CANADA NEPAL GENDER IN ORGANIZATIONS

Section VI: References

Reference #4: Coaching

| Strategy | Contents for the "Coaching for Capacity Building Intervention"|

Gender Integrated Organizational Development:
The NGO Coordinator's Coaching Role as Change Agent

3. Objectives

The objective of the NGO Coordinator role is to translate the greater vision of CNGO in practice. Realizing the absence of gender change agent in the district or remote areas, the project has envisioned developing Gender Resource Organizations (GRO) in each of the selected districts. Together with the district partners, CNGO aims to create gender environment in the district. And most importantly, a shared effort for gender work in the district is expected.
The NGO Coordinator role is to facilitate the CNGO process so that:

Gender change agent in the district can be created to influence district policy makers.
They will demonstrate commitment toward gender equality.
PNGOs will transform themselves as GRO.
Gender equality will be raised to be the priority issue in the district.

4. Strategy

The role of king maker is always difficult rather than to act himself or herself. Patience and temperament is needed to continue to handle things positively. One word can create big misunderstanding and discouragement in PNGOs. Sometimes "Doing nothing" also becomes a very good coaching tool. Some useful methodologies adopted for the coaching are as follows:

Action Research (AR): AR is about reflecting and concluding from the organization's own work. Leaders are encouraged to dig out the problems and success factors of their own organization and replicate the learning in upcoming programs and practices. This helps them to adopt the characteristics of a learning organization and follow the democratic norms in individually and organizationally.
Participatory Assessment: Periodic assessment of gender, linkage, policies/ systems and practices of an organization is a must to draw out their attention toward becoming a Gender Resource Organization (GRO). The assessment is not an exercise for outsiders but a tool that should be conducted in the regular meeting of the organization.
Regularization of meeting: It can be compared with the heart palpitation of a person. If it is stopped, all the living systems of the organization can disappear. A coach should let them understand the importance of regular meetings in an organization and ensure women are fully engaged in these meetings. The discussion should be channelled toward a constructive way of visioning the future.
Validation: Any organization does both good and bad things on their own. But when they perform very well in their own area, they expect recognition from outside. A coach has to validate their good work and appreciate it. This builds their confidence and leads them for further thinking. The coach can help PNGOs to develop linkages and good relationships with line agencies, local government, NGO networks and other stakeholders in the district, introducing their objective to them. Nepali culture always allows trust of high profile people, and recognition of project staff becomes helpful for the PNGOs to bring other district stakeholders' support for them. Especially the project staff influence is much more helpful for the formation of networks and allies in district level, which promotes the service of the PNGO in a common platform.
Helping in application: Sometimes NGOs are confused in practical application of things. At that time, the coach is a reliable friend of the NGO to listen to their problem and make positive suggestions. Most of the time NGO people are reluctant to share their problems.
Reduction of CNGO role and increase of PNGO role: Projects are outside interveners. Local partners are there to inherit all the responsibilities of the project. In the beginning, a project makes its coverage wide to introduce the new concept but the accepted theory is to hand over all the responsibility to the local partners and actors so that program sustainability will be there beyond project phase out.
Participatory management of events: PME became a very successful tool to transfer management skills to the PNGO. Every learning event organized in the district was managed by PNGOs which gave them not only management skills but a kind of recognition and acceptance also among NGO community and government sector of the district. The feeling of ownership of the event and learning also increased in PNGOs because of this tool. In this approach, PNGOs jointly with CNGO team decide the event venue, event participants and other arrangements for the event. They assign a gender-balanced team consisting of 2-4 people from their own organizations to support all these matters during every event.
Voluntary participation of NGO members in the events: As capacity building intervention with PNGOs in the beginning was generally not understood well in Nepalese context, many NGO members were not interested to take part in this process. Clear orientation to the NGO people about the process always encourages and creates enthusiasm in them. A series of training events and backstopping support can be offered to NGO members. They can also be clear about the voluntary participation in the events. A gender balanced group of interested responsible NGO members can be made for participation in every event. Voluntary participation brings commitment in them and broadens their perspective to the wider range.
Non-funding approach: All the NGOs in Nepal are pro-resource. They expect external resources all the time instead of making themselves capable for getting it. In reality capacity building is solely a non-funding approach. It prevents the possibility of becoming only a project delivery organization of the partner and instead scales it up to service delivery or support organization that is essential for the organizational sustainability. The non-funding approach concentrates them toward deep thinking about organization sustainability instead of making easy money. It also creates team building and essence of real development in the organizations' members.
On-the-spot coaching and support: Acting together is a very good approach to intervening in skills development and broadening the thinking of beneficiaries. All the core people - women and men - involved in the capacity building process should be given an opportunity to participate in skill practice events. Their efforts or performance should be closely observed and constructive feedback given from time to time. It is most important to have a core group of capable and skilled people in any organization to be a GRO. Spending at least two days in each PNGO in a month for coaching and support is vital for any coach.
Coaching sessions: Organizing individual and group meetings with executive members, staff and general members of a PNGO is important. Organizing meeting separately with women members gives them time for preparing themselves and specially helps them to be strong and to advocate their concerns persuasively in front of all members. Clarity in concepts makes women effective in influencing the organization from women's perspective. The coaching exercise is aimed toward strengthening the organization as a model for other NGOs and possible clients, which is very important for establishing the credibility of a GRO.

