As the modern workplace environment continues to change at pace, the need for a more enlightened approach to management has never been more urgent. No longer will people put up with the traditional, desk-thumping ‘command and tell’ before packing their bags and moving on — instead, retention has become the focus for most employers. And with that focus, comes the need to engage people differently so that they’ll stay for longer than the projected average of less than two years for Millennials...
With Executive Coaches now ten-a-penny, often with no better qualification or recommendation than being a “friend-of-a-friend” or an “old associate”, and organisations rightfully confused about how to bring coaching into their business and whether and how to build an internal coaching culture, we would like to offer a refreshing viewpoint on how to begin to build a sustainable coaching culture and how you can be sure that your investment in this area will deliver a meaningful ROI and a long-term change for the positive within your organisation.
1. Be Inclusive
The focus of a coaching culture is on finding a way of tapping into the potential of all people within an organisation. Instead of forcing changes upon staff in the name of progress, by taking what Notion have dubbed an ‘Operational Coaching’ approach towards establishing a coaching culture, you are inviting everyone in the organisation, at every level, to step up and give more; to begin to maximise their potential.
It is well documented that employees are happier and thus more productive when they feel listened to and recognised for their contribution to the organisation. Operational Coaching works within the environment and beliefs of a business to ensure that everyone feels valued for their contribution and able to discuss this in an open and listening environment. Understanding how to ask better questions is also vital to establishing a successful coaching culture, with a swift benefit of reducing or even eliminating a culture of blame. Establishing the kind of culture where the predominant behaviour is focused more around helping people to think for themselves rather than telling them what to do can also help an organisation to embrace diversity by making it easier to work with colleagues from a range of different backgrounds, environments, and cultures.
2. Positive projection from Leaders
The Captains of Industry (or the Leadership Team to you and me) can often be regarded as a group of mercenaries rather than a team, assembled for their particular skills and often with competing commitments during their tenure; what the organisation truly needs, compared with what they need to achieve personally to maximise their reward package.
Notion believes that the next captain should come from the crew for maximum organisational stability, and a key role of any Business Leader therefore should be to invest in both the talent pipeline as well as their succession development, preparing the next in line to take on the mantle of leadership. By role modelling an operational coaching approach themselves, the leadership team can build up and model their ideas with the next level of management thus spreading the benefits of an emerging coaching culture by encouraging their direct reports to behave similarly.
Leaders should project a positive role model with the purpose of operational coaching clearly articulated and linked directly to supporting the core business strategy. Ideally, the desire to create a Coaching Culture should have a clear sponsor who is highly thought-of within the organisation and Senior Managers in the organisation should be seen to embrace and promote coaching themselves.
These are just 2 of our 7 ideas. Please click the button below to view the full white paper and learn more (including identifying your ROI indicators, creating an audible noise and how a Coaching culture must flow all ways)
