishment” section after an interview on Radio 2
with Clare Balding about the tragedy, comedy and
hope in our prisons. Professor David Clutterbuck
then wrote in the International Journal of Mentoring
and Coaching: “I rarely suggest that a book should
be required reading on coach training courses, but I
have no hesitation in doing so in this case.”
Maslow, A. (1962; 1968) Toward a Psychology of
Being
Contact
Clare McGregor, Founder of Coaching Inside and Out
(CIAO)
@Clare_McGregor
[email protected]
www.coachinginsideandout.org.uk
• Believe other people all have their own answers.
• A sk questions in a way that helps people realise
their own solutions.
• Listen; really listen to what others say.
• L earn about others and yourselves, which is what
this journal is all about.
49