Our CEO, Zoé Lewis, shares just why the values at The Leadership Coaches are so important.
Christmas is a time to think of others. But at the end of the year, it’s always hard not to reflect back and consider all you’ve achieved over the year as well.
However, at The Leadership Coaches, this isn’t something we reserve for the festive season. The whole business has been built on the core values of giving back, and this is something I feel very passionate about.
I’m often asked what those values are, and just why they are so important to me, so I thought it was time to share all.
In 2019, I went away on my first ever solo holiday. Life had changed for me, but I didn’t want to just stay at home.
While on holiday, in the sun, every day I kept going across to this little rock in the middle of the sea, just slightly out from where I was staying. Day after day, I’d sit peacefully on this rock, and that’s where the idea for The Leadership Coaches came to me.
This was actually a whole turning point in my life. The ideas really took form, and I knew on that rock that whatever I did, it had to feel more and bigger than just a job.
The idea behind The Leadership Coaches was a combination of thinking that I wanted to do something fantastic, and offer really good quality coaching, but it also had to provide more than that.
As I’m sure we all do when we have that space to reflect, I started to get that feeling. I started to question things in my life. I was asking myself why am I here? What's my purpose?
At that moment, it brought two things together for me. I would create a business of really good quality coaching, and then the profits of that would go back to helping shape and make a difference to the communities that we live in and we serve.
This wasn’t just an idea on a beach. When I got home, I put it all into action.
Actions
We do offer really good quality coaching now. Some people might say that my standards are too high, but I think if you’re going to be coaching people, you need to have experience and you need to know what you’re doing. I make no apology for demanding the best. But that’s perhaps another story for another blog.
What The Leadership Coaches also offers now is making a difference to communities, and we feel very passionate about this.
For starters, we donate some of the profits from the business to partner charities. The charities we support include Wen (Women’s Environmental Network) and also 1% for the Planet. As proud members of this, it means that we commit to donating at least 1% of annual sales directly to environmental organisations.
Then there are other organisations, such as Epic. Epic has become really close to my heart in the last few months, as I’ve learnt more about what they do.
When I heard about EPIC, I immediately felt a strong affinity for their work. Not only did I offer to mentor on the programme, but The Leadership Coaches also sponsored an award at their award ceremony in the Autumn.
The award category that The Leadership Coaches sponsored was Entrepreneur of the Year: People’s Choice. I was very excited about this category. Every entrepreneur works hard to get their idea up and running, and so the public recognition of this was a huge accolade to their achievements. Supporting young leaders is very important to us, and so seeing them strive for more, and to see such drive from people at such an early stage in their career, is inspiring.
And this isn’t just me. This is something all of the coaches at The Leadership Coaches do.
Many of us, including myself, have given up time to do things like mentoring people. We focus on working with people who are, for whatever reason, not able to access the support and coaching that they need because of such things like financial challenges, or being from deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds.
Whatever way you look at it, there are personal elements from me that make up our values, but there is so much collaboratively together we do as a business.
Equity
To know I’m really making a difference, one of the questions I ask myself is how can we help to create more of an equitable world. Equality isn’t enough. We need to even the balance so that everyone truly has the same chances, and this is far more about equity.
I think this is probably key to how we run the business in general. We try to create more equity through the work that we do, whether that's with leaders at the top or whether it's with giving through our charitable side.
As we end another year, I’m very proud of all that we’ve achieved. But I’m also ready to do far more next year, both with clients and with the communities that we support.
