The True Meaning Of A Coaching Culture

Increasingly, leaders are talking about building a Coaching Culture in their organisations. So what is a Coaching Culture? Basically, this is another way to describe a culture of high performance in an organisation. In fact it is better to call it this than a coaching culture as there are so many ways of interpreting it, let alone giving the impression that it is all about coaching one another, and nothing else. This is not sufficient because many other outcomes are also visible when a coaching culture exists.

In this regard, a high performing organisation achieves this coaching culture state when there is coaching with these signs appearing at three levels in an organisation.

The first level or the ‘big picture’ of it is a dynamic and successful organisation, which has most people who are somewhat aligned to its vision and values. There is unison of common purpose and goal and lesser ‘boundary drawing’of what is yours and mine.

The‘middle’picture lies in the deep engagement of leaders and their followers who are eager to learn and grow together in the shared goals of the organisation. This is the learning aspect of the organisation. Learning helps to break new grounds, and get them out of their comfort zone for innovation to take place.

The ‘small picture’ (or at the grassroot) is the ability of committed leaders who can and want to empower and lead their people in an inspiring way. There is high morale among them and lesser conflicts in the workplace.

Getting a Coaching Culture is no small feat. It is not only a long-term exercise and neither is it a destination to reach but a continuous journey of innovation to transform the organisation to become better and better. This is logical as the marketplace is constantly changing at a very fast rate. In fact, an organisation will be in trouble if it does its things in the same way, day after day. Not only will boredom sets in but it will soon become irrelevant too.

So when an organisation commits to lifelong improvement, it is on a continuous mode for enhancement and innovation in its business direction, products, people’s skills, policies and so on. Instant gratification is not practical and does not exist at all.

An organisation that takes this route is also aimed at helping its people to be people smart with the highest level of emotional intelligence. In more ways than one, when they have this, their leaders are actually coach leaders who operate in their non-directive leadership ways and are very facilitative to unleash the potentials of their people.

So leaders are coach leaders where coaching is at the epicentre of all their leadership practices — be it for talent development, performance management system, training activities, manpower planning and so forth. Hence, a long-term commitment to coaching is a must for a Coaching Culture to become a reality in the organisation.

A more strategic coaching-based thinking is needed where every organisational initiative revolves around the principles and philosophy of Coaching for a true Coaching Culture to take root, which commonly involves three parties — the leaders (who are the coaches), the people (who are the coachees) and the partnership (or the coaching relationship).

Essentially, the coach’s perspective is about creating and inspiring the vision and creating the momentum for people to forward their actions to reach it. The coachee’s perspective is about acting with a forward-thinking mindset that will get them there. The third perspective is an empowering coaching relationship that propels everyone to strive to reach common purpose and goal in the most successful and fulfilling way for all.

For our ICF-accredited coaching and non-coaching programmes, call 03-6205 4488 or log on to www. corporate-coachacademy.com. You can read more about coaching in the “Stories That Coach” @ http://mikeheah. blogspot.com.