Spark Inside were the first charity to pioneer supporting young people in prison with professional coaching, and we remain the only organisation that provides rehabilitative support from fully qualified, accredited life coaches.
We believe young people hold enormous potential, that they deserve to be valued and that they deserve investment. We’re therefore committed to upholding the highest standards of support.
Our network of coaches work across a wide range of sectors, often balancing their time working with young people in prison alongside senior leaders across a portfolio of global businesses.
One such example is Steve van Zuylen, who qualified as an ICF coach in 2013 and has delivered more than 3000 hours of coaching to senior executives in 25 countries.
Here, he shares a bit about why he wanted to bring this experience to Spark Inside, and what he feels coaching young people in custody and business leaders has in common.
What led you to coaching?
I discovered coaching in 2009, while working in Mexico, leading learning and development for HSBC across Latin America. My work was focused on human development, and I had a coach myself. I loved the experience and the underpinning values: the power of unconditional positive regard and the belief that everyone has the ability to solve their own problems, with the right balance of challenge and support. I trained as a coach in 2011, and have focused for the last 15 years on supporting leaders through transitions, promotions, and periods of change.
Why did you want to start working with Spark Inside?
I was drawn to Spark Inside as soon as I heard about it — a fascinating and much-needed approach to criminal justice. I believe we are all more than our worst mistakes and that everyone deserves a second chance, and I wanted to support change for those who haven’t had the same opportunities as my corporate clients.
The Hero’s Journey appealed to me for the same reason: it’s an invitation to change, not an assumption that someone will or needs to. That choice belongs to them, and there’s real dignity in that.
It also represented the biggest developmental stretch I could imagine. If I can create a sense of possibility for someone else in a space where I don’t feel entirely safe or at ease myself, I’ll come out a better coach.
How do the challenges and topics your clients working in senior leadership bring to coaching compare to what young people want to work on?
At its core, coaching is a deeply human intervention, and there’s a real baseline humanity in the topics people bring, whatever the context. Much of the work across both worlds is about navigating change: in prison, that might be a denied parole hearing, in organisations it might be a new CEO or strategy. People often want to figure out how to manage relationships better, or their relationship with authority. These themes show up everywhere.
But the differences are significant. The prison environment is far less supportive of change. Many young people feel stuck, and years inside can erode their feelings of resourcefulness and self-belief. In a corporate context, a senior leader will typically have a bank of evidence of their own capability to change; when confidence wavers, you can point them back to it. That’s often not available in the same way for young people in prison.
So, what counts as ‘good work’ looks different. Sometimes success is simply a young person feeling they’ve had someone’s undivided attention for an hour. To feel that they matter, that they’ve been seen and heard, that they have value. That’s not a small thing. It’s the foundation for building self-esteem and self-efficacy, and it can open doors to change that didn’t feel possible before.
One activity we do in the workshop is called ‘Possipping’ (positive gossiping). We invite the group to share the qualities they see in each other. For many of the young men, it’s the first time in a long time that anyone has said anything genuinely positive about them. The impact is often profound. That’s what being seen looks like in practice.
I’m often struck by how similar the need is, whether I’m sitting with a young person inside or a senior executive in a corporate office. At the core, everyone just wants to feel that change is possible for them.
What about the environment? Tell us about what this means for the different groups you work with?
Prisons are harsh, unpredictable environments, often hyper-masculine, where showing vulnerability is a risk. People have little control over their time or movement, which creates a deep sense of being stuck, both physically and psychologically.
Trust takes longer to build. The young men can be guarded or suspicious.
One moment has stayed with me. A young man arrived at his first session slumped in his chair, refusing to engage with even the opening questions. By the next session, he was helping with the facilitation, turning to another participant and saying ‘come on man, you’ve got to share more than that, this is a safe space.’ That shift, from closed off to the person creating the space for others, is what this work is about.
As a coach, you have to invest real time finding points of genuine connection, while being honest about the gap in life experience. You can’t pretend to have lived what they’ve lived. It’s about an authentic presence rather than a performed one.
The environment also tests your ability to improvise. Group sessions are always unpredictable, energy levels vary wildly, concentration is hard to sustain, and plans rarely survive contact in the room. You learn to read the group quickly, change tack without losing the thread, and find the moment of connection and contact wherever it appears. It’s humbling, and it makes you a better coach.
As a coach, what’s your view of Spark Inside wanting to bring the best possible coaching to young people affected by the prison system?
This is about unlocking potential in people who rarely receive any meaningful investment. It’s about investing in people regardless of their mistakes, helping young people who have often been let down by the systems around them to feel seen. It’s hard for anyone to move towards their potential without that sense of dignity, and building self-worth opens the door to the possibility of change.
I think there’s something genuinely valuable about bringing corporate coaching into this world. The same approaches used to help leaders navigate change and unlock their potential translate powerfully here, and young people truly benefit from access to that level of investment in them.
Spark Inside feels like a rare thing, an organisation that refuses to write people off. The people involved bring real dedication and genuine belief in the young people they work with. You feel it in everything they do.
Click here to find out more about our coaching quality standards, and click here to sign up to our quarterly newsletter.
