Skills for Justice, as a sector expert in skills and learning and development, helped embed coaching skills in leaders to support new entrants and career progression.
What We Do - Case Study
Coaching programme for the National Crime Agency
Introduction
National Crime Agency (NCA) have a commitment to their employee experience by providing continuous professional development. To help make sure their staff were receiving opportunities to develop, they identified a need to help leaders and managers across the organisation to have an understanding of and proficiency in coaching skills.
Participants reported that they wanted to update their understanding of coaching techniques and methods, understand the difference between coaching and training, enhance their existing skills, learn best practice, and seek practical strategies for applying coaching.
The skills that NCA want to embed in the workforce will help build organisational resilience through helping leaders and managers train and upskill employees as they enter into the organisation, as well as future leaders and managers as they progress through their career in the NCA.
Activity and approach
Skills for Justice were commissioned to help deliver part of the CPD programme, with the aim of introducing the concept of coaching to participants and provide an overview of the key skills, behaviours and actions required to become an effective coach.
The learning objectives were:
- Describe the purpose of effective coaching within an organisational context
- Explain the role and responsibilities of an effective coach
- Identify the skills, knowledge and behaviours required of an effective coach
- Identify how to overcome potential barriers to coaching
- Explain how to facilitate a coaching session by following the coaching arc.
We worked with delivery partners and our sister organisation, People 1st International, to deliver training over four half-day virtual sessions.
Outcomes
A cohort of 36 learners were trained in an Introduction to Coaching course. The course covered key definitions of coaching, the purpose of coaching in the workplace, coaching models, ethical standards, coaching agreements, responsibilities of both coach and coachee, and core coaching skills.
All participants rated the course positively, with over 50% giving a rating of excellent. They reported that they valued:
- The opportunity to observe different coaching styles and techniques
- The chance for discussion and collaboration with peers
- Effective roleplay exercises for practical application skills
- Clear explanations of coaching elements
- A focus on reflection and understanding, ensuring that skills are sustainably embedded in their thinking.
Participants were given access to one-on-one time with the trainer after the sessions, as well as a full coaching eBook to help them reference and apply the training into their working lives.