A Coaching Culture That Works!

A growing number of organisations recognise the value in building a coaching culture that offers employees at all levels the opportunity to grow their skills, enhance their value and reach their potential goals.

Still, questions remain: What does a successful coaching culture look like?

Like any coaching journey, there will be there will be ups and downs when creating a coaching culture that is sustainable, however when implemented well, an organisation can reap the rewards with a highly engaged workforce that gets results.

I was recently told about an organisation who wanted to develop a coaching culture. Their methodology was simple; they distributed a coaching book, (bought in bulk off Amazon) to all Line Managers, who after reading the book attended a 1-day coaching workshop. The intention being that the Line Managers would then be able to coach their team members around work-based situations and challenges. Did this change the way the managers led or even managed their teams? Did it improve the conversations they had? Did it remove the aspect of ‘telling’ and introduce the concept of ‘asking’ into their one-to-ones or general conversations at work? Obviously not…. Why? It’s simple, coaching cultures are not borne out of isolated workshops or reading a book, yes, these help to raise awareness and develop a basic understanding of coaching however if you’re looking for a long term sustained coaching culture you need to make sure you are in it for the long term. The sticking plaster mentally just won’t do in today’s high performing climate.

A coaching culture exists in an organisation when a coaching approach is a key aspect of how that organisations leaders, managers, and staff engage and develop all their people, in ways that create increased individual, team, and organisational performance and a shared value for all stakeholders. There may still be resistance to coaching from those stakeholders that are less favourable, however coaching has proven to be no fad, and is here to stay as one of the leading ways to engage employees to deliver and perform to their best of their ability.

To make sure a coaching culture is implemented effectively, you need to take a three-pronged approach:

1. Recruit, select and train your internal coaching team
2. Develop line managers capabilities in coaching skills
3. Embed coaching in HR & performance management processes

Full Circle Global works with both public and private sector organisations in UK, Europe, Asia and UAE to create, develop and evaluate their coaching cultures.