Building skills to lead
sustainable
social change
How we “do development” has to change in order to realise the fairer and more equitable world we believe is possible.
Those promoting social change need exceptional soft skills to remain resilient, passionate, innovative and effective.
We support leaders and their teams working in the humanitarian and development space. We enhance the skills necessary to transform how they work by providing coaching, training and facilitation services.
Our community is broader than aid. It's broader than donors. It's all about organisations delivering change, producing real solutions to real problems that have real impact. It's about building trust, empowering people and promoting sustainability.
Doing Development Differently, ODI, 2016
What we do
We use a combination of approaches, including:
1:1 coaching
We provide 1:1 coaching, including conducting and providing support on 360 and psychometric profiles.
Team facilitation
We support the practice of teamwork by moderating certain team processes, enabling the team to work and learn together.
Partnership brokering
We support organisations to develop and sustain effective multi-stakeholder partnerships.
Team coaching
We provide coaching to the team as a collective entity, paying attention to the wider system in which the team operates.
Competency training
We support teams and organisations through the provision of specific skills training.
Building a coaching culture
We help build an organisational coaching culture, including setting up peer to peer coaching as a method of co-worker support.
We approach each client and their system as unique, and therefore operate in a bespoke way as standard. Our work aims to support leaders and their teams to develop generative ways of working so they function at more than the sum of their parts.
In general, our process follows a four-phase process:
1. Scoping
Working in close collaboration with the client, we will assess the context and the needs of the individual, team or organisation in order to identify appropriate interventions to improve effectiveness.
2. Inception
The inception phase kicks off the wider engagement with the team or organisation, to feedback findings from the scoping phase and to co-create a process of building and sustaining effectiveness over time.
4. Review and Evaluation
Building awareness is an important step to sustaining change. Reviewing and evaluating the process in order to draw out the core learning is therefore essential.
3. Process
This phase is designed to support new practices and processes to foster and advance team and individual effectiveness.
Who we are
Copperfinch was founded by Sarah-Jane Marriott, Rachel Alvarez-Reyes and Jo Kemp. Between us we have extensive and varied experience of working in international development, as well as in leadership and team development.
We understand the passion and drive to help make the world a better place and the energy one can derive from being part of the bigger picture to make this happen.
We also have personal insight into the frustration and disillusionment that can come from working in a sector that does not always function at its best.
We believe that lasting change comes when the vision and solutions are identified and owned by the 'client'.
Everything we do is about supporting our clients to build and sustain the skills necessary to listen to themselves and others in a way that brings about meaningful and lasting change.
What we think
17.06.21
Podcast: Reimagining Technical Assistance, Jo Kemp and Alexandra Nastase discuss coaching as a means of supporting state capability
https://www.opml.co.uk/blog/reimagining-technical-assistance-over-coffee-episode-3-coaching
04.08.20
BLM and what we can learn from it
The events of 2020 have undoubtedly changed the world as we know it. The brutal police killings of black men and women in North America, which has unleashed a global wave of protest against racial injustice, have prompted some deep reflection on the world we currently live in...
04.08.20
Changing how development assistance is delivered
Much has been written in recent years on the need to “do development differently". At the core of the debates are the principles of focusing on locally defined problems tackled through iteration, learning, adaptation and using systems thinking...
14.07.20
Dancing on the pivot point
“I feel I need to learn how to be mindful, accepting of ‘what is’, while at the same time looking ahead creatively, positioning ourselves strategically for what comes next”...