Creating a culture of coaching in your company or team produces results that transforms productivity, engagement, communication, performance, job satisfaction, and profit. When a company implements a coaching approach with their leadership team which then permeates throughout the organization, it provides numerous benefits including: team collaboration, leadership development, talent retention, business growth, greater efficiency, increased innovation, and high performance. The question is where do you start in developing a coaching culture?
The first step in transitioning to a new culture or leadership approach with coaching is to engage the leadership team in experiencing coaching for themselves. This experiential learning will demonstrate what coaching is and is not, the benefits of it, and why it is valuable so they can be role models for the rest of the company. It is highly recommended that leaders receive both private and team coaching to determine which will be best for the different departments and align them with the company objectives.
Developing a Leadership Coaching Program Specific to your Company
Once the leadership team has an understanding of the coaching methodology, the next step is to align a customized coaching program or leadership development program to the company’s objectives. A leadership consultant and ICF trained coach will provide the expertise on coaching and be able to work with your company on customizing specialized programs. Having a leadership development coaching program helps companies retain, prepare, and promote promising talent; it also develops their team with guide posts on specific competencies expected of them leading to higher performance.
Whether the leadership coaching program is for a technology company, a college or university, a professional services firm, or a non profit, it will combine the unique aspects of your organization with the highly effective skill of coaching. If your organization’s goal is to provide coaching skills to your leadership team so they build coaching into the way they lead, this can be developed and delivered.
The Vision and Strategy of a Coaching Culture
What does it look like for a company to have a coaching culture? Here is what a company can envision with coaching as part of their organization:
- Superior communication skills and efficiency due to clear communication and expectations
- Higher productivity and performance due to increased engagement
- An open, agile, growth minded working environment
- Greater innovation by fostering more ideas, solutions, and asking powerful questions
- More collaboration and efficient team work
- A streamlined process to develop people, leaders, and teams
A company who is looking to bring coaching to their organization or leadership team, has the option of hiring an external coach who can work in partnership with their human resources people leaders or have an internal coach. The strategy of implementing a coaching culture can then be facilitated by the leadership development coach and or co- created. There are some strategic elements to a coaching program that include:
- Personality Assessment for Leaders and Teams (Hogan Personality Assessment)
- Competencies Specific Coaching to refine behavior and skills for each role
- New Leaders or High Potential Leader development coaching
- Career Leadership Progression Plans / Succession Plans
- Team Communication, Collaboration, Performance Coaching
- Business Development Coaching
- Communication Skills for Leaders and Teams
Team Leadership Coaching
One of the most exciting and effective options companies need to consider for their leaders and teams is the ability to offer team group coaching or leadership team coaching. This absolutely needs to be a step in the corporate decision making when creating a culture of coaching and the choice is where to implement private coaching verses where to provide team coaching.
Team coaching lead by an experienced and qualified coach can not only facilitate forward momentum with efficiency, but they are also able to unite the team, increase innovation, streamline solutions, guide results, and create a safe space for collaboration and ideas to be shared. Group coaching saves time, leads progress, combines the strengths of the team, and produces systems of efficiency co-created by the entire team. It is highly effective and delivers a competitive advantage due to the synergy of merging the entire team’s ideas, skills, and assets that can only be created in a group goal focused space.
Corporate Leadership Coaching Benefits to the Bottom Line
As with any new company initiative, the final step in implementing a culture of coaching in your company, is to put structures in place to measure its efficacy and the return on investment. There are both subjective and objective results to implementing leadership coaching and leadership development programs. A company must first itemize why they want to implement coaching and the benefits they want to receive from leadership coaching. Once these are identified, the appropriate measurement and feedback tools can be administered as part of the leadership program process.
There are multiple benefits companies receive from leadership coaching some of which directly impact the bottom line and others that are subjective in support of a company’s most valuable asset, their people. Therefore assessments of effectiveness will not only need to align with objectives, but also the intangible values of the culture a company desires to create. Here is a list of the benefits of developing a culture of coaching and providing leadership coaching to your leaders and teams:
- Talent retention, attraction and acquisition
- Reduced Employee Turnover and Lower Training Costs
- Higher engagement and therefore higher performance
- Greater Innovation, enhanced problem solving, efficient solutions
- Support and streamlined transition for new leaders
- Increased team collaboration, efficiency, and high performing teams
- Improved Communication company wide
- Better conflict resolution skills and less time wasted on conflict
- Lower absenteeism and presenteeism
- Improved stress, time, and energy management reducing sick days
- Superior leadership skills for vision, strategy, and people leadership
- Increase in profit due to higher engagement, performance, team work, efficiencies, retention, communication, creativity, and health
One of the Most Significant Benefits to a Coaching Culture in Companies
At the core of coaching is the belief that each person is resourceful and has the answers they seek. One of the most valuable results of a coaching culture is creating a team of individuals who are solution seekers and empowered with their own insights and clarity. Coaching provides a space that facilitates each individuals resolution to problems, stress, and conflict. This creates a forward moving team of people that gain momentum and clarity to far surpass previous limitations and goals.
At the point that a team’s thinking and actions align with the objectives of the new coaching culture, an extraordinary shift in performance, happiness, and leadership is experienced.
There is a reason Fortune 500 companies are utilizing coaching as a way of life in their companies, yet corporate leadership coaching is available to small and medium sized companies too who need it the most so they can grow and compete. A shift towards a coaching culture is a step towards progress, growth, efficiency, and developing extraordinary leaders.
If your company, team, university or organization would like to discuss how to start a culture of coaching or leadership coaching, email [email protected] for a complimentary consultation. Jody is a leadership development and ICF trained coach delivering leadership coaching programs in Greater Vancouver, B.C. She is available for external and internal coaching assignments.
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