The broad-based outcomes of a coaching culture

Ali, the sales director, got a call from Tom, the HR director, "We’d like to invite you to be on the Coaching Culture Executive Committee." Surprised at this, Ali asked, "Why me?" to which Tom replied, "Because your business unit will stand to gain probably the most from this initiative."

"How?" Ali responded.

Tom explained that it would transform his sales managers and field sales force to become highly effective people connectors with good innovative abilities to keep improving their sales roles and activities for bigger sales success.

Ali was convinced and became a member of the Coaching Culture Executive Committee, together with other key business unit managers from marketing, finance, production and a few others to be part of the leadership team to oversee the planning, development and management of the company’s coaching culture.

Bringing in a team of business leaders clearly implies that a coaching culture is a strategic business platform to reinvent or rejuvenate the entire organisation for greater organisational capabilities and a better competitive edge.

It is, therefore, not an ‘HR project’ simply to make people happy or to achieve some glorious outcomes in the name of kindness and humanity.

Internally, it means making dramatic shifts in the way people think and act more mindfully, both personally and professionally. When people can act naturally in these behaviours, it means that they are purposeful as they have their eyes on those that help to do more of the right things than the wrong ones.

They are thinking people who often challenge the status quo because they have an appetite for improvement and ask themselves questions such as "Why not? What’s another way? How can it be better?" – and many more.

Leaders who are the products of a successful coaching culture are truly new-age leaders who have successfully shed off the shackles of their traditional command-and-control leadership way – of barking orders at people to get things done – to one that is collaborative and facilitative, where they powerfully engage with their people to elicit ideas and solutions to the highest degree.

Such a new-age way fits in well with the younger generation of people, because they want greater independence and autonomy in their work and life. The presence of this empowers them, which inevitably leads to higher morale and productivity. In such a condition, they grow to be talents of the highest calibre.

The uniqueness in the building of a coaching culture is that you need not wait for a future date to see results. Instead, everything is done on a real-time basis that produces immediate results.

Some positive signs that can be seen quite immediately are: managers acting as facilitators at meetings that empower participants with a bigger say in decision-making; potential employees being coached by their managers to take up higher positions; sales people listening more (and talking less) to find out their buyers’ needs; innovative campaigns being activated to drive improvements in the workplace; training programmes being unified to grow the coach in everyone; and so forth.

Indeed, a coaching culture can change the entire landscape of the workplace, which augurs well for continuous growth and improvement. With such large-scale benefits, it is understood that building such a culture is an ongoing journey, and is definitely not a pit stop, a one-off or a stop-gap measure.

It is pervasive, too, as it involves every department and everyone. It is definitely not an HR function alone.

It is, therefore, advisable that organisations do not embark on this as a short-term initiative (but want long-term results), for it will surely spell failure. The coaching culture is only for those who are committed to this as a ‘fixed-deposit’ investment.

In the third part of the series, we shall cover the back-office aspect of ‘structure and mechanism’ to drive the planning and execution of the coaching culture in the organisation.