5 Minutes on Impacting Organizational Culture With Coaching
What do you think of when you hear the term "coach"?
Maybe you think of coaching an employee with a problem.
Maybe you think of a life coach or an executive coach.
Maybe you think of Ted Lasso.
I’ve been teaching coaching practices to my clients for years and I've come to understand coaching as all of these and more.
COACHING IS AN EXPANSIVE IDEA.
It expands your thinking. Teaches you something new. Presents a question that blows your mind.
COACHING IS MORE THAN A SET OF TOOLS.
Coaching is an approach to life and working together that we could all benefit from.
In the next blog post, we'll get more into how coaching is an expansive idea and how it is different from mentoring. But today I want to explore one of the most profound benefits of coaching that I've experienced.
COACHING POSITIVELY INFLUENCES ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE.
That’s what I want to get into today.
Coaching influences organizational culture in a lot of ways, but I’m going to focus on two.
1. Coaching helps us put our values into practice.
2. Coaching helps us take a stance of inquiry.
LET’S DIG IN…
1. COACHING HELPS US PUT OUR VALUES INTO PRACTICE.
Does your organization value any of the following?
Listening
Asking good questions
Bridging divides in perspective or differences in ideas
Figuring out how to move forward
Taking an open stance
Genuine change
The strategies, tools, and approaches of coaching put those values into action. And it can happen at every level of the organization. Imagine training all employees in how to put your organization’s values into action through coaching. It would be transformational.
2. COACHING HELPS US TAKE A STANCE OF INQUIRY.
If you’ve been following along in my newsletter or on social media, you’ll have seen me talk about inquiry. You can read a blog post I wrote here.
The inquiry mentality comes from my training via the Human Systems Dynamics Institute. It has been transformational for me and the organizations I work with. At its heart, it is a coach approach.
Taking a stance of inquiry means:
Turn judgment into curiosity
Turn disagreement into shared exploration
Turn defensiveness into self-reflection
Turn assumptions into questions
It’s not hard to imagine how leaning into inquiry can be transformational for an organization. You let go of always needing to know the answer. You no longer need to be right. It’s not about defending your point of view.
IMAGINE WORKING IN A CULTURE WHERE IT’S OKAY TO NOT KNOW. IT’S OKAY TO CHANGE YOUR MIND. IT’S OKAY TO ASK QUESTIONS.
Imagine supervising not just to help your employees learn and grow, but you are also transformed.
Imagine healthy, flourishing, trust-filled organizational cultures.
Coaching can help us get there.
I’ll leave you with this definition of coaching from Coaching for Transformation by Lesley, Kellogg, Michaels, and Brown:
“…[COACHING WORKS FROM]…A RESOURCEFUL POINT OF VIEW, COLLABORATING TO EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES AND IDENTIFY RESOURCES TO CREATE AN EXCITING FUTURE BASED ON AWARENESS, CHOICE, AND ACTION.”
In the next months I’m going to cover what exactly coaching is, and how it’s different from mentoring, and my top tips for coaching. At the heart of all of this is coaching as an expansive idea. In the meantime, how could coaching help your organization put values into action? How can you bring a stance of inquiry to your next team meeting or one-on-one conversation?
Comment below and let me know what ideas you have. I’d love to hear from you.
