Systems change can be a daunting challenge, requiring cross-sector coordination across organizations. But even the most complex systems are made up of people. When we support people to take up their roles and use their individual power, we can create lasting change.
StriveTogether’s coaching program, Coaching for Collaborative Action, supports leaders in stewarding their work and their teams to transform systems. When we transform systems, we create communities where every Black, Indigenous, Latine and Asian youth and family and those experiencing poverty have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.
In this series, read the stories of four Cradle to Career Network leaders and staff who are developing their strengths through coaching to support their communities to get better, more equitable outcomes.
Pratima Patil, assistant director of programs and policy at the Boston Opportunity Agenda
Pratima Patil knows firsthand the power of data to mobilize cross-sector partners. Pratima, assistant director of programs and policy at the Boston Opportunity Agenda, is using data to shift policies and resources for children ages 0 to 8 and their families.
With her colleague Fernanda Q. Campbell, Ph.D., Pratima has identified significant gaps in access, quality and affordability of early education and care across the city of Boston, revealing wide disparities in Black and Latino neighborhoods. Their study sparked conversation with stakeholders across Boston on the state of early childhood support and opportunities to change the system.
This report stemmed from the Birth to Eight Collaborative. This network was started by the former Boston Opportunity Agenda Executive Director Kristin McSwain, now senior advisor for early childhood and director of the Mayor’s Office of Early Childhood, and a panel of leaders and representatives from direct service providers, city and state government, health and business. As part of this collaborative, Boston Opportunity Agenda directly engages parents and caregivers to provide mentorship, share feedback and shape measurement.
And while sustaining a large-scale, cross-sector initiative like Birth to Eight requires robust data to drive equitable strategies, Pratima shared that it also requires a renewed appreciation for leadership and the skills to navigate change, uncertainty and disruption in increasingly complex environments.
“I realized having degrees doesn’t mean you’ve learned how to recognize challenges and solutions beyond the data, which is what adaptive leadership is about,” Pratima shared. “I realized I needed to learn more, and StriveTogether connected me with my coach.”
StriveTogether coaching supported Pratima to gain new awareness and grow in her ability to lead in her expanded role. With her coach, Pratima identified goals for the next year, including embodying systems thinking leadership; preventing burnout through self-care and self-management; and using her strengths, like creatively seeing multiple options to support decision making. 
Pratima shares that her coach created a reflective and action-oriented environment where she could explore root causes at the person, role and system levels and strategize on next steps. She shares, “[My coach] kind of peels back the onion around the problem or around what I’m feeling about the problem. It’s a very trusting relationship. She knows me well.”
Her coach also created a space where Pratima’s inner wisdom was trusted. “[My coach] doesn’t give me the answers — which would make it a lot easier! — but she leads me to them. Sometimes I say, ‘Can you just tell me what I need to know?’” Pratima shares with a teasing smile.
With her coach, Pratima began to make insights about her own leadership journey. One new insight was a renewed awareness of how her identity and history impact how she shows up. “[My coach] is helping me connect the strengths and challenges of being raised as, and now, raising my family as a second-generation Indian American woman to adaptive change,” she shares.
This insight around self has led Pratima to a deeper realization: “I’m the adaptive challenge. My goal is alignment and for that to happen, I need to work differently with our partners, and part of that is changing how I think about leadership,” she says.
Pratima’s work with data is one way she supports change in her community. One project she manages involves collaboration with multiple partners and reporting on indicators that measure the initiative’s processes and impact, which requires a shared data system.
“Creating shared systems means compromise and change, which can be difficult when organizations have been working a certain way for years,” Pratima explains. “In some ways, knowing what data we needed was the easy part, while the hard part was aligning partners. This is where the insights and guidance of my coach played a key role in being able to really see the adaptive leadership needed to build systems.”
As Pratima convenes and aligns partners in the Birth to Eight collaborative, she has deepened her ability to support collaboration even if partners don’t get along, staying focused on the big picture and end result. Pratima is also designing and facilitating action-oriented meetings for an initiative called Screen Every Child, which involves partners from different sectors.
“There isn’t a preconceived road map, so you don’t know what type of challenges you might come across,” Pratima shares. Her coach offered tools and guidance on meeting structure and composition. “That completely changed my view of what meetings should be and could be; how the time could be used to move agendas forward, including how to work with who is at the table.”
Along with more effective meetings, Pratima is working with her coach on focusing partners on their shared work. “As a result, people started seeing that we are following the same ‘why.’ It’s an important foundation because now we can start visioning around where we want the project to go,” she shares.
Not only is Pratima seeing increased alignment, but more participation and engagement, too. The group developed a series of priorities around referrals and screening services that have become their guiding posts.
Pratima also has noted a shift in strategies and deepening of relationships among those in the collaborative. “There is sharing of resources among the different sectors (schools, family, early education and care centers, parent leaders and more). They are seeing each other as colleagues who all have a role to play.”
Coaching is supporting Pratima to become the kind of leader she wants to be: Empathetic, compassionate, accountable and self-aware. Pratima shared this advice for leaders or those taking up leadership opportunities interested in coaching: “Have patience with the journey. I would say you’ll be surprised at how much you learn about yourself.”
