Create a coaching culture in your organisation

You’re sold on coaching, have learnt to coach well, and have started using coaching in your everyday work activities. What next? Often people ask us how to go to the next stage, i.e. to have coaching taking place throughout their organisations, for the benefit of individuals and the organisation itself.

This is a job of work to do, but is well worth investing in to create a coaching culture in the organisation you work in or support.

What does a coaching culture look like in an organisation?

This varies from organisation to organisation, but typical common elements include:

Commitment from senior leadership
to coaching being a principle way
of working

Highly skilled, well trained coaches, who have the opportunity to continue developing as coaches, and who have been assessed as being of a high standard in their coaching

Coaching being used as
a positive developmental tool,
and not a remedial one

Opportunities for everyone in the
organisation to access coaching
on a regular basis

That coaching sessions are well structured, following a consistent and highly effective coaching process

Time, structure and systems are
in place to ensure that coaching
is given a priority

Managers and leaders use coaching
informally as part of their
everyday skills

Everyone has a personal and professional development plan, focussed on the long term, that is regularly updated

Benefits of coaching are regularly measured, to ensure and improve on its effectiveness, both for individuals and the organisation

Clearly, for organisations to get to this level of creating a coaching culture takes time and commitment. We can help at each stage, to ensure that you embed coaching as much as you want to

What’s in it for the organisation?
Why coaching?

If you have been coaching, you would have already seen some of its benefits: more empowered team members; people prepared to solve their own challenges; people noticing and working on the areas they are not strong at; a spirit of continual improvement.

And you may have started to notice some of the wider organisational benefits: reduced absenteeism; improved productivity; increased wellbeing indicators

Organisations who choose to invest in any way in coaching are seeing the benefits. Investing in coaching just for the leadership team has an impact on leadership capability, and has a wider influence through the organisation. And organisations who make coaching widely available see a more comprehensive impact

Organisations who have invested heavily in coaching and have seen the benefits include

Commercial sector: Tesco, Eurostar, DHL
Voluntary sector: Malcolm Sargent; WaterAid
Education sector: Portsmouth Grammar School; Dubai English Speaking School

Start from where you are

Every organisation will have a different reason to create a coaching culture. Your organisation may be new to coaching, or quite a long way down the line. It may want a comprehensive programme or a lighter approach.

In each of these cases, an individual plan needs to be developed. Which is how we will work with you.

Our approach is to find out where you are at with coaching, discuss your organisation’s aspirations, and then make a plan together. We will then help you deliver the plan, using a combination of our processes and your in-house capabilities

How we will work with you

Phase 1: fact finding

We look to find out what the organisation is doing with coaching, and what its goals are. We’ll ask for a questionnaire to be filled in, then have a site visit to meet senior leaders and colleagues who play a role in shaping the organisation’s culture.

From this a report will be produced, with recommendations for the short and long term

Phase 2: developing a plan

All plans are individual to each organisation, so they differ. Below is a list of the types of activities that typically appear on plans:

Identifying and agreeing a long-term coaching strategy
Appointing a champion(s) to manage and maintain momentum
Define how coaching will be accessed: regularity; coach allocation; ringfencing time
Identifying and recruiting initial cohort of coaches
In depth coach training for coaches, possibly attached to a qualification
Lighter touch coach training for all managers, so they can use coaching skills in their day to day interactions
Individual development plans, how to get the most of out being coached – whole staff training
Ways to measure the benefit of coaching are developed and agreed. Linking coaching to the organisation’s wider vision
Regular reviews of coaching taking place – coachee surveys; further training and action learning for coaches
Sharing of the coaching experience with clients and stakeholders

Phase 3: implementing the plan

Some of the above activities require further training, which we are happy to provide. Others can be taken care of in-house. In either case, the plan will outline exactly how it will be implemented, so that everyone is clear, and that the process is seamless

Often great ideas get developed in organisations, with lots of momentum, but the implementation is where it slows down or gets confused. We’ll follow a plan-do-act-check process used in project management to ensure that your great ideas are turned into reality

Now is the time for coaching

We have all seen the changes that are taking place in the world of work recently. Different working patterns, the growth of home and remote working, budget restrictions in the public sector, higher expectations of productivity from employers, higher expectations of job satisfaction from employees….

There are many ways to address these issues. We promote coaching as the way that impacts on so many of the challenges that organisations and individuals face. Coaching:

Increases self-responsibility and empowerment at all stages of the organisation (CIPD 2015)
Has a direct impact on productivity, performance and wellbeing (Sherpa Global survey 2015)
Helps to contribute to a culture of inclusiveness where people want to work (Tesco review of coaching 2014)

Up to 40% of Fortune 500 companies and Sunday Times best employers’ companies use coaching – so how about your organisation?

Read our FAQs for Creating a coaching culture

Create a coaching culture