A coaching culture is a learning culture—a place where everyone is free to fail, learn, receive feedback, and be coached. This kind of culture is a goal for HR and talent development professionals, but developing it in an organization that is used to strict hierarchy, perfectionism, or micromanagement can be tricky. Here are four things you can start doing today to put your organization on the path to a healthier, more productive culture. Coaching is regarded by many employees as a punitive or corrective measure, not a growth opportunity. These views may change...

Coaching seems to be getting a lot of airtime these days. Is it just hype, or is there something to this? I’d say the latter is true. Using a coach approach can enhance any relationship you have, personal or professional. Trust me on this—you can use coaching techniques with your colleagues, direct reports, boss, friends, family, and, yes, even your teenage children! Asking questions and actually listening is powerful. Did you notice I said “actually listening”? What often gets in our way when we try to coach is the myriad assumptions we make, solutions we form,...

Adekla Vendl discusses the benefits of being honest with clients.

Coaches can help teams with communication, accountability, and more.

According to Innosight’s 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast, lifespans on the S&P 500 stock index continue to shrink. The average tenure of companies on the index was 33 years in 1964. This was down to 24 years in 2016 and is expected to shrink to a mere 12 years by 2027. This means that at the current rate of churn, about half of today’s companies will be replaced over the next decade. This is just one indicator of the rapid and constant change we can expect to experience, and currently experience, in our lives that significantly impacts our work and culture.What...

Applying a sports model in healthcare will increase the connection between coaching interventions, improved employee performance, and desired business outcomes.  Every company pursues consistent performance excellence. This pursuit is especially important in the healthcare industry. Unfortunately, a record of “consistent inconsistency” is typically the norm—and performance is sometimes less than excellent.  Here’s the good news: several factors can help organizations deliver performance excellence more consistently, including great leadership and management,...

Unleash Hidden Potential With Coaching Conversations. Coaching is not just for coaches. When everybody within an organization learns and develops coaching skills, its culture begins to change. The exchange of meaningful and actionable feedback becomes the norm and not something that only occurs during annual performance appraisals. The willingness to share insights and ideas becomes accepted and expected at all levels—up, down, and across.Virginia Bianco-Mathis and Lisa Nabors believe everyone in an organization can master a new language—dialogue—and use it in...

Why should managers devote time and effort to coaching their team? Research shows that coaching leads to better engagement, higher productivity, and enhanced customer service. It also helps an employee improve performance, overcome challenges, reach aspirational goals, and build self-confidence. But is coaching expected to bring benefits only to the employees and the organization? What about the managers—what’s in it for them?It is an important question, as the benefits of coaching for the manager are underrated. When organizations launch coaching initiatives,...

Imagine you’ve just been pulled over by a police officer. Red and blue lights are flashing. The officer slowly approaches your driver’s side window and asks, “Do you know why I stopped you?” If you’re like most of us, you nervously say something like, “No, officer. Is there a problem?” They follow up with, “Are you aware how fast you were going?” To which you reply, “Not exactly. I was moving with the flow of traffic.”Many of us have been there and it’s not fun. Your defenses are up, and you’re just hoping to get out of it with a warning or a low fine. Meanwhile,...

This adaptable sample agenda can guide conversations during this first meeting.

Most of us are good at solving problems. Sometimes, we even think we can solve other people’s problems. We dole out advice like, “Let me lay this out for you. First, you need to. . . . ” This sort of direction can be helpful, for instance, when someone is trying something for the first time. But for most of us, receiving unsolicited advice isn’t particularly welcome. What’s more, it’s often not helpful.The problem is that when we give advice, the other person owns less of the solution. An article by Teri-E Belf and Michael Marx on the International Coach...

The process of executive coaching is a formal engagement in which executive coaches work with their clients in a series of confidential and dynamic meetings designed to establish and achieve clear goals. Most coaching “certification” programs teach a 4-step process of assessment that encompasses assessment, goal setting, accomplishing goals, and final review.

We know from research and from our personal experience that the leadership styles a leader chooses to use have a direct impact on what it feels like to work in that organization—the organizational climate. Think about your best and worst bosses: It felt different to work for each of them, and they likely used very different leadership styles. One of the leadership styles that we know from research has a positive impact on an organization and the results it achieves is a coaching style. Given that, positioning managers as coaches has become very popular. One...

High-performing companies use coaching at a much higher rate than their competition. Coaching—in business, sports, and day-to-day life—is widely viewed as beneficial, especially when faced with change. But it isn't always present. According to Building a Coaching Culture for Change Management, a report from the Human Capital Institute and International Coach Federation, 77 percent of HR practitioners and leaders said that their organizations are in a state of constant change with continuously shifting priorities and strategies. Further, 85 percent of...

Proper planning before program launch will result in a culture that's ready to be served. One of my guilty pleasures is competitive cooking shows. I find these fast-paced competitions with creative, hungry (literally and figuratively) chefs to be incredibly compelling. What's not to love? These shows display a variety of aspects that we seek in our star players: determination, capacity to work autonomously, creativity, accountability, solving problems under pressure, even grace and acceptance when things don't work out as planned. What you may not realize is that...

To start to understand what peer coaching is, it’s important to look at what it is not, author Shana Montesol Johnson explains in “ Peer Coaching: The Wave of the Future.” Peer coaching is not mentoring, where a more experienced employee provides guidance to a less experienced staffer. Nor is peer coaching a time when staff get together to vent about respective work challenges. Rather, peer coaching is a form of internal coaching in which a coaching pair or a group of people who have equal status come together “in support of each individual’s development goals.”...

Help employees get by with a little help from a peer. A deeper level of learning, increased engagement, and advancing toward one's goals are a few of the benefits of coaching, according to "6 Benefits of Coaching for Individuals," an article on the Insala website. And just as the advantages are far-reaching, so are the types of coaching. Within the various types, too, are varied ways of use. Peer coaching—which, as its name indicates, is a support mechanism between individuals of equal status—is one format that is highly customizable. Among its uses are...

As the new year gets underway, you’ve probably been part of at least one conversation about New Year’s resolutions (your own or someone else’s). While mapping out a plan for change can be exciting, the prospect of actually implementing these changes may be overwhelming, even scary. If change is a challenging or stressful proposition for individuals, consider what an upcoming transition or transformation can mean for a team, department, or organization.According to the Human Capital Institute (HCI), 77 percent of HR practitioners and leaders report their...

This is the second in a series of five posts to describe how managers can coach people to practice genuine collaboration in the workplace. These posts represent excerpts from the Association for Talent Development’s new book, Focus on Them , scheduled for publication in December 2018 by ATD Press. Winsor Jenkins is a contributing author of the book.In my first post, we established a road map described as a Team Mini-Charter for Developing a Culture of Collaboration—along with understanding the significance of an operating platform to support your team’s ability...

This is the first in a five-part series that describes how managers can coach people to practice genuine collaboration in the workplace. Each post represents an excerpt from ATD’s new book, Focus on Them, scheduled for publication in December 2018. Winsor Jenkins is a contributing author of the book.The importance of culture cannot be overstated when it comes to collaboration. We know that technology continues to be an enabler of collaboration. However, if we believe that culture is a pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered by, or developed by a given...