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Seasons Greetings!
We wish you, your
family, and your organization a safe Holiday Season and a
Prosperous New Year!
Here is our next
installment of describing our work in helping leaders to create
a true High Performance organization...enjoy...
The Process
of Creating a Coaching Culture
We would define the
process of creating a coaching culture as “a long-term developmental
process for building organizational capacity to create and
sustain high-performance results.”
The definition may
be easy to articulate – the process of shaping a culture is
harder. Why? Because an organization’s culture is composed
of the collective attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, relationships,
and processes by which members of the culture operate. It
is “how we do things around here.” These dynamics are established
over long periods of time, and are difficult to shift rapidly,
yet critical to address if the organization wants to create
and sustain performance over the long haul. Culture is the
powerful interpretative filter through which all strategic
decisions and changes are perceived and experienced. It’s
the 800 pound gorilla that can eat strategy
for lunch!
Since culture shifting
takes place over several years (with care and feeding), it
requires a long-term commitment from leadership. Culture change
is most effectively, and perhaps only, accomplished when the
leaders of the organization are willing to become champions
of the coaching process and conscious role-models
of effective coaching. Of the seven core fundamental dimensions
of a coaching culture we describe on our website, let’s take
a closer look at the first – the role leaders play in this
transformation.
Leaders Become
Positive Role Models – this requires that the leaders
of the organization become sufficiently inspired about the
prospects of creating a coaching culture, that they are willing
to become committed to leading the way. Since leaders set
the tone, pace, and expectations for the culture, they lead
this organizational development process by changing themselves
first by going through their own personal transformation from
BOSS OF PEOPLE to COACH FOR PEOPLE.
Each participates in an authentic developmental process, including
some of the following developmental steps we do with our clients:
a 360 ° feedback process on coaching competencies, a personal
coaching contract, and works with a personal coach (a learning
partner).
If an organization’s
top leaders have been coached from outside executive coaching
professionals, we build upon those positive experiences. These
one-on-one external coaching relationships serve as a model
and springboard for the leader becoming a coach
for their respective teams.
As a unified message from the top,
the senior leadership team needs to “own” the change
process, demonstrate their “coach-ability”, and be
engaged in developing people as the sustainable competitive
advantage for the business.
To build trust and
demonstrate “ownership” of the initiative, they must speak
with one voice in support of the new coaching
culture – they are “on the same page.”
Coaching represents
“applied leadership”. As leaders become master coaches, they
have a powerful tool to create energized teams
focused on improving performance and creating a competitive
advantage for the business.
Life at the top can
be lonely, and people tend to tell the CEO what they think
they want to hear. As CEO’s become more effective and approachable
as coaches, they begin to receive more and better
quality feedback on their behavior and decisions,
placing them closer to the heart beat of the organization.
This is a clear “reality check.”
Leaders become significantly
more effective as they deliver critically-important,
time-sensitive feedback to people – in a way people can hear
it. The organization is better able to benefit from the wisdom
of its leadership as they coach others.
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