Can you create a coaching culture from the middle of an organisation? That was the question posed to me a few weeks ago by a Senior Manager in a University, who didn’t have the authority to do so, according to her role description, but absolutely had the passion.
I suspect this happens more often than not. Passionate people often create a movement that others cannot, or will not.
I’ve now learned that this has a name: social movement theory. According to Marshall Ganz, this is a call to action which relies on the following:
· The formation of some kind of collective identity
· The development of a shared normative orientation
· A shared concern for change of the status quo
· The occurrence of moments of practical action that are at least subjectively connected together across time and addressing the concern
· A reflection of contradictions in the system
You’ll notice that there’s no mention of authority or power here.
I now have a label for something I did when I worked in a corporate, a social movement around developing people. I was a middle manager, and yes I was responsible for our leaders at all levels strategy, but no-one had really bought into coaching at the time.
It started with my blog, which I wrote with the express intention of reaching managers of people on a day-to-day basis, to remind them of their duty of care towards their people. The problem was that people management often went to the bottom of their to-do list, as there were so many other calls on their time to add value to clients and operate the business effectively. It seemed that many managers wanted to do a better job of supporting their people, but this got in their way. So the blog helped them, little by little, to break the shackles and change the status quo.
The tribe of blog followers grew until, at one stage, I had more followers than the CEO! People were hungry for a new “normative orientation”. By commenting in the blog and sharing their experiences, they were creating a “collective identity”.
The blog asked them to practice the skills I was writing about – practical action. And when I ran the 30 Day Challenge through the blog, challenging people to undertake micro-action every day for 30 days related to developing their people, there was even more positive action. The evaluations showed how engaging this was for the tribe themselves, and for the people they touched.
So far, this wasn’t specifically creating a coaching culture, but it was laying the groundwork, tilling the ground, ready for the next seeds to be planted.
Next was a coaching challenge, based on the same principles of the 30 Day Challenge, but this time focused purely on coaching competencies. I shared videos to demonstrate coaching, and I asked participants to work with a buddy to practice those competencies. Again, great feedback from the participants and lots of good learning.
These were the things I did to reach a large audience. At the same time, I also worked 1-1 with people around the business, coaching them. This wasn’t part of my role, but I knew it was creating a ripple effect as their new behaviours had an impact on the people around them.
I make it sound as though I was the only one working on this social movement. I wasn’t. There were a number of us who, over time, trained as coaches and wanted to use these skills for the benefit of our people and our business. And we wanted to go further than that, to create a pervasive coaching culture, where every manager used coaching skills to develop their people. I owned a one day coaching programme for managers, which was part of that solution, but we all know that training alone does not change behaviour. It needed more.
I’ve written this in a few short paragraphs, but this took many years and oftentimes it felt like an uphill struggle. Not everyone got it. Not everyone was ready for it. It was ahead of its time for our culture and for our leadership style. But I, and others, were persistent and kept trying to come at this from different angles.
For example, I worked with a number of colleagues to develop and deliver a career management workshop that was based on the principles of coaching, supporting the participants to figure out their own best career path. I worked with another colleague to create an individualised leadership programme which used an action learning approach to challenge leaders to grow.
I worked with others to set up a coaching Community of Practice for those who had trained as coaches, or were interested in doing so. We put on demonstrations every month to show what coaching looks like in practice, and to reflect on that coaching. We hosted the President of the ICF for a webinar. We ran workshops called Coaching Demystified.
We also did our research around what other companies were doing; what we were spending on external coaching and how we were vetting those external coaches; what the cost saving would be of using internal accredited coaches instead etc etc. Due to the tenacity and persistence of the passionate people driving this work, this eventually led to a business case to create a Coaching Centre of Excellence. A breakthrough! The business finally decided to invest in a function that could provide coaching for clients and coaching internally.
I left the company at about this time for reasons I won’t go into now; but the story continues. I read just a couple of weeks back that the CHRO is endorsing coaching as a means to develop employees’ strengths. Hallelujah said I!
I know I’ve missed many elements of this story, and those who were a part of it will remember many more items that contributed (and continue to contribute) to the success of this social movement. But my point is this – if you are wondering whether you can create a coaching culture from the middle of the organisation, with no authority and no budget, then yes, it is absolutely possible. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it requires determination in the face of many obstacles. It also takes a crowd. Getting people on board, finding the people who care enough to invest their time, this is what makes it a movement.
So go on, what are you waiting for? Start somewhere, anywhere and see where it takes you.
