I write this in the aftermath (afterparty) of the fifth Cross Government Coaching week, in which I’m finding myself reflecting on how lucky I’ve been to have been blessed with such great colleagues and collaborators over the years, and how important it is when you’re embarking on any endeavour, particularly if it’s something that you want to nurture, grow, establish and sustain.

The cross government coaching week was born in the covid years, and grew out of the work that Peter Evans, Nicola Williams, James Frowen* and I did in building regular cross collaboration between the Companies House and IPO coaching networks. We’d spend much of the mid-teenies inviting each other’s coaches to training events and sharing our tactics, resources and ideas to help each other establish and support fab internal coaching provision in each organisation, which culminated in us winning an award for Most Innovative Coaching from the coaching association. Heady days. It’s always nice when you meet people that you really resonate with, and who you trust to be pulling in the same direction as, and who, at core you enjoy spending time with and that was certainly the case with this gang.

Into this mix (now remotely) contact was made with Hermionie Blake at DEFRA, another department with a well-established internal coaching offering (and with many highly skilled and experienced coaches who were keen to help). So in 2021 we got our heads together and concocted a plan to offer a series of 10 coaching CPD sessions, one each morning and afternoon across the course of a week, drawn from the talent and enthusiasm in our pools. To be honest, I can’t remember a huge amount about those first couple of years – the sessions were well-received by a small, but keen, and engaged bunch and the discussions that were prompted were just wonderful. I can’t remember if it was the first or second year, but in one edition I was slated to deliver a couple of sessions and ended up stepping in to cover for a third. (Coaching week survived that, thank goodness). As a coach you can sometimes feel quite isolated in the work (with much of it being one-to-one with the coachee). So finding and connecting with like-minded souls has proved to be such a nourishing and motivating experience that things started to gain momentum.

Year 3 proved to be the watershed moment with the event really. We’d always been active in the cross-government coaching communities and there was a bit of interest in other departments joining in with the event. It’s never been the easiest thing to arrange, as much of the ease of Teams meetings that we experience internally in our departments gets more tricky when you spin it out across different departments and organisations. Slide sharing, access to video recordings and even getting the word out reliably in advance of the week get much harder as things scale up. At heart, then, as now, having it set up as a grassroots event, in which everyone (including Hermionie and myself and the presenters) all give freely of their time and are juggling this alongside the day job, does give you some wiggleroom and goodwill. But doing something at scale and with zero budget provides some challenges too.

So it was with year 3 that once we’d set up a strong raft of presenters (thus avoiding poor attendees being subjected to another round of treble-Mark), Hermionie pushed me out of my comfort zone and suggested that we push it out as widely as we could, through our contacts in the Government Coaching Leads network.

We drafted a schedule, provided links to the sessions, put out the comms, answered a couple of enquiries and then sat back and wondered what sort of take-up we’d get.

The answer to that blew us away. Instead of the dozen to two-dozen people we’d been used to getting, suddenly we had a hundred or more on the call. By the end of the week we’d hit 1000 attendances in total and there were expectations and suggestions that we’d not factored in before.

Through Knowledge Hub (formed and established through the stalwart efforts of Khalid Joomaye and Jess Loudon) we finally had a route through which we could reliably disseminate slide packs, resources and videos of the sessions. The videos proved a particular challenge as the file sizes proved unwieldy and some of them stretched for hours as people (dazed by the brilliance of what they’d heard) stayed logged into the session for the whole day. Thankfully the talented guys in the Intellectual Property Office’s Creative and Print team were able to find some spare time to help us get them edited down and compressed to a size that would allow us to upload them (and people the other end to download them, in the main).

Year 4 went even bigger, Hermionie and her colleagues set up a series of spot-coaching sessions to run alongside the week and audience numbers ballooned to over 2000, from across 40 public sector bodies.

This year was even bigger, with our opening session alone hitting almost 500 people, and the number of organisations dialling in increasing by a quarter, the spot coaching having even more coaches and coachees and the introduction of a couple of small (but perfectly formed) lunchtime drop in sessions for the attendees to get chance to chat to each other and talk all things coaching in an informal forum. There’s been IT snags, scheduling juggling and numerous other little issues to balance, but being able to kick back on a Friday evening, and breathe a sigh of relief that we’ve been able to make a space for all those great public sector coaches to come together and further build this great, supportive and talented community makes it all worthwhile. Hermionie and I were talking about it once it had all wrapped up.  The audiences and attendees this year were particularly superb, showing real appreciation for the time and effort that the presenters had taken, asking insightful questions (which showed they’d been listening) and all playing their real part in making the whole thing the success it was.

So back to the main point about surrounding yourself with good people, none of this would be possible without the boundless enthusiasm of my co-conspirator in all of this, Hermionie Blake (it’s always a joy working with you). (also shoutout to Mel Crunkhorn for not just delivering a wonderful session on Coaching people through Stress, but also pulled together my rough and ready brochure into a whizzy looking, and much more accessible flyer). Likewise, the support and backing that I gain from all the senior coaches in our IPO network. It’s the community that turns these colleagues into friends and which encourages an environment in which people want to spend time in each other’s company. 

I’ve found this to be true in all walks of life. Getting people together with a common theme, or purpose is one thing, but having them coalesce into a friendly community is the key to making it all sustainable. My proudest moment of running a local badminton club was when one of our members (Lliwen will have her 10 year anniversary at the club this autumn) found us by Googling for “Friendly badminton club, Cardiff”. Of course, none of that would have mattered if there hadn’t been genuinely friendly faces there, like our Social secretary Lloyd Bingham, or fellow long standing member Rich Sibbick there to hold good on that promise.

It’s been true of our coaching network at the IPO too, with the senior coaches all building that great sense of belonging (and approachability) the aforementioned droll Peter Evans, bubbly Helen Treharne, indomitable Debbie Cooke, strategic Lilian Stone, stalwart Donna Box, upbeat Nick Curry and dry-humoured Hazel Craven all playing their part in making it a welcoming team. As I started that my heart sank a little too, as I knew that I’ll have inevitably have missed out some crucial names there – please forgive me, it’s been over 10 years and my memory is not what it once was.

So yep, when you’re embarking on any enterprise, in addition to making sure that you have all the basics in place, ensure you also gather good people around you, as they’re the reason that everyone will come back.

*(That’s also the James F with whom I’ve just started up a coaching company – Aspiration Experts Ltd)