Transforming Organisational Culture through Coaching

Organisations continue to look for ways to improve the productivity of their staff and retain talent. Coaching has been found to be a particularly effective way of improving performance, leading to increased productivity and competitive advantage for the organisation. Employees who are coached tend to stay longer in the organisation because of their felt concern that the organisation values them and wants to support their development and career progression. Research has shown that the benefits that coaching delivers to organisations with a coaching culture include: higher employee engagement (60% of employees rated as highly engaged compared with 48% of all other organisations); higher revenue growth (63% of organisations report being above their industry peer group in 2014 revenue compared with 45% of all other organisations); and higher engagement levels for high-potentials with access to external coaches or managers and leaders as coaches (as reported by 60% of organisations) (International Coach Federation). Within European and North American organisations, coaching has become an accepted practice and a billion dollar industry. However within Australian organisations, coaching is not as well-known and accepted as a valid organisational practice. The coaching that is conducted in Australian organisations is usually conducted one-on-one via executive coaching for the CEO and senior executives and may be included as part of their salary package as they enter the C-suite realm. Leadership coaching may also be delivered at the middle management level to existing and emerging leaders as well as to talented individuals as part of the organisation's talent management program and succession plan. Increasingly, organisations are recognising the need to skill their team leaders and frontline employees in coaching skills, as these are the people with direct access to customers and clients. The relationships that they forge with customers and clients are so very important in terms of the organisation's ability to make sales and retain satisfied, repeat customers who tell all their friends. Productivity increases result and the organisation gains competitive advantage by developing a coaching culture throughout the organisation. There are significant benefits to individuals who are coached. They develop increased leadership capability and improved `people skills' in terms of communication and relationships with colleagues and others in the organisation. In addition, their ability to influence key stakeholders both in and external to the organisation grows. At the team level, group coaching improves team cohesion, increases cooperation and collaboration, and reduces conflict. Issues can be addressed as they occur, negating the need to take the matter further and cause loss of staff morale and engagement. The organisation benefits from increased productivity gains and an improved position with the marketplace. Organisations with an appreciation of coaching, and foresight into how coaching can be used to benefit the business, are engaging executive coaches who have an overview of the external marketplace and intelligence in terms of what other organisations are doing in the coaching space, to guide the development of a coaching culture within their organisation. The executive coach works with an internal coaching champion to blueprint an approach which cascades coaching throughout the organisation, including to team leaders and members in customer-facing services functions e.g. call centres. The executive coach works with the C-suite to design that blueprint and develop an implementation plan. Leadership coaches are engaged to work with a designated operational role member of a specifically-formed Coaching Culture Development team. The executive coach liaises with the designated contact person and together, they customise plans and actions to train leaders in coaching skills and deploy coaching throughout all levels of the organisation. This approach builds the organisation's human capital capability as a major asset in the organisation's ability to grow and sustain into the long-term. In coaching organisations, executive and leadership coaches train and coach all members of the leadership team plus aspiring talent. Leaders coach their direct reports and others in the organisation including frontline managers and team leaders. Peer coaching is introduced as a means to ensure that all employees are coached on a daily basis, formally or informally, in how to better interact with customers to generate increased sales for the business. The result is improved customer engagement with the organisation, longer-term customer loyalty, and increased revenue for the organisation in secure pipelines. These outcomes from coaching support the research evidence that coaching contributes positively not only to individual performance but also to organisational effectiveness. In organisations which aspire to develop a coaching culture, a fragmented approach to coaching has no long-term benefits to individuals, teams or the organisation. The coaching commences. The individual improves. The coaching concludes. Some change occurs. However, if the coaching is not sustained or internalised, the individual often returns to previous habits, drawn back into expected behaviours by colleagues and/or the contextual environment or both. The benefits of coaching are lost. This type of individual coaching has typically been arranged by an organisational leader with little or no knowledge of, or skills in, coaching - someone who just wants a `problem' to go away. However, when there is an organisational leader with a passion for coaching, who knows or has personally experienced the benefits of coaching, the outcome is different. The piecemeal approach to coaching is replaced by a whole-of-organisation focus which starts to develop a coaching culture in pockets of the organisation. These pockets of coaching occur in areas of the business where there is a committed manager with the authority to make decisions and allocate resources, typically within revenue-generating sales and services functions. In order to identify the strategies and mechanisms that support, promote and embed the development of a coaching culture in organisations beyond the dedication and commitment of a single, passionate individual, I conducted research into how Australian organisations are progressing on this journey. These interviews have provided a window into the workings and aspirations of Australian organisations as their leaders attempt to influence those in more senior, decision-making positions to adopt what they believe to be one of the most powerful ways of developing employees and growing an organisations' productivity and competitive advantage, and then embedding coaching into the organisation to achieve transformational, cultural change.