Change is often hard and complicated, and people have varying degrees of success in making and sustaining substantial changes over time. While some individuals succeed, many find change challenging.
The difference between implementing and maintaining change and failing to do so lies in understanding the factors that facilitate or hinder change in our personal or professional lives.
Ronald Heifetz has identified two types of challenges in implementing changes: “technical” and “adaptive” challenges.[1] Technical challenges involve acquiring specific skills necessary to perform a particular behavior, often with little mental resistance. However, the difficulty of learning these skills can affect persistence in staying on task. For example, international development projects address technical challenges globally by providing teacher training, school leadership workshops, and parental and community groups. Despite this, many projects do not follow up to ensure participants have mastered and applied the knowledge successfully, often measuring success by delivering training rather than the outcomes.
On the other hand, adaptive challenges involve incorporating technical skills into one’s mindset. Leaders commonly make the mistake of addressing adaptive challenges with technical solutions, focusing on stakeholders’ lack of skills rather than their resistance to change. According to Kegan and Lahey (2009),[2] resistance to change is a self-protective mechanism that ensures our sense of safety and well-being. Without awareness of this mechanism, change cannot occur. The absence of a systematic strategy to tackle humans’ “immunity to change” has resulted in billions of dollars spent on aid projects with little evidence of success or self-reliance among aid recipients. Lazell and Petríková (2021) analyzed 144 aid projects carried out by DFID in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Sudan from 2000 to 2018. Using the OECD evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability, they found that about 50% of these projects achieved their intended impact on the target populations.[3] This indicates an improvement from earlier studies,[4] but still highlights significant challenges in the sector.
In response to the growing concern with the international aid model, the concept of self-reliance has become more prevalent among donor agencies. For instance, USAID’s Effective Partnering and Procurement Reform promotes “more collaborative, adaptive, and diversified approaches” to foster local leadership, creativity, innovation, and resource mobilization[5]. Achieving these goals requires innovative and scientifically proven strategies to support human development, vision, and accountability. Fields such as human development and neuroscience have effectively improved institutions and organizations.
The Pillars of Coaching
One strategy to address the problems mentioned above is coaching. Coaching can promote self-reliance by encouraging self-sufficiency creatively with clients to devise and execute precise and impactful transformations in their personal and professional lives. The following pillars of coaching—solution-focused, systemic, client-centered, and action-oriented[6]—can be particularly useful to address the effectiveness of international development projects.
Solution-Focused: Coaching directs clients toward achieving desired results by focusing on future outcomes rather than past experiences or current dissatisfaction. This helps to defeat the failure mindset from previous projects, encouraging stakeholders to define success criteria, align their roles with project goals, and foster a positive outlook.
Systemic: Coaching emphasizes the client’s holistic nature, helping them see how positive change fits into the bigger picture. It assists clients in identifying and developing fundamental values and intrinsic motivators, challenging them beyond self-imposed obstacles.
Client-Centered: Coaching values the client’s inner resources and skills, promoting active listening to understand how local and foreign stakeholders’ knowledge can improve project outcomes. This self-development leads to applying new skills during and after the project.
Action-Oriented: Coaching promotes change through meaningful shifts in attitudes and behavior. Clients develop steps to achieve project goals with their coach’s assistance and receive support to succeed.
The coaching approach is grounded in effective organizational leadership skills and encourages inquiry through powerful questions to improve communication. It assumes that clients are not broken and have the resources to change, enabling them to make important decisions for lasting change. This creates a learning culture that generates creative solutions and self-reliance.
The Coaching Session
My mentor, Dr. Haiyan Hua, emphasized the importance of starting any international development project by inviting stakeholders for tea. This symbolizes respect for their experiences and knowledge and signals open communication. Expanding this concept to coaching involves structured, meaningful conversations that start a transformation journey.
The first “cup of tea” in a new project involves introducing ourselves, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and understanding stakeholders’ backgrounds and aspirations. This initial coaching conversation is crucial for setting the foundation for achieving specific goals. Coaches focus on the individuals, bringing out their critical thinking skills and developing steps for problem resolution without a specific agenda but mindful of the project context and objectives.
In the initial session, coaches present coaching as a partnership distinct from mentoring, consulting, or therapy. They assist clients in arriving at solutions suitable to their circumstances and support them through the process. Coaches use this session to gain insights into the clients’ context, roles, values, and priorities, aligning project goals with their personal and professional goals.
Clients then determine the most pressing issues, breaking down ambitious goals into smaller, tangible steps. A contract between the client and coach outlines the work to be done until the next session, anticipating obstacles and ensuring accountability. The coach may become the client’s accountability partner, maintaining communication to support motivation.
The first coaching session concludes with the client’s assessment, prompting reflection and providing the coach with insights for future sessions. While not exhaustive, these steps provide a methodology for promoting change, considering participants’ individuality while keeping broader project goals in mind.
How Does Coaching Fit Within Capacity Strengthening?
Coaching is a potent catalyst for change within capacity-strengthening processes due to its consultative, participatory, and inclusive nature, which respects cultural contexts and encourages adaptation. By entrusting decision-making and strategizing to clients, coaching enhances ownership and accountability. Moreover, coaching fosters experiential learning: clients set specific goals, devise strategies, test them, and refine their approach until they achieve program-driven objectives.
Individual coaching can complement facilitated group processes, individual interviews, or focus group discussions to accommodate implementation contexts and group dynamics.[7] These approaches, aligned with coaching, adopt an appreciative stance that prioritizes lessons learned, adaptation, incremental change, and, ultimately, solutions to challenges rather than dwelling on problems and failures.
Emotionally, coaching addresses the complexities of change. It acknowledges that change often involves letting go of the familiar, feelings of loss, fear of failure, or resistance to adaptation. Coaching supports individuals in navigating these emotional landscapes, helping them confront frustrations, challenges, and internal conflicts that may arise. It guides clients to recognize conflicting feelings—such as attachment to the status quo alongside the desire for change—and encourages them to embrace the opportunities and growth that change can bring. By doing so, coaching facilitates effective international development initiatives through enhanced emotional resilience and a forward-looking perspective.
[1] Heifetz, R. (1998). Leadership without easy answers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. In R. Kegan and L.L. Lahey (2009), Immunity to change (p. ). Harvard Business Press.
[2] Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2009). Immunity to change. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
[3] Lazell, M. and Petríková, I. (2021). “Securitized” UK aid projects in Africa: evidence from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Sudan. Development Policy Review, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12551
[5] https://www.usaid.gov/eppr
[6] https://erickson.edu/what-is-coaching
[7] Squire, C. (2021). Partner capacity strengthening: A toolkit for small NGOs. INTRAC. Retrieved from https://intrac-1.gitbook.io/partner-capacity-strengthening
