How do you create a coaching culture in your organisation?
The starting point is to ask “Why do you need a coaching culture?”
Then, and this is a big one, “What is coaching?”
At New Results, we look beyond one to one time and explore coaching in its purest form – non-directive coaching. That is learning to ask rather than tell.
We help people understand the difference between mentoring (a more experienced person sharing their experience with their mentee) and coaching (helping your coachee find their own solutions and ideas).
So once you have clarity on coaching, you simply need to know when to use it (it’s not a tool that will solve every challenge and issue).
Coaching normally works well when someone has some experience and skills in a given area and is looking to develop and grow. It can be used when an experienced member of your team is facing new challenges and you can use coaching to help them identify new solutions and approaches.
As a side note, one of the brilliant things that coaching can do, is to promote deep conversation about “evidential feedback” between coach and coaches. These conversation really promote things like ownership, accountability and growth. Without good quality evidential feedback it’s very hard to know how to grow.
Here are our six tips for creating a coaching culture:
- Get clarity on what coaching is for everyone in your organisation.
- Create coaching contracts, being clear on what you expect from your coaches and coaches.
- Be open to learning in this space (people need to learn to coach and be coached).
- Help everyone understand coaching in all t’s forms. It can be a single question asked in a busy office or a deep dive over several hours working one on one.
- Create time and space for your new coaches to apply their skills and support each other.
- Understand that coaching unlocks people’s potential, it will take time and rewards are brilliant – be patient, you are investing in your people.
The big mistake that organisations make when trying to create a coaching culture is trying to take either a bottom up or a top down approach. The truth is, it needs to be both. Everyone across your organisation should be involved in creating a productive, warm and rewarding coaching culture.
