Hi there!
A whole 10 years ago, I launched THC on the founding belief that companies could do far more to support women through maternity leave, and that this would lead to improvements in gender diversity at the top of organisations, which would improve organisational performance as well as the wellbeing of women in the workplace.
Happily, we've seen a lot of systemic change in that time and we've evolved a lot too. Here's how:
- THC have grown into a diverse team of 20+ experts who support organisations with diversity, equity and inclusion in the broadest sense of the words. We worked in 50 different organisations last year, using 20 certified coaches.
- There have been huge improvements within many companies; both in terms of how they manage the maternity transition and in the prominence given to DEI issues. Coaching has become an intervention offered to the many, rather than the few, and is seen as a performance enhancing solution rather than a problem solving one.
- On a societal level, we have seen a change in the law, allowing Dads and same sex partners to take extended periods of leave. There are also more non-traditional families emerging, including more cohabiting couple families, more single parent families and more same sex couple families.
- We have seen an explosion of coaching platforms offering low cost, scalable coaching. We believe the power of coaching is down to the strength of the relationship between the coachee and the coach. We pride ourselves on offering a tailored and high quality service, that is based on human connection and industry experience.
The workplace is currently at an inflection point. The pandemic has provided us with a once in a lifetime opportunity to reset our work cultures and design how we form relationships with one another in our professional lives. At the same time, people are more burnt out than ever and many need to establish more constructive relationships with their careers, as well as with each other.
So, 10 years after our launch, we have taken this opportunity to overhaul our coaching product. This improved proposition includes Executive Coaching with intentional focus on DEI and systemic change, Parental Transition Coaching which now speaks to all types of parents and families and, a new proposition, coaching to support through other life events, such as Menopause.
Executive Coaching
Naturally, our Executive Coaching, in fact all of our coaching, is built on a belief that has Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at its core – we believe that everyone, no matter what their background, experience or position in the organization is, has more potential than they realise, and that everyone has a role to play in improving the performance of the organisation as a result.
We recognise that some people, particularly minority groups, have more barriers in the way of success than others. All of our coaching creates awareness of such systemic issues (not solely those who bear the brunt of them) so that we can enable systemic change as well as individual performance improvement via coaching. This means that we raise awareness of these systemic barriers (e.g. race, gender, neurodiversity) with those that are advantaged by the system as well as those that are disadvantaged.
To do that, we use the THC leadership model to explore three different lenses within the coaching:
Understanding me: What lights me up and what trips me up?
Understanding you: How can I improve how I am in a relationship with others?
Understanding us: How does the system impact on my effectiveness, and how can my awareness of that improve my effectiveness? If I benefit from that system, how can I effectively use that privilege for good?
You can find out more about our coaching proposition by contacting the team here.
With the belief that everyone has more potential than they realise in mind, we provide coaching around some specific life changes that lots of people go through during their career;
Parental Transition Coaching
We believe PTC holds relevance and impact for anyone going through the parental transition, both mothers, fathers and non birthing parents. We have worked hard to diversify our coaching community and are now well equipped to be able to support all family types. Coaching is proven to aid retention rates, enable parental leavers to hit the ground running on return and helps them with processing common emotions such as guilt or imposter syndrome. The returners we have worked with are clear on their reasons for returning, have awareness of what they have learnt and how they have changed as their family has grown and are focused on their long term career success.
For a full outline of our PTC offering please contact us here.
Life Event Coaching
We also believe that anyone dealing with other significant life events benefit from a helping hand, and we provide coaching for people around the menopause transition, fertility issues, miscarriage and bereavement. These are all significant transitions during which a specialist coach can support with emotional processing, reasonable adjustments and exploring the impact of the transition on lives and careers. Line manager support is also critical and, to that end, we have produced an e-learning suite aimed squarely at supporting the line manager when these events arise in their teams.
As you can see, we have come a long way and there is a lot to take in here, and so we would love the opportunity to come and talk to you more about how we could help you and your team.
Please contact tanya@thehobbsconsultancy.com to set up the opportunity to discuss further with our Head of Coaching.
Thank you!
Rox x