“We are not so much human beings as we are human becomings.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
An explicit goal of the Innovation Fellowship is to create a purposeful and intentional space for the personal and professional development of young people working in civil society organisations. It is designed to provide the Fellows with knowledge and skills which would enable them to identify opportunities to generate new ideas, approaches and solutions to existing organisational challenges and to explore the implications and complexity of facilitating change. The Fellowship is a platform for the Fellows to engage their creativity, design innovative approaches and implement them within their organisations.
Coaching is all about learning
Learning is the key driver of the Innovation Fellowship. Learning occurs in different contexts – during the Immersions and in between them, when the Fellows work on assignments to bring their exploration of an innovation question into their own organisations.
A key element of the learning programme is the provision of coaching and mentoring, which support the Fellows on their journey of discovery. Fellows receive individual coaching, are coached as pairs or trios and have their coach support and mentor them in structured interactions with their own organisations.
The theoretical model underpinning the coaching approach
From the start of second cohort of Fellows in 2019, the Ontological Coaching framework has been used, supported by a Lead Coach and five coaches, all of whom are trained and accredited ontological coaches. In addition, the key text book, The Innovator’s Way, provides an ontological model for innovation.
The ontological approach is a good fit for the Fellowship. Ontological coaching is not psychologically based, but rather it is an existentially focused model, concerned with the human way of being, made up of the way in which people use Language, the Moods and Emotions, which are predispositions for action, and their somatic experiences of their Body. As the diagram below illustrates, there is alignment between the Ontological approach and the Head, Hands, Heart focus of the Fellowship.
The Ontological approach works with Language (which is used to think, speak and listen), Moods and Emotions (which is what is happening in the human heart) and the Body (which is related to the concept of Hands).
