Boosting Initiative for Strengthening Collective Skills and Productivity within Alliances
In the realm of community development, three distinct approaches – community coaching, facilitation, and technical assistance – each play a unique role in fostering growth and progress.
"Vision to Action: Take Charge Too," a publication from Iowa State University's North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, sheds light on community coaching, a strategy that focuses on individual and team capacity building through skill development and behavior change. This approach, outlined by Emery et al. (2011), is based on the Six Rs of Community Coaching: readiness, relationships, reflection, results, reach, and resilience.
Unlike facilitation, which guides group processes to improve communication, decision-making, and collaboration, community coaching adopts a relational, developmental, and personalized approach. Coaches respond to questions with thoughtful questions to help coalitions reflect, and they build relationships marked by trust and rapport, recognizing every voice and community asset. Their skills encompass active listening, cultural competence, conflict resolution, networking, goal setting, and problem-solving.
The Six Rs of Community Coaching provide sample questions for each topic area, helping coalitions explore various topics with their members. For instance, a community coach might help a coalition transition from a needs-based approach to an asset or strengths-based approach, focusing conversation, exploring possibilities, identifying potential partners, establishing goals, and celebrating success.
Technical assistance, on the other hand, provides targeted support to address specific knowledge or skill gaps, tailored to local needs. It has evolved to include peer networks and learning cohorts, which outperform traditional expert interventions in effectiveness and scalability. These efforts may include face-to-face workshops, expert-led training, and digital platforms.
A coalition may seek the services of a community coach for various reasons, such as loss of momentum, discouragement, rapidly changing communities, new leadership structures, increased emphasis on impact, or increased return on investment. Community coaches usually come to coalitions through a lead organization's request, grant support for a specific program, or the coalition's own determination.
In summary, community coaching focuses on personalized skill development and empowerment, facilitation prioritizes guiding group processes for collaboration and decision-making, and technical assistance delivers targeted expert or peer support to address technical or capacity-building needs in specific areas within community development. For those interested in learning more about community coaching, resources include the Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Coalitions Work, University of Kansas' Community Tool Box, and University of Wisconsin-Extension's Program Development and Evaluation.
- The publication "Vision to Action: Take Charge Too" highlights community coaching, a strategy that emphasizes nutrition, health-and-wellness, and community development by empowering individuals and teams through skill development and behavior change, utilizing the Six Rs of Community Coaching (readiness, relationships, reflection, results, reach, and resilience) as its guiding principles.
- Nutrition and community development are intertwined aspects that community coaches often focus on, helping coalitions transition from a needs-based approach to an asset or strengths-based approach, encouraging conversations about health and wellness, exploring possibilities, and fostering resilience.