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5. Contents for the "Coaching for Capacity Building Intervention"

"Managing people is a difficult job. Teaching to manage people is a more difficult job. And facilitating people to manage themselves is a most difficult job."

Capacity building is a never ending process. To come to a GRO, they were supposed to be a good organization first. But the ground realities were just the opposite. The selected NGOs were at very basic level. Some of them were just sleeping at that time. In town area, the scenario might be different but in those remote areas, where NGOs trend has come in existence recently, it becomes difficult sometimes to facilitate, and one has to teach them. Experience has shown the multi-dimensional situation to be dealt with in those areas. The focus areas of coaching for capacity building are as follows:

Internal Governance

It is always difficult to promote new and fresh leaders from the second generation in an organization. There are so many excuses for current leadership to prevent new people from taking a lead role in any area. The mentality of being autocratic is inherited from the feudal system of social structure. Most of the NGOs are operated by local elite and they are motivated by controlling the social power through social work of NGO. So, the real essence of empowering people is lacking in most of the NGOs. Inclusion of women in the decision making level of an NGO is also guided by the same mentality. In the beginning, it was difficult to convince men to bring women at a higher level because men's perception was that women can not lead the NGO. The dominant class feel their prestige is threatened if the disadvantaged segment of the society comes forward. Such dominant class tries to pull their leg. Women leadership is handled in a different way. Women are kept in higher positions but all the decisions are taken by men, or only "showcase" women are kept in high positions while only men are most active in the organizations. So, all these aspects are always challenging for a gender change agent.
All the leaders want to engage himself/herself in all the activities while other members are at leisure most of the time. Reducing a leader's dominance and broadening member's role in the organization is also important. Large numbers of members are mostly left out and just nominal. But sometimes, family members of the responsible people influence in the organization.
Newly formed NGOs are always weak in writing and recording. The very small group of educated people in the district do not practice writing up materials most of the time. In daily life, people have less habit to write; but they speak more. Such traditional practice is the cause of giving less importance to writing. So, the coach has to make the local NGO people habituated in documenting everything.
It is also difficult to cope with the modern management system for local NGOs. The traditional social organizations' management styles are so well practiced at local level that new interdependent types of management are becoming controversial for them.
The constitution of an organization doesn't have more meaning than maintaining legal formalities for local NGOs. All NGOs have to make a very good constitution following a standard format, but provisions of the constitution are not translated into practice generally. To maintain democratic practices in an organization, nothing additional has to be done; just emphasize to practice constitutional provisions leads them toward democratic practices automatically.
Research is not a common practice in rural Nepalese society. Community leaders are supposed to know everything. People who have grown up in the rural environment have generally a dependant mentality. Leaders and respected people's views are followed without testing their truth. Innovation, on the other hand, gives new people an opportunity to be established in the society. But the NGO people are not familiar with the benefits of innovation and dissemination of the new things. All members should be enthusiastic to know new things rather than to act as an all knowing person. The challenge is also on how to develop learners in an organization.
Local NGOs are generally not transparent in financial resource mobilization. They are always afraid of local politics and do not share their total budget with the general people. Their assumption is people will become jealous if they know about the transaction. Information about the organization is not even shared among all general and executive members. The trend is to handle many things by a small group of people and not to communicate among the members and staff. That practice results in a lack of committed and motivated members in the organization.

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Linkage

The coach promotes PNGOs in front of major district development actors and encourages them to work in partnership with PNGOs. PNGOs are handed over the CNGO linkage role because it gives them an opportunity to be recognized in a bigger platform. High profile organizations are given more value and so local NGOs are undermined most of the times. But if INGOs give more value to the PNGO, then other district stakeholders also take them seriously.
NGOs need help in making strategies to select likeminded people for network or ally formation. They can provide leadership with the other NGOs or development agencies if they get opportunity to do such. The PNGOs acceptance is increased among local NGOs and it gives them moral power to mediate conflict between two networks in the district if such a problem exists.
The coach can also play a vital role in helping PNGOs to influence district policy makers. The NGOs voices are not taken seriously in current tendency. There is a superiority complex in government officials and they underestimate the local NGOs, thinking that local NGOs have not much capacity to work in partnership with them. The coach affirms the capacity of local NGOs and it gives local NGOs acceptance among the district line agencies as well.
Women are often less experienced in linkage building and are taken less seriously by the mainly men government staff. The coach supports women to take on these roles, and smoothes the way for easier acceptance.

Program

Most of the local NGOs have not any particular program and activities; they are motivated toward external funding or other support. They deliver any sort of activities anywhere asked by funders. And that practice doesn't make any difference in the community or anywhere. The coach role is also to motivate them toward focussing their effort in a particular place. That gives them some sort of foundation and makes them accountable toward the ultimate power, the people. Instead of having a hand in every sector, NGOs should be facilitated and guided toward specialization. And for the GRO purpose, PNGOs have to be shaped as issue based for gender equality. Some specialization automatically generates in all of the PNGOs. They should be made aware of those specialties and validated by coach.
One of the roles of NGOs is also to safeguard the social interest and security. Being a civil society actor they have responsibility to play the role of watchdog. On the other hand, they have to fight against social injustice as well. They should always be aware about the positive change process in the communities. The coach can provide moral support to rights based campaigns of the NGOs that address gender and caste inequalities. This gives them additional empowerment to go ahead, and to create new methods and ideas for social transformation.
Sometimes NGO people are not well accepted in the society because of their gender, caste or other background. If disadvantaged groups are organized and doing a good job then different social barriers disturb and discourage them. The traditional power holders do not allow them to introduce new things in the society. They confront the new concept and conflict comes ahead. That conflict can bring a big challenge that stops the possible change process in the society. So, the coach can ease the situation and facilitate NGO people on how to bargain with social power elites and deal with them in a diplomatic way rather than to fight directly with them. Frequent coaching on how to intervene in the higher caste male dominated society and increase their acceptance is important. For that, skills of social analysis and conflict mitigation should be exercised in participation with PNGO people.
The social analysis and conflict mitigation skills can also give them self confidence to cope with the security situation of the country which most of the time hampers launching activities in time. Mature assessment of the situation and timely action to respond to it, is not easy for anybody all the time. But team work can make it easy to take decisions on slowing down activities, working at low profile, maintaining communication with all sides and verifying the situation with proper judgement.
One can bring more change by applying or practicing a new thing rather than through training or any other awareness activities. Adoption of new ways brings a debate in the society that impacts positively in the communities. In the beginning people test that practice by analyzing it from their own perspective. They explore out the difficulties and weaknesses at first and then they began to follow it. It is unique Hindu culture that everything is started from critiques. Everything is ready made in this culture and so new interventions are always painful for this society. The coach role is to discuss the cultural barriers with them. That helps them to analyze new things from the local perspective and demonstrate that to the communities. Demonstration of new behaviour is always effective to breaking gender and other barriers of the society.
Integrating gender equality into the PNGO programs and addressing both practical and strategic gender needs helps to mainstream gender in the organization and increase their impact. The coach helps guide this process and explore opportunities to improve their practice.
Intensive monitoring creates lack of ownership of the program introduced by outsiders. It brings a negative attitude in the program implementers that the program is in the interest of the monitor or donor. So, one should let the NGO people analyze new initiatives freely and deliver it with their own understanding. This doesn't mean that guidelines and conditions should not be introduced or that the initiative is not discussed properly. That should be done but NGO people should have complete freedom to apply the theory into practice. If they make mistakes, that should be taken as a normal thing. Mistakes give them more opportunities to learn the matter in depth. The coach role is to facilitate them to explore options and take the most logical and practical convincing path. Let them experience all up and down hills. This will give them the opportunity to own the prickle with the flowers. The traditional concept of monitoring is harmful for a coaching role. The coach has to be always aware that the coaching act should not be converted into the monitoring act.

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