How to Create a Culture of Coaching

A strong coaching culture, however, cannot sustain itself unless the top workforce development officer — the CLO — embodies the traits and mentoring practices that he or she expects out of the organization’s cultural ladder, Thompson said.

“The most potent way a CLO can be a personal catalyst for creating a coaching culture is to become a great coach,” Thompson said.

After CLOs learn to coach those directly tied to them, the next step is to make sure that those immediately below them in the reporting structure are taking their own steps to become involved in a coaching relationship with subordinates.

Strongly encouraging senior leaders to take part in a high-quality coaching training program is a good starting point. Doing so “will not only build coaching capability but will also demonstrate your commitment to talent and personal development,” Thompson said.

Thompson also recommends that learning leaders heavily skew performance management and reward systems for leaders and employees toward coaching. This, he said, will ensure that coaching eventually becomes part of the organization’s DNA and not just “another managerial competency.”

He even went as far as to suggest that leaders’ performance reviews should be based almost entirely on the performance of those working below them — a test as to how well they’ve been coaching their people.

Lastly, Thompson said, learning leaders should cap their coaching culture initiative by encouraging everyone in the organization to invite someone else to be their coach — even across employees in different functional areas of the organization. This informal coaching structure enables the organization to embrace coaching even when it’s not built into a formalized program.

“The idea here,” he said, “is to start a lot of fires in the organization, and let the CEO and others get swept up in all these fires.”

Frank Kalman is an associate editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine. He can be reached at fkalman@CLOmedia.com.