Health coaching as infrastructure: how good questions help our Movement Manifesto every day

By David Henderson, Chief Executive, MOVE Against Cancer

At MOVE Against Cancer we recently launched our Movement Manifesto, a team-built commitment to how movement lives across our working day.

As a charity, we support people living with and beyond cancer to get and stay active. Movement is at the heart of everything we do. But last year I had to be honest with myself. Were we actually living that belief? As CEO, was I leading by example?

Several of our team are living with and beyond cancer. They know first-hand what movement does for body, mind and resilience. And yet we were all caught in the same trap — desk-bound, screen-fatigued, long productive days followed by tired and inactive evenings.

We wanted to change this, and using health coaching to inspire great conversations we launched our manifesto approach earlier this year.

Our approach rests on three principles at the heart of everything we do.

Permission, so that movement is genuinely available rather than just technically allowed.

Equity, so that people can move in the way that works for their body and their life.

And coaching, which is what turns a written commitment into lived culture and experience.

Health coaching is the infrastructure that makes it all work. At MOVE we have invested across the team to better understand the role health coaching can play for us as an employer, how we support each other as colleagues, and importantly how we can better support people living with and beyond cancer that access our programmes of support.

We have worked in collaboration with Peak Health to improve our understanding of the impact of health coaching, with several of our community (including myself) completing the Foundation Course run by Peak Health. It is a great introduction to health coaching and the support it can provide you as an individual, and as an organisation.

Coaching questions are different from advice. Instead of telling someone what they should do, a good coaching question invites them to reflect. What would help you build more movement into your week? What might feel possible today? These questions honour individual context in ways instruction cannot.

We see this every day across our 5K Your Way community, where our ambassadors and volunteers support people living with and beyond cancer to move at their own pace, on their own terms. Good listening, open questions and genuine curiosity underpin how we work internally and how we support the thousands of people who join us on our programme of support each month.

Health coaching, done well, is quiet, powerful and enduring. It is at the centre of how we work at MOVE Against Cancer, and it is one of the most important tools we have for supporting people to move for life.

MOVE Against Cancer works in collaboration with Peak Health Coaching to develop our coaching approach.

Inspired to help your community to stay active and support each other through coaching - then check out our Movement Manifesto, free to access for all at

https://www.moveagainstcancer.org/movement-manifesto/