Alzheimer's Society coaching skills programme - embedding great conversations across the organisation

Alzheimer’s Society is the UK's Leading Dementia Charity, with a vision of a world where dementia no longer devastates lives. The organisation gives hope to those living with dementia today, and provides hope for the future through dementia support services, funding dementia research and campaign action.

WRKWLL is currently working with Alzheimer’s Society to design and deliver a coaching skills programme for colleagues working at manager level. Sophie Binder, Organisational Development and Learning Specialist at Alzheimer’s Society explains that following cross-organisational co-creation of a set of leadership success profiles, it was clear that “a catalyst for several development areas was the ability to have great coaching conversations across the organisation.”

The WRKWLL and Alzheimer’s Society teams have worked collaboratively to design a programme that applies coaching expertise to the specific organisational context in which participants work. 

“WRKWLL brought their subject expertise to the discussion about what the course needed to look like and include and we then fed in from an organisational perspective of language, strategy and tools we’re already using to make sure it was collaborative…We really wanted to make it clear to the people attending that this wasn’t just an external course, but something that’s believed in internally as well.” 

In order to achieve this members of the OD team attended the programme sessions alongside WRKWLL facilitators. In addition, the programme was structured around the application of coaching techniques to three central threads of conversations about people and performance at Alzheimer’s Society: 

• Boosting wellbeing
• Career development
• Performance

This approach was designed to move coaching skills from the abstract to being readily applicable to participants’ conversations with their direct reports. In order to support this process, the Alzheimer’s Society team scripted banks of coaching questions in relation to each of these three areas for participants to take away and apply.  

The teams worked together to decide on the coaching approaches and tools to share and then create a safe and supportive environment for managers to practice in and build confidence. Sophie emphasises the benefits of the WRKWLL and Alzheimer’s Society teams’ close collaboration in using participant feedback to iteratively tailor the design and delivery of content and structure over the course of the programme. 

“You can see in the feedback that people are aware that we’ve really listened and have actually provided the training that they wanted - that it’s been personalised and tailored.”

The cohort was divided into small groups in order to develop relationships between peers over the course of the six-month programme. The opening session introduced participants to a range of coaching skills and strategies. The group then worked in buddied pairs to practice these and feedback to one another before their second session. The final session brought cohorts back together in order to troubleshoot issues they had encountered as well as share some a variety of additional coaching tools.

Feedback about the programme from participants has been extremely positive, with everyone who completed the course reporting an increase in their confidence to use coaching skills at work. Participants highlighted a range of factors that made the course so impactful: 

• Practicing coaching conversations in a safe and supportive environment.
• Learning and applying the coaching model, particularly in performance and 1:1 conversations.
• Engaging discussions and facilitator insights.
• Tailored content that resonated with the Society’s culture and challenges.

“I was very nervous about starting this course but came away feeling energised and excited about learning more and practising coaching skills. Thank you for creating a safe space and providing an excellent session.”

“I just loved this, so useful, so important and so well done.”

“Such a great facilitator and the session was really helpful. Great to have a mix of directorates too to give perspective in what is going on within the broader AS.”

In line with the Alzheimer’s Society’s commitment to embedding coaching skills across the organisation, the programme is continuing with a series of drop-in sessions with WRKWLL coaches for programme participants to attend over the coming months. There are also plans for a second phase of the programme to start in the autumn, building on the design of the first phase and iterated to meet the bespoke needs of the next cohort of participants. 

Reflecting on advice to other organisations considering establishing a coaching skills programme, Sophie emphasises the importance of tailoring the coaching content to the organisation’s context and the personal requirements of participants. She suggests allowing sufficient lead-in time and working collaboratively with WRKWLL to achieve this: 

“What I’d say to other organisations is whatever your threads are, WRKWLL have been brilliant at weaving that through and translating it into something that makes sense through the lens of coaching skills.”

“The feedback about all the WRKWLL team in terms of their facilitation has been brilliant and it’s got a really positive reputation around the organisation.”