Defining your coaching culture

Coinciding with this happening, I am also taking this route by writing a series of articles this year on the subject.
The purpose is to support and guide planners and implementers of the coaching culture so they take the right steps to ensure this big and serious initiative is successful for organisations in the short and long term.
To kick off this series of articles, let us define what a coaching culture really is.
The “big picture” is the growth of a dynamic and successful organisation that has everyone aligned to its vision and values.
The “middle picture” of it is the deep engagement of leaders and their followers to learn and grow together in the shared goals of the organisation.
The “small picture” (or the grassroots) is the ability and commitment of an organisation’s leaders to inspire and lead their people in empowering ways, propelling them to break new ground and excel for the good of the organisation and themselves.
Taken from this perspective, a coaching culture is really about people empowerment at the highest level throughout an organisation, and involving everyone. It is also about thinking and acting in a heightened state of awareness so as to propel everyone along the same path and attain the desired organisational results in the most successful and fulfilling way.
Seen in this context, it appears that a coaching culture is at the apex of any other organisational initiatives, such as high-performance culture, learning culture, thinking organisation.
Indeed, it is the ultimate attainment for any organisation.
Obtaining a good coaching culture is no small feat. It is not a destination to reach but a continuous journey of transformation that reveals more and more for the organisation. So an organisation should not regard this as a short journey.
An organisation taking this route needs to make a life-time commitment for organisational rejuvenation that is aimed at gearing everyone up to be people smart with the highest level of emotional intelligence.
This calls for alignment and integration in everything they do in the name of organisational rejuvenation. It requires everyone to think and act like coaches.
So this begs the interesting question as to why it is called a coaching culture.
Organisations going for this need to know what coaches are and what they do. Coaching should be at the centre of every other initiative, be it a talent-development programme, a performance-management system, a reward system, training programmes, manpower planning and so forth.
They all must converge to coaching, and nothing else. So a long-term commitment to coaching is a must if a coaching culture is to become a reality.
Taking an easy and adopting weak thinking should be replaced with more strategic coaching-based thinking, where all parts of any organisational initiative should fit into the whole, allowing a coaching culture to take root.
Broadly speaking, there are three perspectives to consider in building a coaching culture – the coach, those coached and the coaching relationship.
Essentially, the coach’s perspective is taken by those in leadership positions, where it is about creating and inspiring the vision and |creating the momentum for their |people to put their plans into action.
For those coached, it’s about having a forward-thinking mindset.
The relationship between leaders and their staff needs to be so empowering that it propels each other to do their part in bringing about the desired results both parties want.

Next month, the second article shall address the success measurement that needs to be in place in the next stage of building a coaching culture.