Embedding a Coaching Culture

Very few leaders have been able to appreciate the power of leadership coaching as a business proposition. Even fewer leaders appreciate that leadership coaching is an overall orientation that can be drawn upon to achieve strategic shifts that are critical to organizational and individual success. I am not talking about the traditional model of external executive coaches coaching leaders, I am talking about a new game-changing paradigm wherein the leader is the coach. When leaders act as coaches, they are much more able to facilitate profound shifts within their organizations. They become able to unlock purpose, passion, performance, engagement, and ownership, and successfully channel these elements to increase value for the business substantially.
Leaders need to understand coaching as a business proposition, and to learn how to utilize a coaching orientation to shift performance, create a growth mindset culture and sustain the kind of engagement that enables sustainable success. At the heart of leadership coaching is the opportunity to shape and embed a high-performance culture where the mindsets, attributes, emotions, behaviors, skills, and knowledge align around what the business needs achieve to succeed. Incorporating coaching as a business proposition provides four key benefits
1. Alignment around what’s truly important to organizational, team or individual performance
2. Engagement of hearts and minds to unleash discretionary effort and free the x-factor
3. Building the organization capability to succeed
4. Creating a culture of accountability.
When organizations embed a coaching culture, we see leaders engage with others to facilitate transformational impact. We see leaders engage in conversations that genuinely unlock value across a myriad of conversations. We see leaders create a strategic approach to creating a coaching culture and developing the skills, behaviors, attributes, and mindsets to operationalize one.

There is a real danger today that organizations be confused as to what constitutes a coaching culture.

I spoke recently with an HR Leader who proudly shared how her organization had nailed ‘a coaching culture.’ I was a little bemused, knowing that the business was not highly regarded. A robust coaching culture should translate into better business performance. Here are clues an organization does not have a coaching culture.