Our Purpose
A purpose driven organisation
The OCM is, and always has been, a purpose driven organisation. What unites, drives and rewards us is the impact we have on the individuals, teams and organisations we work with. We will equip you to thrive now, to grow into your future and to realize your purpose through the power of coaching and mentoring.
From our founding in Oxford in 1998, we have consistently brought best practice coaching and mentoring to our clients with simplicity and pragmatism. Whether you are an individual seeking to build your own coaching capability or an organisation looking to integrate coaching and mentoring into your culture, we will put your success at the heart of our relationship. You’ll find us genuinely supportive, and constructively challenging; we constantly seek to make our work and your world better through powerful reflection, targeted measurement and authentic partnership.
A SHARED PURPOSE
OCM Discovery partners with organisations, bringing our expertise and experience to create sustainable transformations to bear on their strategic challenges and priorities. Supporting them to make changes in the effectiveness of their coaching investment, the power and authenticity of their leadership and the resilient adaptability of their culture.
OCM Enable: When people are stronger, more capable and more adaptable, organisations are transformed for the better. We believe that coaching and mentoring have the power to create this transformation. Our purpose is to partner with you to make coaching and mentoring work for your organisation and help you to achieve your purpose.
OCM Educate: we’re passionate about supporting you to become the coach you want to be. It has to start with you, so our personalised approach to learning creates a unique, flexible learning experience with high levels of individual support throughout your coaching journey.
OCM Apprenticeships works with organisations to develop impactful and agile coaches who can deliver your coaching strategy. Our purpose is to ensure the coaches we develop can effectively support your employees, provide the desired impact for your organisation and that we create a fantastic learning experience for the apprentices.
Living our purpose – be the change you want to see
We strongly believe that coaching and mentoring have the power to transform lives, with the potential to create more diverse and more inclusive societies, cultures and organisations. That said, we also acknowledge that, as a profession, coaching and mentoring is not as diverse or inclusive as it should be and, in our view, has a long way to go to live up to its transformational potential.
We challenge ourselves and our clients to recognise and change our perceptions, prejudices and assumptions where they limit anyone’s opportunities to grow or deny others space to flourish. By exploring and relishing our diversity, we believe we release our combined capacity to solve problems and create a better life, better organisations and a better world.
We want to use our expertise to make a real difference, and our purpose drives us to make the benefits of coaching and mentoring available to the widest possible range of people and organisations. So rather than just talk about the issues, we prefer taking proactive action to address the systemic challenges facing those who wish to enter the profession or who want to use these skills to further their careers.
Enabling diversity and inclusion through action
The Eric Parsloe Scholarship Fund
We launched the Eric Parsloe Scholarship in 2017, following the death of our Founder in 2015. The Fund’s original purpose was to provide free qualifications in professional coaching and mentoring for those in under-represented groups who wish to become a professional coaches or mentors.
We know that becoming a coach is often a privileged choice afforded to those who have the economic freedom gained from a successful career. Due to systemic challenges faced by many from under-represented groups, this choice may not be possible.
We know that developing the coaching skills of leaders and managers is fundamental to improving leadership capability, enhancing career progression and, ultimately, increasing social mobility.
To address this challenge, we relaunched the Fund in 2022 so it now also provides the opportunity for individuals from all under-represented groups to develop their coaching skills via one of our ELECTRIC Coaching programmes.
Find out more about the Fund, including how to apply, here.
Find out more about joining our Team and our Diversity and Inclusion Policy here.
Pro-bono coaching & discounted services
Our mantra is the more coaching or mentoring the better but we know not everyone can afford access to world-class leadership coach-mentoring so, where possible, we make it available to those who can’t including:
- Enabling all our employed coach-mentors, at all times, support at least one pro bono client, a leader in a 3rd sector organisation who would not otherwise have.
- Facilitating our clients trainee apprenticeship coaches to work with leaders from the not-for-profit sector
- Offering discounts on all of our services and training programmes to public sector, charities and social enterprises.
If you want to know more about any of these, please contact us at [email protected] or fill in the form below.
CSR Projects – Together for Children
Sunderland Council received an ‘inadequate’ rating for its Children’s Services in 2017 a new organisation, Together for Children (TFC), was established. Its remit was to transform the quality-of-service provision, outside the council so it could freely appoint its own board, and implement strategy and new ways of working.
A huge transformation project was undertaken that included an entirely new approach to learning in the sector. Although not the entire factor in the transformation of children’s services in Sunderland, the learning strategy was an integral factor in TfC achieving an ‘outstanding’ rating in July 2021 – the first time any children’s services organisation has gone from inadequate to outstanding in one leap.
However, one major ongoing issue - identified through an April 2021 employee survey and ongoing exit interviews - was management and leadership behaviours, particularly when it came to conversations, performance management and coaching.
This is where we joined, partnering with a huge, £86,000 pro-bono coaching programme that impacted right across the organisation.
You can read about what we did and the impact that was created here.
Pro Bono Coaching Request Form