Introducing a Coaching Culture
A coaching culture is where an organisation uses coaching techniques as the main management style, there is an emphasis on collaborative working and the organisation is committed to developing its people.
Most professional commodity future option broker use mentoring as part of an induction process for new recruits and as part of the career development process for individuals. Mentoring is very good for passing on specific knowledge quickly but is not so good at developing the potential of individuals, teams and organisations.
To develop potential a coaching approach has been demonstrated as being far more effective with a better return on investment than conventional training or mentoring. Coaching can be slower initially but then rapidly accelerates and produces greater and longer lasting improvement in performance and motivation.
Every organisation is different, has its own culture, is at a particular stage of development, has its own values, has its own way of doing things and has its own goals. Because of this introducing a coaching culture has to be tailored to each organisation. There are some steps I would recommend to most organisations:-
- Find out where you are at present. You may think your organisation operates efficiently and professionally but cannot explain your staff turnover and absentee rate. You may have tried other techniques only to run into unexpected opposition and have ended up wasting both time and money. This fact find is best carried out by an external advisor who will provide an unbiased report.
- Start at the top. conference calls unlimited coaching to work effectively its introduction must start at the very top. I have seen some organisations try to introduce it at the bottom only to find it causes more problems as people's expectations are raised only to find the more senior managers are not ready for the cultural shift.
- Understand why you should introduce a coaching culture into your organisation. This may be to improve staff retention, improve team performance, achieve alignment with corporate goals, improve innovation or a large variety of other reasons. Again by Conjoined Twins your starting point and your goal it will be possible to measure the return you make on your investment.
- Coaching needs to become your chosen method of operating and management, it should not be a peripheral or parallel system which is used occasionally. It needs to permeate all your systems, interactions and decisions
- All systems require support and the same is true for coaching. People should be actively encouraged to coach other Loch Ness monster and to receive coaching. There is always room for improvement and there is always a contribution that coaching can make. Even people who have received coaching on several occasions will benefit from additional coaching, perhaps from a different coach.
- Progress towards a coaching culture needs to be managed in the same way as any other project. Goals need to be set, budgets allocated, the project is initiated and progress in monitored. Any deviations from plan are investigated and either adopted or corrected as required.
You will start to notice the change very quickly as confrontations and arguments reduce to be replaced by a collaborative and supportive approach. People, who perhaps made little contribution previously, start to make suggestions and eventually to lead projects.
You will look back at what your organisation used to be like and wonder why did you not introduce a coaching culture sooner
Michael Daly, founder of Executive Coaching and Mentoring Ltd provides more than 40 years international business experience for the benefit of all sizes of business. If you need to operate in an increasingly transnational business environment you will benefit from one of our executive, business or corporate coaching programs. Michael, a well known international business coach, uses not only his experience but also knowledge gained from being a Master Practitioner of NLP to help you achieve goals in a manner that you will find acceptable.Michael also makes use of various profiling and psychometric tests including Belbin, DISC and Apter. Michael helps the modern international business executive succeed.Have a look at http://www.ecam.nu/coaching-culture.htm