Building a coaching culture
'A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders' Neale Donald Walsch
When leaders experience the benefits of coaching they often want to learn coaching skills for themselves. It's clear to them how learning this skill can help them manage their teams more effectively, achieve higher levels of productivity and release the potential of their team.
We offer two levels of coaching training at Toynbee Associates:
Level 1 - Manager as Coach Training
'Coaching is the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another. Effective coaching in the workplace delivers achievement, fulfilment and joy from which both the individual and the organisation benefit' Myles Downey
This training gives managers the basic skills, attitudes and behaviours required to coach the team to think for themselves and solve their own problems. For a leader who finds that team members are dependent on them to give them the answers all the time, the advantages of adopting a 'coach approach' are greater self-reliance within the team, and the ability to delegate tasks with confidence, knowing how to coach the team member to deliver to the required standard.
This training programme consists of three parts:
1. Manager as Coach Course: During our two-day training course managers will:
- Learn how coaching can create awareness, increase responsibility and promote self-belief within their team members.
- Deepen the skills of active listening and powerful questioning which will facilitate their team members' thinking.
- Learn how to use the GROW (goals, reality, options, will) coaching model to structure the coaching conversation, and ensure that the coachee sets strong goals and actions that they are committed to.
2. Practice and Mentoring: Managers will practice their coaching skills on their team. A mentor coach will meet with them twice between the first and second parts of the course to support their coaching skills development.
3. Intermediate Manager as Coach Course: Once the fundamentals are understood and are becoming second nature managers will:
- Learn how to go beyond skills coaching and start to coach around issues such as confidence and motivation, and other mental blocks.
- They'll also understand how the manager's beliefs and attitudes can interfere with coaching team members to full potential, and what professional coaches do to release it.
Level 2 - Super Coach or Internal Coach Training
Many FTSE 100 companies (including BBC, Boots and Railtrack) have gone one step beyond training their managers in coaching skills, to develop their own internal coaching service. This is where staff are trained to a very high level so that they have the skills to provide coaching outside their own departments. If done well this can be equal to, or in some cases even better, than the quality of coaching available externally.
The benefits of an internal coaching function compared to bringing in external executive coaches are many:
- Leaders are coached by those who know the company, its people and understand the context in which they operate.
- Leaders coached by someone they don't know feel safer and are able to open up more than if they were being coached by their own manager. In the first case, the relationship is entirely confidential and the coach has no agenda. When a manager coaches, there is no confidentiality and the potential for different agendas.
- Hundreds of people within the organisation can be coached simultaneously. There is an investment in time and money of course (namely, the cost of the initial training, and the coach and supervisor's time). But as coaches typically aren't paid extra, an internal coaching function offers better value for money than if external coaches had been hired. This is especially useful if the organisation needs to embed change, and/or build their leadership capability quickly and effectively, for example as part of a leadership programme.
- It's the quickest way to embed a genuine coaching culture across an organisation. Everyone takes responsibility for their own learning and development, and finds ways round the obstacles and challenges of leading their team.
- Coaching is a great retention strategy. Staff with access to a coach can work through issues that frustrate them and regain confidence and control, which they may be unable to or are embarrassed to raise with their manager. Having that support means they no longer feel they have to leave, which would necessitate a costly recruitment drive.
- Similarly coaching can be used as a tool to attract talent. A New Job programme offered by an internal coaching service will encourage an candidate with a similar offer, but without that additional support, to join your organisation instead.
Implementing a genuine coaching culture doesn't happen overnight. It takes patience and a well thought out strategy. Issues such as who to train and how to train them need to be explored. Supervision, whether through coaching action learning sets and/or co-supervision, needs to be embedded if standards are to be kept high and coaches are to have credibility. And then there are decisions to make about how to position the Service.
Questions like these need careful thought. Toynbee Associates offers guidance from experienced professionals who have a track record of embedding coaching cultures in other organisations to make it easier for you.
Want to know more?
To find out more about our Manager as Coach training, internal coach training or establishing a coaching culture in your organisation email us or call 020 7383 0714.
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