Organisations that create a coaching culture know that the time and effort put into doing this will reap the rewards for all. The organisation thrives, employees and leaders are happier and more focused, and productivity increases. And yet….. many organisations don’t start the process of developing a coaching culture or start and then stop quickly. Let’s explore what the barriers are to creating a coaching culture and find some solutions.
Creating a coaching culture or not: other options are available
Coaching can be used to develop all individuals in the organisation, and to develop the organisation itself. There are plenty of alternatives to coaching. For the people – training, work shadowing, the dreaded 360, appraisals… And for the organisation – planning, budgeting, forecasting, goals and strategies.
The problem for coaching is twofold. Firstly, the people who commission coaching are often also the people who organise these other things. So, coaching becomes just another item on the “ways we support people” or “ways we run the organisation” list.
That’s fine if it is well embedded, but less so if it is new and needs some special care in being introduced. Also, it is not always clear which of these items that coaching could supplement, and which it could replace.
What is a coaching culture in an organisation?
In essence, a coaching culture is one where two things are observed:
- That a coaching approach is the favoured leadership style by most leaders, most of the time.
- That skilled coaches are deployed in an organised fashion to provide coaching support to the workforce
- And that everyone has access to a coach
The implications of these three statements are quite wide. We deliberately say most of the time in the first statement. There are times and reasons to choose a different approach to coaching. The second statement, to have skilled coaches deployed, is a commitment of time and resources. And giving all access to a coach may involve a big shift in how organisations perceive all their staff. The implication is that everyone is worthy of being coached, and everyone can develop and improve.
What are the barriers?
The “coach ready” organisation: For coaching to be successful, the organisation has to have a certain way of working with its people. The person being coached needs to be 100% confident that coaching is confidential and is only about their development. As an example of what doesn’t work, imagine this organisation. Very hierarchical, where mistakes are frowned upon, performance micro analysed, and development opportunities are rare. Now imagine this organisation introducing coaching into the mix. It is highly likely that the people being coached won’t engage with the process fully. They won’t be prepared to be vulnerable nor trust that the process is truly confidential.
Lack of understanding of what coaching is: Even though coaching has been around for over 30 years, there is still plenty of confusion about what it is. It gets confused with training and with mentoring, and with managing under performance. A major barrier is not understanding the basic premise of coaching. Here’s a definition that may help.
Coaching is an exploratory approach to professional and personal development, helping colleagues develop their resources and approaches to continual improvement in their roles. |
Lack of commitment: Even if there is a good understanding of what coaching is, there may be a lack of commitment to using it well. Often the responsibility for deploying coaching falls to someone outside of the senior team. Perhaps it falls to the person who is most interested in wellbeing or staff development. There may be a tension between this coaching champion and the leadership team, who may not be fully behind the initiative.
Lack of resources: This is the next obstacle. Even if coaching is well organised and there is a commitment in principle, time needs to be allocated. Time to train coaches or to put together a register of external coaches. And protected time for the coaching to take place. It is easy and tempting to not ringfence time for coaching, or for allowing it to be cancelled during busy periods. This this is worth avoiding.
Lack of measurable outcome: Return on investment is the holy grail of any initiative. It is important to be able to calculate if it is worth investing in, and what specific benefits have been achieved. Although there are good ways of measuring the benefits from coaching, often organisations don’t do this. They don’t start with the end in mind. Two reasons: complexity and isolation.
Complexity means that it is not straightforward to work out what to measure. For example, is a 10% increase in productivity a better measure than a 10% increase in happiness?
And isolation means that it is hard to work out whether improvement in an individual or a team is down to the coaching on its own. It is possible that elements influenced the improvement as well as the coaching.
And some solutions
To fellow coaches, the above list may read as somewhat gloomy! That isn’t my intention – but it is my intention to consider these things deeply, so that we can find solutions. And these are some initial thoughts about all the above areas.
The “coach ready” organisation:
- Work on the organisational culture before starting on a coaching programme.
- Check employee engagement actions and improve these.
- Understand clearly the obstacles to an open, vulnerable and inclusive culture, and take action to remedy.
Lack of understanding of what coaching is:
- Senior staff to have a good experience of being coached
- Look at definitions of workplace coaching, read case studies on how it works.
- Small pilot scheme with a couple of people being trained to be coaches, and then coaching colleagues.
Lack of commitment:
- Start with the pilot project.
- Link commitment to coaching with the mission statement and values of the organisation.
- Senior people commit first to being coached.
Lack of resources:
- Cost out the options: train internal coaches vs buy in external coaching.
- Work to within your budget.
- Allocate ringfenced time for coaching that only gets cancelled in emergencies.
Lack of measurable outcome:
- Define what outcomes are sought from the coaching, on an organisational level.
- Develop a process for measuring – use case studies and best practice.
- All individual coaching to start and end with quantitative and qualitative measurement scoring.
- Progress during coaching to be tracked, to see impact on an ongoing basis.
Final words
This is the hard work, but well worth doing before any commitment to coaching takes place. The mantra do it well, rather than do it quickly rings true here. It’s worth putting the effort in, to make sure that when coaching starts in your organisation, it is being given the best chance of success.
If your organisation is ready to take coaching seriously, we can help you think through where to start, book a call with us now.
