A coaching culture is defined as one where coaching is the predominant style of managing and working together, with a commitment to growing both the organization and its people. Organizations develop coaching cultures to focus on high performance, engage employees, and continuously develop skills at all levels. Key attributes include integrating coaching into policies, demonstrating commitment from senior leaders who coach others and receive feedback on their coaching skills, and permeating coaching principles throughout all relationships. While no organization has fully attained a coaching culture, frameworks exist to assess stages of development and guide organizations seeking to introduce or further develop their coaching culture.

1. Coaching Culture:
what is it and how would you
bring it into your organisation?
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2. Coaching Culture: what is it and how would you bring it
into your organisation?
Until recently business and executive coaching has been focused on 1:1 coaching
of senior executives. Whilst this 1:1 focus remains important it is increasingly being
seen as a rather limited form of intervention. Organisations are more and more
seeking to introduce coaching to the whole organisation under the heading of
coaching culture. However, though a coaching culture is becoming viewed as a
good thing to have, there is often less clarity about what it is! Hence the title of this
introduction to coaching culture: what is it and how would you bring it into your
organisation?
Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005) offer a useful definition of coaching culture:
“Coaching is the predominant style of managing and working together, and where
a commitment to grow the organisation is embedded in a parallel commitment to
grow the people in the organisation” (p.19)
Organisations are investing in developing coaching cultures because they
anticipate the following benefits
• A constant focus on high performance
• Decision making rooted in the knowledge and skills of the most appropriate
people
• The continuous, ongoing development of people at all levels of the
organisation
• A positive impact on peoples’ morale, motivation and engagement with the
organisation
A coaching culture has the following attributes:
• There is a strong business case for coaching: it is integral to achieving the
organisations key objectives
• Coaching is integrated into the organisations policies and procedures (e.g.
leadership development, recruitment, performance management)
• The senior management team and managers at every level demonstrate their
commitment to coaching (e.g. by being coached and coaching others) and
receive feedback on the quality of their coaching (e.g. as an aspect of 360
degree feedback processes)
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3. • Coaching mindset, principles and skills permeate all relationships throughout
the organisation (e.g. managers use coaching skills with their direct reports;
colleagues engage in coaching conversations with each other)
The creation of a coaching culture is still an aspiration in that no organisations have
attained all its attributes. However Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005; 2006) offer a
useful framework for considering the stages of development of coaching cultures
(Nascent; Tactical; Strategic; Embedded) that can be useful as ‘diagnostic’ for an
organisation seeking to understand what elements of a coaching culture they have
in place, and what/how to further develop
Developing a coaching culture in your organisation
Developing a coaching culture will involve a substantial investment of recourses
(financial, time, etc.) therefore the first question for any organisation must be why
take this journey? What are you seeking to achieve and is creating a coaching
culture the appropriate way to achieve it? If it is agreed that developing a coaching
culture is the way forward then ‘buy in’ from the senior management team is vital to
drive the initiative, as it will affect every aspect of the organisation
The metaphor of a journey may be quite helpful in planning the way forward as it
invites consideration of where you are now and what are the steps to take on the
route? The Clutterbuck and Megginson framework is quite useful here. It can also be
helpful to separate out and consider some of the elements of creating such a
culture. For example one might expect to have established or establish:
• The business case for bringing in a coaching culture
• Top team ‘buy-in’ and commitment to introducing a coaching culture
• The integration of coaching into organisational policies and procedures
• The means by which coaching behaviour is going to be measured and
rewarded
• 1:1 coaching of senior executives and managers, perhaps by external
coaches
• Team coaching for the senior management team
• Senior executives and managers coaching other personnel in the organisation
• Accredited training of a cadre of internal coaches to a professional level as a
resource for the organisation
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4. • Coaching skills training for managers to enhance their capability in their role,
enabling them to have quality coaching conversations with direct reports
• Training to enable people across the organisation to have ‘candid
conversations’, giving and receiving feedback and engaging in the difficult
conversations that may be required to address interpersonal and
performance issues (see Crane 2009)
Some useful publications on coaching cultures
Anderson, M. C., Frankovelgia, C., Hernez-Broome, G. Creating Coaching Cultures:
what business leaders expect and strategies to get there. A CCL Research White
Paper. Centre for Creative Leadership
Clutterbuck, D., and Megginson, D. (2005) Making Coaching Work: creating a
coaching culture CIPD
Crane, T. G., (2010) The Heart of Coaching: using transformational coaching to
create a high- performance coaching culture F T A Pr
Garvey, G., Stokes, S., and Megginson, D. (2009) Coaching and Mentoring: theory
and practice Sage
Megginson, D., and Clutterbuck, D. (2006) Creating a Coaching Culture Industrial
and Commercial Training, Vol 38, No 5, 2006, 232-237, Emerald Publishing Group
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