Coaching for Social Impact

Social impact. Social change. Two phrases that – especially this year – have become household terminology. We can see their importance in local, national and global news headlines, but what exactly does it have to do with coaching?  

From our perspective – everything. 

Having an impact socially can start as simply as making a difference in one person’s life – then watching the ripple effects take shape as the person you impacted reaches out to help another. ICF-credentialed coaches take this to heart as they lead their clients and organizations through the coaching process. 

Sometimes, it can feel “easier” to impact one person than it does to impact an entire organization. But what happens when you start with one person within an organization – a manager, a leader, an executive? By coaching those individuals, the organization can be equipped to apply the coaching principles to its own values and mission.

To this end, the ICF Foundation is delving deep into creating its Strategic Impact Framework and designing programs to encourage coaching for social change. 

Lisa Nitze, a member of the Board of Directors for the ICF Foundation, is one of the lead stakeholders for these initiatives. With her background in social impact measurement, Lisa is leading the charge to prove that coaching should be a budgetary line-item in any major social impact global initiative.  

The hypothesis of the Foundation’s framework and subsequent programs: When coaching is applied to an organization striving for positive social change, that organization’s impact will increase.  

To prove this, the Foundation’s board is preparing to launch a series of pilot programs in which they will partner with three to five social system change organizations around the world to offer coaching to their leadership teams.  

“It’s a very important initiative,” Lisa said. “Because anyone who’s had coaching like I have or has engaged with coaches in one way or another knows how much of an impact [coaches] can have on the people being coached, and how those people then are able to act in the organizations that they are leading.” 

Social Change Organizations are any organization – typically, though not necessarily nonprofits – that are dedicated to bringing about sustainable positive social change. These could include organizations dedicated addressing social issues like education, cross-cultural tolerance, potable water, women’s empowerment, job training and education, food security, etc.  

But at this point, Lisa said, there is not a wealth of proof or data to confirm that coaching can drastically improve a social system change organization’s impact for positive change. These pilot programs intend to do just that – define a baseline measurement of each organization’s social impact and track progress toward increasing that impact once coaching is applied. 

“This is a time when the world really needs coaching because the world really needs its social system change organizations to be as impactful as they possibly can,” Lisa said. 

But outside of this framework and specific pilot project, another social impact opportunity exists for the individual coach – the Foundation’s Ignite Initiative. 

With the goal of “engaging coaching for humanity and the planet,” Ignite seeks to harness the collective power of global ICF chapters, members and credential-holders to accelerate the positive impact of coaching, mainly through pro bono coaching projects. 

Lisa said this initiative has begun to flourish in the last year. Ignite encourages all ICF-credentialed coaches to coach their clients to consider how they can include positive social change in the work they do – encouraging them to see themselves as change-makers. 

“The Ignite Initiative is extremely exciting,” Lisa said. “It’s essentially harnessing a massive global network of change agents to help advance and accelerate positive change in the world.”