Facing dysfunctional disruption and change? Develop a coaching culture!

First, to disclose the obvious, I’m biased about coaching. I coach leaders for a living. I trained for it, I believe in it and I love doing it. But I’m also a previous HR Executive and know a thing or three about building resilient and productive cultures. For this reason, I’m excited about the benefits of embedding coaching into the values, mindset, and practices of organizations – to augment their culture, not just to develop their employees.

Given the state of constant change in our workplaces (digital transformation, AI, economic pressures, and shifting legislation and demographics, to name a few), coaching as a cultural lever is worth a look. 77% of the respondents in the survey quoted below, said their organizations are in a state of constant change. Coaching cultures encourage greater readiness, acceptance, and resilience. They can promote the dialogue needed to make disruption work toward positive ends. They can fuel a level of problem-solving and idea generation that is difficult to achieve in static, steady-state organizations.

For this reason, I was thrilled to read the recent report, Building a Coaching Culture for Change Management, put out by the Human Capital Institute (HCI) and the International Coach Federation (ICF). The HCI and ICF partnered to research coaching cultures in organizations. Among their findings was the identification that organizations who had coaching cultures performed better overall. 61% of the high performing organizations they surveyed had a strong coaching culture, whereas only 27% did not.

Other findings included:

• Coaching is one of the most helpful ways to develop change management capabilities. Specifically, coaching (both one-on-one and in groups) was rated more helpful than traditional classroom training, e-learning and time with senior leaders during change initiatives.
• Organizations with strong coaching cultures are more likely to have better talent and business outcomes. These results can be seen in the graph below (source: HCI & ICF, Building a Coaching Culture for Change Management).

How do you embed coaching into organizations? Here are a few ideas:

Teach your managers how to coach

• Show them the value of adding coaching to their management toolkit. Although there is a time to direct employees, using questions to help employees explore their issues and options can help them become more self-sufficient, take accountability for their work, and ensure the work they do has impact and meaning – both to themselves and their teams.

Build the practice of individual coaching

• Develop a team of internal coach practitioners (if your organization is large enough) – Ensure that coaching is this group’s primary function and that they are well trained/certified to perform their jobs. Develop ethical standards and protocols and communicate these with full transparency to engender understanding and trust. Enable all employees have equal opportunity to access these internal coaches.
• Develop a roster of qualified external coaches – Even if you have an internal team of coaches (and especially if you don’t), have at least 3 coaches you can call upon when the situation dictates that an external coaching resource would be helpful. When you decide to engage with an external coach, best practice is to give the ‘client’ (the person being coached) 2-3 biographies of coaches to interview and select from. Their comfort level and fit with the coach and his/her style is often a key factor in whether the coaching engagement is ultimately successful.
• Use coaching to work on positive objectives, not just as a last-ditch effort to improve performance - Coaching can be used very effectively to help successful leaders improve their presence, communication style, team performance, project management, or to prepare for promotion or increased responsibilities.

Build the practice of group coaching

Coaching in a group setting can be a wonderful way to facilitate discussion, learning, and growth. Here are a few variations:

• Team coaching – Coaching can greatly assist in-tact departments and teams to clarify goals, roles and processes while improving communication and trust. 
• Inter-team coaching – Similarly, the techniques of coaching can be invaluable in helping two different teams improve their relationships, hand-offs and any issues that exist at the margins where their work intersects.
• Group coaching – It can also be used to help individuals who work in different areas of the company. These groups can be formed based on tenure, similar development objectives, affinity group membership, or randomly. In this way, each participant can receive support not just from the coach, but from their peer group as well.

Build the practice of peer coaching 

• If you engage in group coaching, a wonderful addition is to teach them the skills of coaching one another as peers and colleagues. This will enhance the group coaching discussions and is a skill that will serve them well with colleagues and those they supervise in the future. 

By approaching coaching in a variety of different ways, with different groups, on a regular basis over a period of time, coaching will become embedded as an effective means of driving organizational dialogue and change. When facing challenging situations, people will begin to automatically coach one another through it, moving them toward engagement and renewal, rather than allowing them to exist in a state of resistance or withdrawal.

More ideas? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Intrigued? If so, let’s chat. I’d enjoy learning about your challenges and objectives and brainstorm how coaching may help! 

#coaching, #inspiredleadership, #disruption, #disruptHR, #changemanagement, #change

Robin Elledge is a leadership and executive coach and the founder of Janus Coaching + Consulting (januscoach.com). She would enjoy a conversation about how having a coach can support you. Robin takes an outcomes-based approach to her work, partnering with clients to enhance their self-awareness and help them identify, develop and demonstrate the actions needed to achieve their goals and aspirations. Intrigued? [email protected] 310-439-1186