Why Your Company Needs a Coaching Culture
What is a coaching culture at work?
A coaching culture at work exists when a company supports and embraces a coaching approach as a key part of development across levels of the organization, from new starters to leadership.
Think of it as an environment that plays to everyone’s strengths, betters employees, and encourages new and innovative solutions.
A company with a coaching culture prioritises employee growth and development and invests in its workforce, allowing them to become true assets. You’ll find companies who are striving towards a coaching culture investing in upskilling their management and leadership with coaching skills, to provide long-term positive impacts as well as seeking professional coaching externally too.
Let’s take a look at some of the common characteristics of a coaching culture:
Open, transparent, and candid workplace communication
Supportive and empathetic leaders, with equally open employees
An environment where leaders listen and provide feedback
The promotion of a growth mindset across the business
Leaders who are open to learning from their team members
Personalized coaching programs being made available to everyone
Why is a coaching culture important for your company?
As employees begin to develop with coaching, reach their personal goals, and learn new skills, productivity, performance, and retention levels rise. Trust us when we say, it drives success, and it’s worth the effort.
But what else can a coaching culture do for you?
Helps to boost performance and build a strong company
A coaching culture has often been referred to as a business imperative. And it’s not hard to see why when you see its effects on developing strong businesses!
With a coaching culture in place, one study found that 80% of employees reported higher performance at work, higher productivity, improved communication, and improved well-being.
As well as investing in external coaching, providing leadership with coaching skills can massively benefit your company too. A study found that managers with coaching skills increased business performance by a huge 130%.
Provides essential wellbeing benefits
Developing a strong coaching culture at work can provide some beneficial wellbeing benefits for your employees.
For example, the focus on employee and employee development that comes with a coaching culture can bring about great uplifts in employee confidence and happiness, while the characteristics of open feedback and continuous learning provides a sense of purpose, boosting employee morale and satisfaction within a company.
When your workers are happier and more satisfied, you’re far more likely to see higher engagement, productivity, interest, and as a result performance.
As Jim Goodnight, CEO, and co-founder of SAS Institute, said:
“Treat employees like they make a difference, and they will.”
Fosters strong workplace teamwork
Research suggests that coaching can boost workplace communication by a significant 70%.
These communication skills learned through coaching boast a whole host of benefits, including allowing for teams to collaborate and work together more effectively. Why? Coaching for teams means defining goals and establishing strategies together, building a cohesive, strong, and well-established group of employees.
So, whether you’re investing in external coaching or building coaching resources from within, you can be sure that your teams are going to grow from strength to strength with a coaching culture.
Helps employees reach their full potential
Not to sound like a broken record, but a coaching culture is all about helping employees reach their full potential.
With coaching, employees can set and achieve personalized goals, keep up to date with and measure progress, and feel supported to better themselves.
When your employees reach their full potential, your business does too – what’s not to love!
Increases employee retention
Another benefit of instilling a coaching culture is the decrease in employee turnover.
Investing in your employees and making them feel as though they have purpose within a company is vital in staff retention – no one likes to feel used for their productivity at work, and if employees do, you’re far more likely to have high levels of turnover.
With EZRA coaching, 77% of participants say they feel more loyal to their company as a result of their coaching experience. And that’s just through one experience. Imagine if you developed a culture of coaching in your business.
How to build and instill a coaching culture
Get buy-in from leaders and influencers
Make your case by demonstrating the value of coaching to those with the power to instill it and get the buy-in from your business leaders to start developing a culture of coaching.
This often means starting at the top. Investing in coaching for talent and leadership first can show business leaders just how good coaching can be, and why it should be put at the forefront of the company’s culture.
Advocate for the benefits
Once you’ve got the buy-in from senior members of the company, a coaching culture isn’t just going to happen.
Start advocating the benefits of coaching to teams and employees, showing them just what coaching might be able to do for them, and any success stories so far. This will help to promote coachability across the business.
Build a learning culture
Alongside this, start building a learning culture around coaching too. Offer training on simple coaching tips, like delegation, feedback, and problem-solving to start building a strong internal coaching culture.
Once you’ve got these opportunities in place, encourage people to share their knew knowledge and ask questions.
Make use of a coaching model
Establish a simple coaching model that can be used company wide. This instills a framework for people to follow, making things clear and developmental to both coach and coachee.