Culture Change

Implementing a Coaching Culture with Managers and Leaders

Although coaching has traditionally been used as a developmental tool for executives, in many organizations access has expanded to individuals at every age and stage of their careers. This is because a growing number of organizational decision-makers recognize the capacity of coaching to empower, engage and develop employees.

“What we want to do is create a culture of coaching so that our managers can develop skills in their teams, and empower our employees to make their own decisions and take action on things that they felt they needed to, so that we could have a bigger organization focused on achieving goals. It sounds like you’re releasing capabilities, like you’re handing over stuff to the employees to make decisions, but there is nothing more empowering to an individual than to realize that they made that decision.”

Ricardo Niles, Director HR Global Sourcing Footwear – Adidas Group (ICF & HCI article 2016)

Happier employees achieve greater results.

Organizations with a coaching culture show an elevated level of interconnectedness that leads to a higher level of trust. This in turn enables managers, leaders and teams to create new and better ways of working together. It stimulates inspiration, positivity, innovation and performance.

Building a High Trust Organisation

It’s a core task of all leaders to create a positive climate where individual team members can trust and rely on each other. Yet, however robust the climate, there will always be challenges: a team member who’s under-performing and reacts badly to criticism; someone behaving inappropriately; bad news that has to be delivered – all situations which, if handled inappropriately, can have a damaging effect on the level of trust shared within the organization.

What does it take to implement a strong coaching culture?

Use of all three coaching modalities:

  • external coach practitioners
  • internal coach practitioners
  • and managers/leaders using coaching skills

Impact

  • Employees value coaching
  • Senior executives value coaching
  • Managers/Leaders adopt a “coach like” attitude through coaching skills training and spend an above-average amount of their weekly time on coaching activities
  • Internal coaches receive accredited coach-specific training and abide by the ICF Code of Ethics
  • Coaching has a line item in the budget
  • All employees in the organization have an equal opportunity to receive coaching from a professional coach practitioner.

Benefits

  • Engagement, trust, motivation, job satisfaction
  • Professional and personal growth,
  • Loyalty, sense of belonging
  • Effective Communication, decision making, qualitative team work
  • Self-confidence, energy and stress management
  • Talent development and retention, faster leadership impact
  • Improved employee relations and team functioning
  • Increased productivity and performance

Situations

  • Performance review session
  • Employee development conversations
  • One to one meetings – Formal/ Scheduled or not
  • Team meetings – Formal / Scheduled or not

Coaching Agreements

  • Written agreements are used to create a safe environment for the client to engage in his/her coaching journey and specific objectives.
  • Verbal agreements are usually less formal to discuss the topic of the moment in a context of a development opportunity
  • Implied agreements must outline a time period and modalities and maintain confidentiality even if it is unspoken between managers and his/her report. No gossip.

ProOptim is a network of experienced executive coaches, and our passion is to build business success for our clients.

Our unique approach is to make a bridge between our coaching and training proposals and the research in neurosciences, positive psychology. Train your brain and change your mind to access to best practices in life and at work for an higher level of satisfaction. With many companies, Nathalie Ducrot coaches the leader/manager and trains the team. Her training style is combining coaching with formal training.

Collaboration & Network

Collaboration is an effective way to learn what motivates others, and build quality relationships based on trust and respect. The act of coming together, supporting and sharing knowledge with one another in peer groups is an intrinsic part of what we do. The objective is to nurture long-term collaboration in order to sustain change.

When are you ready to invest in yourself?