You can train people how to coach, but if they don’t see a connection with the way that your company’s processes are carried out, they are not particularly likely to put their new-found skills into practice.
For example, what is the philosophy of your performance management process? Does it reflect more of a command and control leadership style, or more of a coaching style of leadership? The words you use make a huge difference to the way people will act. But the words are not in themselves enough – actions that are aligned to the philosophy are paramount too.
Look across the whole employee experience and identify places where a coach approach needs to be integral to the way the processes are handled. Look at the recruitment experience, pre-joiner and new joiner experiences, day-to-day performance, career planning, learning, changing roles, leaving the organisation – each a touch-point in the employee experience. How can you shift each of these to use more of a coach-approach? And how can you help those responsible for these processes – whether that’s members of HR, managers, or employees, to use a coach-approach?
(Oh, and don’t forget that you are not doing this for the sake of it, but to enable your business strategy to come to life).
Teaching people how to coach could then be in the context of the expectations of their role in making the employee experience phenomenal, effectively bringing a coach-approach to every aspect of an employee’s experience. As well as teaching coaching skills per se, you might also teach them:
- how to enable employees to be independent, adult learners when they join the organisation
- how to help employees to tell their best career story
- how the psychology of transitions affects our propensity for change (or not), and how employees can grow and learn the most from transitions of role, function, country, organisation*
- how to have feedback conversations in a coach-like manner
- etc
More levers to come that will facilitate the creation of a coaching culture.
*transitions in organisations:
