Humanitarian coaching - celebrating Judith's transition

Judith and me - over the past two years

In the next couple of blog articles, I would like to explore what 'humanitarian coaching' is and what it looks like. I will begin with the story of Judith.

Who is Judith, and how did I get to know her?

Judith is an experienced programme manager with 15 years of lived experience in the field of migration management, primarily with International Organization for Migration (IOM). She is now an "ex" humanitarian aid worker who lost her job due to the discontinuation of US funding, and she handled this transition graciously and calmly (it looked so to me).

Judith and I first met in July 2023, when we were matched for a coaching partnership through the Humanitarian Coaching Network, a platform that connects humanitarian workers with experienced coaches on a pro-bono basis.

I was struck by her immediate message after the confirmation of our engagement:

"Kindly advise if there is anything I need to do in preparation for the first session on Friday".

This kind of enthusiasm is rather rare, I must say - especially from a newly matched, pro bono-based coachee. I was immediately intrigued. After I sent her an introductory coaching agreement, she replied just as promptly:

"Thank you for sharing the coaching memorandum, which I can confirm I have read and understood".

Her eagerness to begin the coaching process was unmistakable - despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she had never worked with a coach before.

The initial information I received from HCN indicated that Judith wanted to develop specific skills, such as communication and report writing. As always, I was excited to meet a new coachee - especially someone from a "sister agency" to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency where I had worked. The fact that she was “locally recruited” as national staff made me especially motivated to work with her.

Working with a "national" staff member

Having spent around 20 years as an "internationally recruited" UN staff member, I had many professional and personal relationships with national colleagues from different parts of the world, some enriching and long-lasting, others unfortunately marked by challenges.

Since leaving the UN, I've been doing inner work and (hopefully) undergoing a transformation. This included the process of becoming a coach - its education and continued development. I've come to see that I was often inadequate, unskilled, and clumsy at forming genuine, human-to-human relationships with colleagues I had the privilege of working with. The main victims of my immaturity were often national, or "locally-recruited" staff members.

To this day, I often think back to those relationships across the various duty stations and wish I had a chance to apologise to them - for my arrogance, poor communication, lack of interpersonal skill, and, above all, for failing to be a good friend first, before being their "official" supervisor.

I've come to believe the system itself is flawed: just being international staff should not automatically make you a supervisor or manager of national colleagues. An international staff member often receives no proper management or leadership training whatsoever, and many have no adequate prior experience. In many cases, the national staff they are meant to 'supervise' possess far more experience and skills. Well, this could be a topic for a piece of writing on its own, so I would like to save it for later.

Coaching partnership with Judith

It was with this background that I entered the coaching partnership with Judith with renewed enthusiasm. Over two years, we've had 14 online sessions - four in 2023 via HCN, and another ten (seven in 2024 and three in 2025) as follow-up and continued coaching. Through this time, I’ve come to know her as a professional whom I now deeply respect and and want to support and root for from afar.

Coaching naturally builds a relationship of trust, as sessions can touch on any area of the coachee's life, depending on what they choose to bring in. Although I haven't observed Judith in her day-to-day work environment obviously, I can easily imagine her high level of professionalism, based on my own experience in similar UN settings. While I don't claim to know the context in Zimbabwe well where she works, I previously worked at UNHCR in Zambia and Angola - often in collaboration with IOM - so I can reasonably imagine the scope and challenges of her work.

In the first half of 2024, Judith and I worked together on her professional transition. There were moments when she became curious about opportunities beyond her current role, prompting her to reflect on possible new directions. At other times, we worked toward a well-deserved promotion. By then, Judith - who had been new to coaching just a year earlier- had embraced it. She told me she hadn't realised that coaching could cover any topic in her life, not just her career (even if the coaching offer initially came through HCN - and her employer - IOM).

Judith and me - in the last session

An "Ideal" coachee

What's striking about Judith is that she is, in many ways, an ideal coaching client. When I pose powerful (empowering) questions (this is coaching vocabulary to signify the type of questions a coach asks), her insights seem to flow effortlessly. Often, she would say something like, "As I was talking, this just came to me..." - a hallmark of a deeply self-reflective client.

When she received her promotion and I congratulated her, she responded with surprising caution. Even with the good news, she said she remained prepared for "eventualities" that could affect her job security depending on the outcome of the donor country's presidential election that would come later in the year. I laughed and reassured her, truly believing at that point (like many of us) that such drastic change wouldn't happen.

But in early 2025, her response to my New Year greeting mentioned that she was preparing for her transition out of IOM, as the programme she had worked on for 15 years was facing closure due to discontinued funding, a reality now unfolding as a result of the election outcome in the autumn.

And so here is a real, tangible story of an aid worker - a competent, professional, national staff member of a UN organisation - who lost her job due to a sharp shift in donor policy.

Judith's story of transition 

Judith and I had three sessions this year where she re-examined and reflected deeply on the skills she had developed, the tasks she enjoys, and the reasons behind her motivation. She also explored her future directions. Once again, her insights surfaced naturally - sometimes even surprising herself. That is one of the tangible gifts of coaching:

when supported by powerful questions, insights that may have been buried deep in the mind or unconscious can surface clearly.

I always admired Judith's diligence. At the start of each session - before I even asked - she reported on how things had gone since our last conversation: how she applied the insights she gained, what she worked on, and how it turned out. This showed just how seriously she took the coaching and how much value she derived from it.

Judith has just informed me that she has secured a new opportunity. I’m not surprised - but I still want to congratulate her! She kindly thanked me for "all your support, which gave me a can-do attitude". It has been my pleasure, and a deeply rewarding learning experience as a coach, to work with her.