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Coaching Culture: what is it and how would you

bring it into your organisation?

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Coaching Culture: what is it and how would you bring it into your organisation? Until recently business and executive coaching has been focused on 1:1 coaching of senior executives. Whilst this 1:1 focus remains important it is increasingly being seen as a rather limited form of intervention. Organisations are more and more seeking to introduce coaching to the whole organisation under the heading of coaching culture. However, though a coaching culture is becoming viewed as a good thing to have, there is often less clarity about what it is! Hence the title of this introduction to coaching culture: what is it and how would you bring it into your organisation?

Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005) offer a useful definition of coaching culture:

“Coaching is the predominant style of managing and working together, and where a commitment to grow the organisation is embedded in a parallel commitment to grow the people in the organisation” (p.19)

Organisations are investing in developing coaching cultures because they anticipate the following benefits

• A constant focus on high performance

• Decision making rooted in the knowledge and skills of the most appropriate people

• The continuous, ongoing development of people at all levels of the

organisation

• A positive impact on peoples’ morale, motivation and engagement with the organisation

A coaching culture has the following attributes:

• There is a strong business case for coaching: it is integral to achieving the organisations key objectives

• Coaching is integrated into the organisations policies and procedures (e.g. leadership development, recruitment, performance management)

• The senior management team and managers at every level demonstrate their

commitment to coaching (e.g. by being coached and coaching others) and receive feedback on the quality of their coaching (e.g. as an aspect of 360 degree feedback processes)

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• Coaching mindset, principles and skills permeate all relationships throughout the organisation (e.g. managers use coaching skills with their direct reports; colleagues engage in coaching conversations with each other)

The creation of a coaching culture is still an aspiration in that no organisations have attained all its attributes. However Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005; 2006) offer a useful framework for considering the stages of development of coaching cultures (Nascent; Tactical; Strategic; Embedded) that can be useful as ‘diagnostic’ for an organisation seeking to understand what elements of a coaching culture they have in place, and what/how to further develop

Developing a coaching culture in your organisation

Developing a coaching culture will involve a substantial investment of recourses (financial, time, etc.) therefore the first question for any organisation must be why take this journey? What are you seeking to achieve and is creating a coaching culture the appropriate way to achieve it? If it is agreed that developing a coaching culture is the way forward then ‘buy in’ from the senior management team is vital to drive the initiative, as it will affect every aspect of the organisation

The metaphor of a journey may be quite helpful in planning the way forward as it invites consideration of where you are now and what are the steps to take on the route? The Clutterbuck and Megginson framework is quite useful here. It can also be helpful to separate out and consider some of the elements of creating such a culture. For example one might expect to have established or establish:

• The business case for bringing in a coaching culture

• Top team ‘buy-in’ and commitment to introducing a coaching culture

• The integration of coaching into organisational policies and procedures

• The means by which coaching behaviour is going to be measured and rewarded

• 1:1 coaching of senior executives and managers, perhaps by external

coaches

• Team coaching for the senior management team

• Senior executives and managers coaching other personnel in the organisation

• Accredited training of a cadre of internal coaches to a professional level as a resource for the organisation

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• Coaching skills training for managers to enhance their capability in their role,

enabling them to have quality coaching conversations with direct reports

• Training to enable people across the organisation to have ‘candid conversations’, giving and receiving feedback and engaging in the difficult conversations that may be required to address interpersonal and performance issues (see Crane 2009)

Some useful publications on coaching cultures

Anderson, M. C., Frankovelgia, C., Hernez-Broome, G. Creating Coaching Cultures: what business leaders expect and strategies to get there. A CCL Research White Paper. Centre for Creative Leadership

Clutterbuck, D., and Megginson, D. (2005) Making Coaching Work: creating a coaching culture CIPD

Crane, T. G., (2010) The Heart of Coaching: using transformational coaching to create a high- performance coaching culture F T A Pr

Garvey, G., Stokes, S., and Megginson, D. (2009) Coaching and Mentoring: theory and practice Sage

Megginson, D., and Clutterbuck, D. (2006) Creating a Coaching Culture Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol 38, No 5, 2006, 232-237, Emerald Publishing Group