Instilling a coaching culture delivers a great promise— a high-performance environment that holds your people accountable for delivering results while fostering a climate of full engagement, personal development, and mutual support. It’s a key ingredient to creating a symbiotic relationship between employee productivity and wellbeing.  

Join LeggUP and Harvard psychologist, best-selling author, and executive coach Jeff Hull, Ph.D. for an actionable discussion on the benefits of creating a coaching culture, specific strategies to tackle internal impediments to coaching programs, and, how to foster a coaching culture through CSS: Clarity, Capabilities, and Support, by watching the video below or read on for key takeaways.

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Is Coaching the Same as Mentoring?

Mentoring is an informal form of training where the mentor, usually an older, more experienced professional, offers to pass down advice and best practices from their personal experiences. It’s a culture of telling— let me tell you what I know — important and powerful at times but is also limiting because it doesn't ask that much of the recipient in return. There is no accountability partner. 

Professional coaching, on the other hand, puts your employees in the driver’s seat by enabling self-discovery, asking open-ended questions, giving them direct feedback on how they are applying whatever it is they are learning, and finally, uncovering what is working and what can still be improved. It’s very focused on how someone can do things better in the future while ensuring they remain balanced individuals in wellbeing and productivity dimensions.

To learn more about the similarities and differences, start the video above at 10:17.

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How Does Coaching Standout as a Development Modality?

Coaching is more than teaching people; it doesn’t take away from the practice or training or mentoring, but adds to it.

1. Coaching creates a new level of awareness, thanks to your coach acting as your accountability partner and external set of eyes and ears.

2. Coaching helps you re-evaluate your surroundings and view things in a new light.

3. Coaching not only helps you break a problem down, but form an action plan to fix it.

4. Coaching helps you develop your strengths and weaknesses, leading your to career success rather than hitting a plateau.

5. Coaching helps you realize how you are perceived in the outside world, and when needed, how to change things for the better.

To hear Dr. Hull discuss these five points in his own words, watch the video above at 13:50

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What are the Markers of a Strong Coaching Culture? 

• Employees value professional coaching
• Senior executives value and encourage coaching
• You have a dedicated line item for coaching in your budget
• Managers, leaders, or internal coaches receive coach-specific training
• All three development modalities (training, mentoring, and coaching) are utilized at your company

To hear more about these markers and how many organizations meet all the requirements, start the video above at minute 17.

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What are the 3 Steps to Building a High-impact Coaching Culture?

Step 1: Make a case for coaching

The first step is to become an influencer or internal champion of coaching by experiencing the modality for yourself. Does your organization or an association you belong to offer grant money for coaching? Can you secure finances for a small pilot program within your organization, hopefully creating a group of champions? Or, if you are already a believer in coaching thanks to personal experiences, start verbalizing this! 

Looking for more details on how to become a champion? Read our short guide on developing a Talent Empowerment Strategy!

Step 2: Integrate coaching into your talent and leadership development strategy

Take a look at areas where you are currently using training and/or mentoring. While analyzing these areas, write our how coaching specifically can add to your current results. Be sure to highlight the data behind coaching as an industry, any personal stories to help drive your point home, and the People Analytics external coaching platforms provide.

Step 3: Equip leaders and HR professionals with coaching skills

Coaching has a strong ripple effect throughout the entire organization, even with just a few executives actively participating in coaching. When enrolling your powers at be in professional coaching, make sure some of their coaching sessions focus on fostering a strong coaching culture within the organization. Coaching, in general, will always naturally teach your leaders how to become better coaches themselves.

To hear Dr. Hull discuss these three steps in his own words, watch the video above at 25:38.

Want to learn more from Dr. Jeffrey Hull on the power of coaching? 

• Read Now: How to Get the Most Out of Coaching by Dr. Hull
• Watch Now: Building Productivity and Wellbeing in Today's Workforce with LeggUP and Dr. Hull

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