For previous story see here.

Today I visited the corporate headquarters of the company I work for to discuss my new coaching framework.  I had developed a ‘specialist coaching’ framework and a blended learning program that gives subject matter experts to skills to transfer learning on-the-job without the need for any classroom training.

I came up with the concept and the whole package really as a means of being able to deliver on an impossible task that was placed on me.  In a short period of time, I had 20 separate pieces of L&D work that had to be delivered to the business across all states of Australia, no budget and just me – it was never going to happen.

After doing an analysis I realised that there were subject matter experts across the business and who were in the perfect position to be the people who needed to coach people. It wasn’t my role to design and develop facilitator guides – or even push these people into a classroom.  These people were going to be the answer to my problem! I was going to teach them how to coach adults, using learning principles that are tried and tested and together with team leaders set an agenda of on-the-job coaching schedules where everyone learns from each other.

I rolled it out initially within our own business and now the learning program is in full swing but the application is much wider than our own business unit.  It can be used across the organisation!

The centralised Learning and Development department expressed an interest to take it on, and with their budget repackage and roll it out as an enterprise program, an offering as part of the Coaching Curriculum under specialist coaching.

Finally, with a bit of money, my program can be branded, marketed and promoted!

So today, I talked about my journey to get to this point and how I envisioned the program working on an organisational level.  In the past, we have concentrated on generic coaching such as the GROW model  – certainly, they have a place in our curriculum – but we have lost the art of learning, role modelling from SMEs in the workplace who in a majority of cases are under the pump with general day-to-day business and aren’t able to share what they know to others – or if they do, it’s inconsistent and sporadic.

I’m thankful and appreciative that I have been given this opportunity to be creative in my work and create a legacy program that will be in the organisation for a while.  The future of this program looks bright both within this organisation and for possibilities outside.