Organisational outcomes improve when coaching culture is part of business strategy. Creating a coaching culture requires more than good intentions or even a mandate. Coaching culture must be modelled from the top down.

On episode 131 of The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Charlotte Saulny, CEO at Coaching.com, about how organisations can create a coaching culture.

With our recent strategic collaboration between Hogan Assessments and Coaching.com, we are honoured to spotlight how Coaching.com helps people thrive in the workplace. “Assessments are an incredible tool for coaches to help accelerate the impact they can have in coaching engagements,” Charlotte said.

Read on to learn what a coaching culture is, how to build one, and why all leaders and organisations should embrace a coaching environment.

What Is a Coaching Culture?

To Charlotte, a coaching culture is a workplace environment where coaching principles are deeply ingrained into the organisation’s values, norms, and practices. “People have adopted the mindset that every individual has a contribution to make and that if we enable them to make that contribution, we’re going to be a better organisation,” she said.

Creating a coaching culture requires intention and commitment from organisational leaders. Setting values that prioritise uniqueness and growth can help leaders instil a coaching mindset—and skillset—throughout every level of the organisation.

A coaching culture is not the same as a coaching initiative or program. A program may begin and end. But a culture stems from a belief system held by members of the organisation at large. To ensure the culture can be seen, heard, and felt companywide, it often requires change management, communication, and buy-in from everyone in the organisation.

Coaching Culture Misconceptions

“Coaching needs to be modelled by the leaders within the organisation for true adoption,” Charlotte said. She discussed three misconceptions about creating a coaching culture that may keep leaders from embracing coaching:

One misconception is that coaching isn’t practical, when in fact, assessment-based coaching can have a positive impact on nearly every measurable business metric. Another misconception is that coaching is only for poor performers. But when managers have coaching skills, organisations tend to see higher employee satisfaction, improved retention, and more productivity. A third misconception is that coaching is separate from or opposed to performance management, but coaching improves performance for leaders and their teams.

Understanding these misconceptions is the first step. Here’s how to actually build a coaching culture.

How to Build a Coaching Culture

Ask these questions: Why is creating a coaching culture important for your organisation? How does this align with and support organisational values and business objectives? Asking questions about the “why” will help organisations clarify how to use coaching. Charlotte listed additional points for successfully incorporating coaching into your organisational culture:

• Write your coaching charter – This statement could include a definition of coaching culture, the philosophy driving the cultural change, how coaching will and won’t be used, and whether coaching will be internal, external, or both.
• Design your coaching architecture – The plan might outline what level of manager will receive what type of coaching and when. For instance, directors and above might have one-on-one external coaching. Senior managers and managers might have group coaching in cross-functional settings.
• Measure coaching impact and ROI – Direct participant feedback should be paired with 360 feedback to determine the changes that others see in a participant’s reputation. Of course, business outcomes are among the most powerful metrics to consider measuring.

Charlotte told a story about the impact of coaching on employee engagement within a large tech organisation. To start, baseline employee engagement scores were taken from the employees of 200 total managers. One group of 100 managers received six coaching sessions, and another group of 100 received none. After the sessions, engagement scores increased among the employees of the managers who’d received coaching. The employees of the control group did not have increased engagement scores. “Going through coaching helped the managers become better leaders of others,” she said. “That kind of data is gold when you’re trying to get executives on board.”

Personality and Coaching

“Personality profiles give me clues into how I can best coach you,” Charlotte said. For example, some people tend to be more resistant to feedback than others. A coach equipped with nuanced, scientifically validated personality data can both predict that resistance and overcome it. These insights emerge when the coach understands both their own and the participant’s personality data.

In addition to logistics such as geography or frequency, understanding what the participant wants from their coach is essential to a successful coach-participant match. “For the coaching to work, rapport is massively important,” she observed.

Do All Leaders Need Coaching?

Coaching shouldn’t be limited to underperformers. Think about it: the highest-performing athletes have all had coaches. In a pragmatic sense, managers will get a greater return on investment if they focus more time, energy, and effort on coaching top performers instead of underperformers. Organisations need to teach their leaders and managers that high performers and high potentials deserve coaching too. “Everyone can grow, everyone can make a contribution,” Charlotte said.

Not only do all leaders need coaching, but all leaders need to learn the skills of coaching. Coaching skills benefit everyone, not just executive coaches, Charlotte explained. “Taking a coaching approach with someone can really go a long way in terms of unlocking their potential and growth,” she said. Asking questions to help people come to their own conclusions can be as enormously helpful as offering insights, suggestions, or ideas. “We find that when managers have gone through the experience of coaching, they themselves start to incrementally use those skills with their direct reports because they’ve experienced the power and the impact of it.”

Do All Organisations Need a Coaching Culture?

The short answer is yes. A coaching environment celebrates curiosity and the opportunity to learn. Charlotte said: “A coaching culture is a curious culture—curious first, critical second.”

When there’s leadership buy-in and top-down support, organisations can integrate coaching into their values in a way that uplifts everyone. “A coaching culture can’t be mandated. It happens when leaders model a coaching environment,” Charlotte said. Coaching is most effective when woven into the employee life cycle from onboarding through talent development to leadership development.

Communicating Cultural Change

Charlotte advised organisations to continually reinforce the message of why coaching is important and what it means to belong to a coaching culture. The speed of cultural change will likely be perceptible sooner in a 300-person organisation than in an organisation of 30,000 . . . but word of mouth accelerates culture change, no matter an organisation’s size. Positive change can come about with just a few months of consistent communication reinforced by leadership modelling.

“Make sure that your leaders at every level of the organisation are incentivised to become better coaches and given the skills they need to coach effectively,” Charlotte said. This mindset isn’t a call for leaders to become professional coaches but rather to incorporate a coaching approach into their leadership practice. Organisations that are most successful at implementing this change get managers and leaders on board to cascade coaching energy throughout the company.

Final Thoughts on AI and Coaching

Charlotte sees AI set to augment or even replace some pieces of coaching. She cautioned organisations to recognise the power of AI and determine exact parameters for using AI tools in development.

“How does coaching evolve? What does the role of coaching need to be in this new world?” she asked. “What distinguishes us from AI is our humanity. So how do we lean into those things that make us really, really human?”

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 131 of The Science of Personality.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.