The level of awareness and clamour for change around the need for greater diversity and inclusion in the coaching profession has, we sense, accelerated in the last 18 months. We are gradually seeing more courageous conversations taking place to listen, to learn and to understand the issues. Also, to see, hear and believe the lived experiences of our colleagues. Our own Listening Circles have made an important contribution to help us to understand the perceived and real differences between us.

Increasingly our professional colleagues have a felt sense that the time is now for us to raise the bar on our standards of behaviour and move beyond words to acting. A good example of this awareness was September’s roundtable on ‘Race in Coaching’ attended by a cross-section of professional bodies including EMCC UK, the resulting Anti-Racist statement is the beginning of a movement for change.

Greater inclusivity is about action rather than words and our national working group is putting together a new campaign for 2022 to encourage a change in our professional standards of behaviour. This EMCC UK campaign has a simple message and a call to action for us all to ‘Stand Together.’ To stand together to work to provide even greater access to coaching, mentoring and supervision. To stand together to create and include a volunteer, leadership, and governance body at EMCC UK that represents our membership in all its’ diversity.

We will be using the hashtag #StandTogether to help create momentum around this topic and we encourage you to get involved in raising awareness, encouraging generative behavioural change, and helping to dismantle the symptoms and disease of social injustice.

How do we do this? The answer is to decide.
To decide to lean into the tensions created by making mistakes and being vulnerable around ‘not knowing.’
To decide that words aren’t enough.
To decide that action means doing more even when there is uncertainty and trepidation in putting a head above the parapet and be shot down by doubters, critics and the comfortable
To consider, ‘who will my actions or decisions intentionally or unconsciously benefit or disadvantage?’

Is it worth it to #StandTogether? Our experiences to date in our current roles would suggest it is.

At its most basic level, if we don't make people feel welcome, then we are, by definition, a part of the problem. It is up to us as a profession to take leadership in this space and to role-model inclusive behaviour.

In this movement, we listen to each other, we support each other, we #StandTogether.

We, at EMCC UK, all agree to #StandTogether.

Signed,

Paul Crick, Rachael Hanley-Browne, Mark Ellery, Hannah Butler, Yolanda Collinson, Jasmine Gill, Ez Williams, Gloria Ribeiro, Linbert Spencer, Angie Bamgbose.

In the first instance, please email [email protected] and we’ll share where we’re up to and what’s going on. We look forward to welcoming you.

Come and join us to #StandTogether

Image credit: ATC Comm Photo