Creating A Coaching Culture

How do organizations get the best out of their employees? How do they retain motivated, passionate people? How do companies take managers and turn them into leaders who inspire and support others?

Now, more than ever, leading organizations are recognizing how coaching increases employees’ effectiveness and in turn supports individuals, teams and the organisation as a whole to deliver better results. Businesses all over the world recognise the benefit of investing in their personnel. Personal coaching and work place coach training provide employees with tools which support them to create long term, sustainable growth.

At Empower World, we work with top organisations in the Middle East and beyond to support them to create positive sustainable change and growth – creating leaders and organizations that keep ahead of the competition.

In this ever changing, diverse world we truly believe when organizations support people to develop a growth mindset, employees experience greater empowerment and in turn become even more committed to supporting the organization to reach new heights. We also believe personal coaching and work place coach training are two of the most powerful and cost effective ways of leading and supporting high performance cultures.

At Empower World, we believe when organisations invest in their employees and train them in the skills of coaching and leadership to provide an internal coaching resource – and in fact, create a coaching culture – the effects can be enormous. In fact we believe coaching skills are essential for supporting managers to become effective leaders.

Larissa Thurlow, certified coach and leadership development professional based in Canada was instrumental in the introduction and development of a coaching culture and approach to leadership in the work place within a university based in Qatar. This was with the aim of creating greater organisational awareness, opportunities, resourcefulness and effectiveness.

Larissa shares her thoughts about how having leaders with coaching skills provides a valuable way of creating more awareness, understanding, and new ways of approaching challenges and opportunities within the organization.

“The ultimate goal or vision was not to just have coaches but to have a coaching culture – this is something quite different. When we are talking about trying to build a culture, it is very much leadership at all levels, coaching at all levels. It’s not just coaching which occurs in a formal appointment, but it’s actual informal coaching conversations which are happening top, down, bottom, up, across, laterally throughout the organization so that’s really what we are trying to get.

She continues, “That solution-focused coaching and approach to leadership is really what we were trying to embed within the culture. And trying to create that environment of trust and safety that people could give and get feedback and try to, you know, do things that they hadn’t done without fear. That was really what we are after, for sure.”

So what are some of Larissa’s tips on creating this coaching culture?

She says, “There’s quite a few different phases I would suggest that an organization would go through. Not that it’s a linear process necessarily, but definitely there’s a huge piece just around creating the awareness – getting clarity on what coaching is, what it isn’t. How it aligns with the business goals – that’s really important. If organizations are going to be spending time and money, they need to see some kind of impact and this is where research is important. Return of investment is the best measure – that’s something that you really have to spend some time thinking about. What is it you’re trying to achieve and how will you measure if you have achieved it?”

“That would be the first part, real awareness and engagement, you know planning and then I would say there is another phase which would be the learning and the application so actually growing coaching capabilities. You need coaches, you need people that have coaching skills. Spending time building those capabilities is another important stage. “

“And then what often happens, unfortunately is there’s so much energy that goes into that piece that we kind of forget the last piece which is sustaining and making sure that this carries on. So those are some really big chunk phases or stages that really require time and thinking and energy.

She continues “Look for the champions and the collaboration – if you think about the impact that one-on-one coaching can have, the scalability of that in an organization is just amazing. If you think about doing team coaching and leadership development – it’s really exciting stuff.”

Here are some of the signs we at Empower World believe you will experience when working in an organization with a coaching culture.

People are:

• Helping each other to learn and grow
• Having coaching conversations as part of a continual process throughout the year rather than once a year during annual performance reviews
• Asking questions to support growth
• Actively listening to each other
• Sharing ideas and expertise
• Giving and receiving effective feedback
• Challenging one another to be even better
• Being aware of what it takes to move forward
• Understanding their strengths and how to use them
• Being aware about their gaps and the steps that can be taken to close them
• Taking 100% responsibility
• Being accountable for their choices and actions
• Embracing change
• Coming together to manage conflict
• Understanding others perspective
• Being open minded

We all want to be better, we all strive for something more. Continuous improvement is about supporting and developing self and others and the organization to be the best that they can be. Coaching and learning coaching tools supports collaboration and innovation and enables businesses to understand better who they are, what their values are and how they can move forward into success.

Be empowered.