In this conversation, Niamh Walsh, a leadership and career coach, looks back at what brought her to coaching and her human rights education underpins her work. The conversation is rich in advice and will give you an idea of what rights-based coaching might look like. Niamh, a graduate from the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, started working as a coach and mentor after a more conventional career with the OSCE and the EU. A move to Oxford and the lockdown caused by the pandemic helped her to pivot from this international career working for inter-governmental organisations to coaching. “I came to coaching very much from my own perspective in terms of experiencing a coach. When I was taking on management roles myself, I was coaching informally and did not have a word for it at that stage. Now I look back, I was coaching and mentoring. It was a part of the job I enjoyed a lot. It brought me a lot of fulfilment. I could see how it impacted others.”She insists on the importance to stay in touch with your alumni network and gives examples on how it made a difference in her career path to ensure that she always remained involved in the community even when work does not leave you with much headspace. For instance, she found the coach she employed for herself through the mentoring programme of the EMAlumni Association. She thinks everybody should consider themselves as a coach and consider what coaching skills can bring to their work environment and what it can bring to themselves as a manager, as a leader, as a colleague, as a team member. She describes some of the essentials of coaching: the ability to listen properly, non-judgement, positive action and empowerment. Looking back, she wished that when she studied somebody told her about the importance of career planning – taking time to think about the type of career you want and setting goals – and also told her that “it is not all about getting a permanent job at the UN and that there are so many paths you could take to have a fullfilling impactful career.”

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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