Better results? Consider a coaching culture | Bangkok Post: business

BY INVITATION

Business is more competitive and future success depends on having better-performing people as a critical advantage for higher performance, higher returns and desirable business outcomes. Senior leaders often look for what they term a "coaching culture" and I see them making the investment in creating one.

Culture is an essential element for all organisations and unless you carefully shape the culture you want; you unfortunately end up with the culture you deserve. Culture is the organisation's unwritten rules, values, norms, behaviours and practices; how work gets done here, and embedding a coaching approach provide immeasurable benefits. On the individual level it helps people to pause and refocus so that performance can improve as expertise is shared and improvement is looked for. On a team level it develops skills and knowledge across the board. When we get to the organisational level it's possible to see desired behaviours blossom everywhere.

So what is a coaching culture? It's more than just simply having a lot of coaching taking place in an effective fashion. It has to be rooted firmly in the organisation and supported by willingness and commitment from the very top leadership capable of and committed to performance improvement, starting with themselves.