In 2020, the evidence is clear that coaching positively impacts the workplace. When coaching is embedded in the organization it is a game changer that shifts the way managers and leaders work together and develop others.
Why build a coaching culture?
Coaching improves performance, increases retention, creates higher levels of engagement and provides tools and proven processes for developing leaders both in-the-moment and in the longer-term coaching engagement.
At the heart of every organization is its culture—its personality and identity. Today, people are putting more importance on company culture than ever before. Deloitte recently found that 94% of executives and 88% of employees consider a distinct workplace culture important to organizational success.
According to a study by the Human Capital Institute and the International Coach Federation sited in an ATD article, organizations with strong coaching cultures report revenue growth well above their industry peer group (51% compared with only 38%) and significantly higher engagement (62% compared with 50%).
In the HCI – ICF 2014 Study on Coaching Cultures, of those organizations self-described with successful coaching cultures “nearly two-thirds rate their organizations as being ‘highly engaged,’ compared to only about half for organizations without strong coaching cultures.
In terms of financial impact, 60% of respondents from organizations with strong coaching cultures report their 2013 revenue to be above their peer group, compared to 41% from all other companies. Based on these results, it becomes clear that coaching is more than just a way to increase employees’ skills and competencies; it can have a long-lasting systemic impact on an organization’s ability to retain talent and on its financial sustainability.
What is a coaching culture?
Culture shapes behaviors inside the organization and a coaching culture is one deliberately focused on growing and nurturing talent in order to deliver key results, strengthen leadership capacities, increase retention and deepen engagement. A culture that has cultivated a coaching approach to development often demonstrates the following characteristics:
- Giving and receiving feedback in the service of being at one’s best
- Focusing on opportunities to help members of one’s team grow
- Operating in teams with clear goals and roles
- Developing others when it matters most
- Asking and empowering more than telling and fixing
When coaching is embedded through all levels of an organization it creates a culture of employees who work and lead together with a common goal of building a best-in-class organization.
How does a coaching culture evolve?
Every organization will find a unique path to building out a culture that emphasizes a coaching approach. For some, it begins with using a few external executive coaches to work with specific leaders where high-stakes issues are at hand. In others, a single sponsor will instill coaching at the managerial level or others build out a small internal cadre of coaches to provide short-term coaching opportunities for mid-level leaders. As the impact of coaching is evidenced, organizations begin to develop a coordinated strategy across business units.
Ideally, a culture that fosters a coaching approach to developing people will utilize coaching at all levels of the organization— from the early manager to the senior leader.
For workplace coaching to work and truly drive results for your business, it must echo throughout your entire company—at every level and in every conversation. One way that organizations can develop such a culture is through four steps called RLAA (pronounced “relay”): relevance, learning, application, and accountability.
1) Build Relevance from the Top Down
Organizations with robust coaching cultures are over 60% more likely to have senior leaders involved in their coaching systems. Leaders, if you want coaching to become your company culture, start with yourself. Make it part of every meeting agenda, strategic discussion, and water cooler chat. Illustrate the benefits of coaching—to the organization and to each individual—by talking about it and, more importantly, by doing it. And if you’re not the right leader for the job, find the person who is. Make that individual the spokesperson, and have him or her share enthusiasm regularly.
As senior leadership takes the reins, employees will naturally follow. However, to make workplace coaching fully relevant to them, pinpoint their motivation. Help managers, as well as employees, understand the value that coaching can provide them. Show managers how coaching can engage their people, increase team performance, augment their leadership skills, or add a credential/certification to their résumé.
2) Foster Learning on a Regular Basis
Every employee in the organization, regardless of role or level, should understand the basic principles of coaching and performance improvement. Organizations with successful coaching cultures were nearly 40% more likely to target every employee with coaching training than organizations with less pervasive coaching cultures.
Make coaching, training, and development regular opportunities by using classroom or virtual lessons. Then, like anything we want to excel in, it takes hours of practice. The more you coach, the better you become.
3) Help Employees Apply What They Learn
The adage is simple but true: Where you fail to plan, you plan to fail. You can’t create a coaching culture without developing an action plan and providing support to make the transition easier on employees. Establish a personalized follow-up plan that will work with your organization’s business cadence and structure. We’ve seen companies develop a master coaching class with follow-up small group sessions. Other companies use reporting systems and even online coaching platforms or apps. The point is, create a system that helps everyone apply what he or she learns, and check in on it regularly.
4) Develop Positive Accountability for Results
When it comes to accountability, we frequently put that responsibility on managers, but when done correctly, it looks completely different. The beauty of coaching is developing a workforce of people who feel supported in their abilities to make decisions and own their choices. An accountability system encourages employees to take ownership of their performance and encourages managers to take ownership of how they coach others.
What does this look like? First, make sure every employee at every level is experiencing coaching conversations on a regular basis. Second, establish transparency regarding coaching efforts in your organizations. Do you know who is coaching successfully? How many coaching conversations are occurring? Tapping into that knowledge will guide leadership on what needs to change and how to get there.
If your organization is already investing the time and money in workplace coaching, why stop there? Dig deeper, and change the identity of your company to one that coaches at every level and in every instance. As a result, you can expect better productivity, more engagement, and higher performance all around.
Click here to download information on how we can help you build a coaching culture.
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