Beyond the workshop: How Change Coaches builds trust through long-term leadership partnership

LaTonya Wilkins left corporate leadership development after seeing how one-off workshops failed to create lasting change. Her company Change Coaches now serves Google, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and hundreds of other clients globally through ongoing coaching relationships that tackle the 'below the surface' issues traditional training ignores.

When a client told LaTonya Wilkins that her company’s coaching solutions had sustainably transformed their entire culture, Wilkins realized she was hearing the kind of feedback that was missing during her years in corporate leadership development and consulting firms. Wilkins is the founder and CEO of Change Coaches , a leadership and organizational development consultancy designed to bridge the gap between superficial training and real psychological safety. After seeing how often traditional professional development failed to address the systemic "below the surface" issues that actually drive culture, Wilkins created Change Coaches in 2018 and pursued it full-time in 2022. Today, the company serves hundreds of clients globally, including organizations like Google, Blue Cross Blue Shield and University of Illinois. While Change Coaches initially offered standard workshop packages, Wilkins pivoted to a coaching-first model, recognizing that lasting organizational impact requires long-term relationships beyond one-off programming. “It’s that relationship that is really important to us. Clients will say, ‘We never feel that we’re bothering you, and you always have space for us,’” Wilkins said. Rooted in Wilkins’s award-winning book, Leading Below the Surface , Change Coaches offers signature solutions including executive coaching and customizable leadership development programs, targeted towards specific problems identified in an initial discovery session. Each coach at the company is certified by the International Coaching Federation, utilizing the Change Coaches LEAD Assessment to measure trust and belonging on teams. Whether a client is saying, "We've scaled fast and now everything feels harder," or "Our leaders are technically strong but struggling with people leadership," Change Coaches provides guidance through uncertainty and growth. “We focus more on shifting identity to be aligned with change, decision-making and trust under pressure — basically the human side

By Sara Xu at TechNexus Venture Collaborative