Business Recovery

Finding Opportunity in the Face of Adversity

Leaping into Action

The challenges that the pandemic has brought into each and every one of our lives has been unprecedented. They’re difficulties that pay no mind to geography, class, gender or creed, I’d argue the impacts of the pandemic have been felt by every person on the planet in some form or another.

I can’t speak for others; I can only understand that they too are enduring challenges that none of us foresaw before 2020 began. I can speak for myself and the organisation that I lead - Animas Centre for Coaching. In the article that follows I’d like to share some of my learnings, reflections and takeaways from this current climate of challenge, as a coaching school that has shifted as well as evolved.

I’d like to start by iterating that within both our team and community, we have felt the devastating impact of Covid-19 and the grief, loss and chaos that it has brought with it. No organisation has been immune from this, and we’re no different.

Where perhaps our story is a little different however, is how we have managed to traverse some of the challenges of the pandemic, shifting our whole approach to what we do in order to keep our team and students safe, whilst allowing our students’ learning to continue.

In what now seems like a lifetime ago, back in March we made the quick decision to shift our training entirely into the online space. This was first and foremost to keep our students and team as safe as possible, but this quick decision also meant that we could prevent a learning lockdown for those that were enrolled with us. We had no idea quite how well it was going to work, but we just knew that we had to do something.

To help students and trainers to acclimatise as quickly as possible we provided how-to videos for zoom, set up group discussions to allow people to play with the platform and share how we would use it.

This all really helped myself, my team and those that were training with us to realise just how transferrable our training was for a virtual learning environment.

For those students that were caught in the paradigm of in-person study, it allowed them to see how online worked, and gave them the confidence to try coaching beyond their immediate environment. Through accepting this shift, it also enabled them to open the door to that global space. People’s practice clients became more global, but also, we saw a big influx of more global students joining us.

Community is something that we take great pride in at Animas, having nurtured a vibrant community of more than 3000 coaches. And so, for more people from different countries, cities, backgrounds and cultures to be joining our already diverse community was an amazing positive in a time which felt dominated by uncertainty and negativity.

As I’ve shared previously, we have felt the devastating impact of Covid-19. I’ve seen members of my team experience varying degrees of loss, loss which ripples through a tight-knit team as Animas is. But among the chaos we managed to find opportunities to grow, develop and try new things together.

The pandemic allowed us to do something we had thought and talked about for ages, in fact it forced us to just go for it. While there were some that did step away from the training, as they realised virtual learning wasn’t for them, on the whole, this shift opened up a new space where we could connect with people that wanted to do our training but couldn’t before because of geographical limitations. All of a sudden, people who were on the outskirts of the country, or in another country altogether were able to train with us.

People were more time rich than ever before and were using this time to develop themselves and take the next step towards what they wanted to do. In the face of adversity we’d managed to develop our offering and grow and help others to grow too. And it wasn’t just us as a training organisation. Our community of changemakers were finding new opportunities to grow too.

We saw an instant response from our community to what was happening globally. Several social impact initiatives found their feet, organised completely by our alumni. One of the first very quickly gathered more than 100 Animas coaches to offer pro bono work to those in need.

We noticed this desire for our community to help their communities, and it made me extremely proud to see this. We supported these initiatives in any way that we could, including providing free consultation and supervision to the organisers.

We have always been involved in social impact projects at Animas, but with no real dedication to it as its own mission, but having seen the call for social impact we knew we had to change this, and we hired a full-time Head of Social Impact so that we can better support our community in offering the power of coaching to communities that otherwise might not be able to access it. A role which is already shaping up to do some incredible things in 2021.

“helping others to live with greater purpose, meaning and fulfilment.”

In thinking about our own community and how we could assist them in not just growing as coaches, but feeling connected to one another and the wider profession in a time of distance and disconnect, we hired a full time Community & Events Manager to organise learning opportunities as well as virtual social events to ensure a feeling of connection and belonging.

We have been on quite the journey, a journey we’re still traversing but my key takeaways to this point are:

1. There are opportunities in every challenge
2. An organisation is only as good as its team and community
3. As Kobi Yamada said “Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down.”

The challenges and shifts will continue. We’re now noticing Zoom fatigue which has led us to think about how we create a more interactive learning environment so people can still be engaged in their learning.

As we continue to shift and grow, one thing is certain:

I feel confident that as an organisation with a committed, resilient and ambitious team and a receptive community open to change, we’re in a great position to tackle anything that is thrown at us and continue to help people realise their dream of becoming coaches, helping others to live with greater purpose, meaning and fulfilment.

Robert Stephenson