More and more organizations are recognizing that a “coaching culture” might be something to aspire to have. But do they really know what they are looking for? Leaders in these organizations need to think about what it is that they actually want to be different as the result of the presence of coaching. The target of what they want to achieve should drive what they actual do.
A Notional Case: XYZ provides help-desk responses to their customers. Feedback from customers have said that the Helpdesk staff are “impatient.” Meanwhile, a competitor is getting more business because their staff are reputed to be “very customer oriented.” The CEO of XYZ organization recalls that personal coaching had an impact on him and changed the way he behaved in a positive way. He decided to hire coaches to coach the help-desk staff as a solution to the problem.
Over time, the feedback from customers did improve a little bit, but business kept decreasing because of the competition. He reads in an article that his competitor’s success is because the company has a “coaching culture.” He wonders how he can achieve the same.
Indeed, the competitive edge could be because of a “coaching culture.” What is a coaching culture and how is it that it can give a company a competitive edge?
A coaching culture is less about coaching and more about communication. In a coaching culture, every person from the CEO on down has learned how to communicate more effectively. They have learned to listen…really listen…to each other and to their customers. They ask questions with patience and curiosity and listen for the answers. The employees at this organization are happy because they feel that they are able to share their ideas with management and that management "hears them." Even meetings are more productive ask everyone learns to hear what everyone has to contribute. How did they learn to do this? By learning and implementing coaching skills in all of their communications, whether with their clients or with each other in meetings and daily interactions.
In XYZ company, the strategy of hiring coaches for the help-desk staff, while beneficial to those staff members, was not enough effect real change. In the competitor’s company, the coaching culture was created by implementing the following:
· Trained 5% of their staff (including many leaders) to be internal certified coaches. These internal certified coaches are available to provide coaching to anyone in the organization who wants a coach.
· Trained all leaders at every level who had not learned to be certified coaches, coaching skills to use with their staff and peers.
· Trained all staff members peer coaching skills that they can use with communicating with customers and with other staff members.
The final results of this 360-degree approach is that an organization learns how to better communicate with each other as well as with its customers. There is no question that such an approach, resulting in a coaching culture, can give you a competitive edge.
