Coaching has been and continues to be of huge value to many organisations. More so now than ever where people managers are managing not only a hybrid workforce but a remote workforce also. The future of what successful leaders and managers look like is changing. There is a greater need than ever before to upskill leaders and managers to deal with this changing landscape of people management and an enhancement in both the skill of coaching and adopting a coaching style will be part of that.
So, is there a difference to: ‘creating a coaching culture’ or ‘a culture where coaching is valued’? Those of you that manage change and work in organisational development will know that changing cultures works on a timescale of 5-7 years. Therefore, working towards creating a coaching culture seems like a lot of effort with little successful outputs for some time. Is then the same effort required if you want your workforce to value coaching? Surely the value add and successful outputs need to be seen and recognised in the same way as a culture shift?
To ‘reimagine’ coaching as an ‘approach’ makes the possibility more real and doable. And ultimately if you create an approach mindset to coaching, then it will naturally be valued and eventually be an organic part of the culture.
Either way, I think the biggest question here (and what you are thinking now is) how do I do it? From my experience both as a coach and in creating cultures it is about introducing and maintaining a range of systemic and holistic interventions.
Making coaching the ‘way we do things around here’ can easily become part of a culture if all the workforce has the understanding and purpose of coaching along with access to success stories, tools, support, and time to consciously learn and practice this skill. A plan is required (or even an approach in itself), stretching into the future, aligning with business objectives, and supporting development plans.
Knowing where to start, what to do and how to do it can be daunting. I suggest a phased approach to avoid overwhelming you, the business, and the workforce. Drip feeding information, training, skills, experiential coaching is key. I’ve created a three phased approach for you to consider:
Phase 1: Education
Asking key questions like: Who knows what coaching means? Is it used (correctly)? Who uses it and when? Is a great way to start. You may find that a particular part of your workforce is already using coaching which other parts of the business can learn from.
Phase 1 is the educational phase. Understanding the answers to these questions will then help you support educating the workforce and enable you to offer a range of initiatives to fulfil the education need. The phase also includes the C Suite/Senior Leads/Stakeholders. Gaining their buy-in is key and will slow down implementation if you do not have it. Spending time working with this level of the organisation will pay off, so invest time in educating, selling, and coaching here.
Dependent on what you find, what you need to introduce and then deliver means this phase could be short to medium term.
Phase 2: Upskill and Implement
This phase follows quickly from phase 1 and should overlap particularly in terms of training initiatives. Keep an eye on where staff knowledge versus hands on experience is up to and design a range of support and development opportunities for staff at all stages of the learning cycle.
This is a medium to long term phase which carries through into opportunities, support, training and development into phase 3.
Phase 3: Making coaching the ‘norm’
Dependent on what you have introduced in the earlier phases, you could find yourself nurturing the coaching approach and running your own internal coaching scheme or service. This takes time and requires a ‘process’ to support this organisational framework as well as a pool of experienced and/or qualified internal/external coaches – this is where the nurturing comes in.
Coaching may become a leadership style to use at this stage and can create frustrations if not used correctly. Advanced skill training will be required, to accelerate and enhance skills further. Coaching will not continue on its own and needs to be fed and used across the business in numerous ways to be kept alive.
This is a staged ‘process’ that takes time, effort and imagination to build and nurture. And with all organisational initiatives, it needs the time and care to grow and evolve. This does not happen overnight however, over time you can absolutely achieve a ‘coaching culture, where coaching is valued.’