“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn, rather than teaching them.” – Timothy Gallwey. 

By instilling a culture of coaching in their organizations, leaders set the stage for the best investment they can make: the in-house nurturing of talent and growth of capabilities within their workforce.

What is the culture of coaching? What are its benefits, and how can leaders adopt it?

Coaching ensures that the potential for growth does not go unrealized. 

We can best define a coaching culture as an environment in which higher-ups encourage employees to develop their skills, through feedback and motivation. An organization built upon such culture values training, feedback, and it provides employees with well-communicated opportunities to advance their careers.

The benefits of continuous coaching are multi-faceted and far-reaching.

• Employees developed under such a culture become greater assets for their organizations. Coaching is an effective way to plant the seeds of future leadership in high-potential employees.
• The workforce, as a whole, becomes more energized, empowered, involved, and willing to make an extra effort for the greater good.
• On a personal level, a coaching environment motivates people by giving them the means and opportunities to improve their skills. It rewards creativity and it creates a more satisfying work environment.

How Do Leaders/Organizations Promote a Coaching Culture? 

Leadership coaching involves the hiring of an outside specialist to improve the skills of the organization’s top tier. Translating this approach to the everyday working environment is the first step toward instilling a culture of coaching.

Coaching culture turns every employee into a coach. 

Leadership coaching involves the hiring of an outside specialist to improve the skills of the organization’s top tier. Translating this approach to the everyday working environment is the first step toward instilling a culture of coaching.

• Leaders should lead by example. As a first step toward a coaching culture, leaders can hire a coach for themselves. Once this type of coaching delivers its benefits, the leader can pass on the newly acquired skills.
• Hiring a coach for every employee in an organization is not a practical option. Leaders should, therefore, strive to provide on-the-job coaching for their teams, within the frame of ongoing operations and real business outcomes. This way, the coached workforce can apply the newly learned skills right away, gaining valuable feedback on their usefulness.
• The culture of coaching is a “trickle-down” culture. Thus, its implementation should start at the top. As leaders pass down their tenets to their reports, it will eventually permeate the entire organization.
• Executives should pick the coaches they bring in carefully. These expert coaches should focus their leadership development efforts on values, skills, and attitudes leaders want to provide for their teams. This kind of coaching needs to deliver coaching skills on different organizational levels. It is not merely advising or mentoring.
• Higher-ups in the organization should introduce coaching routines as a way to integrate coaching behaviors into the culture of their company. Weekly one-on-one coaching sessions with managers could be one way to implement this approach.
• Organizations should be clear and concise about defining what a coaching culture means for them.In this definition, they should delimit it from mentoring and consulting. They should also insist on making coaching behaviors routine, and an integral part of their talent management and leadership development strategies.

Unlike leadership coaching, a culture of organization-wide coaching translates to the real-time development of all team members with the help of all team members. It is a genuine boon to employee value and talent management.

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