Does Your Organisation Have a Coaching Culture?

Henry Stewart: Okay, so this is the third of my Happy Workplace Round Tables. Um, I'll be doing this every Wednesday for 13 weeks, apart from holidays. Now, of course, one of the reasons I am doing this is because I want you to book on our courses, but I'll give you some fabulous insights into what creates a happy workplace.

So today is about coaching. So let me just share with you my PowerPoint.

So, um, So Google did, Project Oxygen, which was, uh, they wanted to find out the best, the most important management behaviours. And being Google, they looked into the data. They looked at tens, thousands of performance appraisals and worked out whose performance improved as a result of those behaviours.

Um, they discovered eight key behaviours, and they rated them. Um, And the most important rating was being a good coach. Okay.

So when I put it on LinkedIn on Monday, um, that was not the most important rating. Um, uh, they reckoned only 14%.

Um, so they found, so as I say, they found the most important behaviour management was to be a good coach.

So who has had coaching at any point in their life? In their, in their careers. Who's had coaching?

Okay, Hugh, Steph, okay. So, um, uh, Jennifer, one sentence on what they did for you.

Jennifer: Helped me to clarify where I was going.

Henry Stewart: Okay, um, Hugh, what did they do for you? One sentence.

Hugh: Helps me to be really clear on exactly what I had to do for to prepare for something.

Henry Stewart: Okay, Derek, you are a coach, aren't you?

Derek: Yeah, it gave me time to think.

Henry Stewart: Okay, Stefan?

Stefan: It helped me get a little bit better than I was the day before.

Henry Stewart: Okay, so did they build your confidence?

Stefan: For sure.

Henry Stewart: Yeah, everybody, did they ask you questions?

Participant: Yeah, yeah.

Henry Stewart: Did they help you find, did they help you find the right solution? Yeah.

Stefan: Sometimes.

Henry Stewart: Okay, that is the role of the coach. Let me put that in, um, into chat.

The role of the coach is to build confidence, ask questions and help people find the right solution. That's also the role of the manager. Okay, so the manager shouldn't, shouldn't tell people what to do. It's not about mentoring. They should, uh, encourage people to find their own solutions.

I'm going to put you in breakouts of two people. I'm going to ask one person to talk about something they enjoy, then the other person to feedback. Um, so, uh, just think about something that you enjoy.

So 90 seconds on something you enjoy and 30 seconds on feeding back.

Okay, so here we go. So think about something that you enjoy.

So, um, A, A person, did the person who talked about something they enjoyed, what did you think about the feedback? Anybody?

Stefan: Yeah, it was just nice to hear from Claire. Um, I'll she, you know, in a very short space of time because came quite energetic about what I shared, you know, to her. So that was good to get that feedback that, you know, through a very short little intervention, um, I managed to, to get somebody else excited about what I'm excited about. So.

Henry Stewart: Excellent. Okay. Anybody else?

Hugh: Hi, it's Hugh here. Yeah. The fact that somebody has listened to you, the fact that somebody has listened to you and bothered to take notice is quite interesting.

Henry Stewart: Yes, absolutely.

And, um, the Bs. Do you always listen like that?

Anybody? Do you always listen like that?

Alex: Well, I made notes, which was why I was more accurate in what I fed back. And I wouldn't always make notes. Maybe in meetings I would, but in an average conversation I wouldn't make notes.

Henry Stewart: Right, okay. And, yeah, anybody else?

Gloria: Um, yes, I listen because I'm also an NLP practitioner and one of the key things of being a practitioner NLP is to listen, is to all the space. So I was able to hold the space for Anita when she was expressing herself in terms of what she enjoys. And you could see the passion. You could, you could just feel, you know, how excited she was.

Henry Stewart: Yeah. Okay. Excellent. But often, um, you, you don't always listen. You some, maybe you're doing your laptop or something like that.

Um, but the key, the key to coaching is to listen. Um, it's not mentoring. It's not about telling people what to do. It's about helping people find their own solutions. So I'm going to give you, um, chat here, um, which will, which gives you some coaching questions that if you type into that, um, some coaching questions, um, and I'm going to ask you to coach people.

We're going to have maybe four minutes of coaching so each person has four minutes and then there's another four minutes. So have a think, have a look at those questions, um and then think about something you want to be coached on. Okay, just have a thought about that Um, and then I will put you in for four minutes.

Now type into the chat how, how did that feel? How did it feel to be coached?

Participant: Go on, you be honest.

Henry Stewart: Yeah, feel free to be honest.

But obviously, you know, coaching, you know,

coaching can be a lot of work. But I love to be listened to and have space to explore new ideas. Excellent.

 It's always great to have the opportunity to get your mind heard out loud. Tell us more, Shirley.

Shirley: Uh, yes, I coach and I mentor.

Henry Stewart: Yeah.

Shirley: Uh, uh, I always envy those people that I coach. I wish I could be coached and mentored. So, but what I do is when I coach and mentor, I, it's, it's very fascinating. When we do coaching, we. answers to, to our own questions as well, because we have so much commonalities and similarities, like, um, what we had with Robert, the diet, uh, we had so many commonalities.

So it's in the, in the process of coaching, we find also answers to our own questions and, and the ability to, to hear out loud, uh, some answers to our own questionings.

Henry Stewart: Absolutely. And Rachel, um, you, uh, being coached feels different to just a conversation. Explain.

Rachel: So, um, my, my challenge was, I think I've lost my way with coaching a bit and I want, I want coaching to be my kind of natural style of leadership with the team. And therefore I want that to come out in the conversations we have just as part of everyday work. And then when you actually said this, I am now being coached. It really does make you. think a bit differently, and it makes you have to explain why you said what you said, or where you're coming from, or exactly what that means. You can't just expect the other person to, to know why you're thinking that way, because they will ask you questions to tease that out for you. So it does, it makes you work a bit harder.

Henry Stewart: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, um, we have, you know, uh, a series of coaching sessions, you know, we have one day one, but we also have the apprenticeship programme, um, which is, absolutely is based about coaching. Um, on our leadership and management apprenticeship programme you either pay it out of the apprenticeship levy if you have over 3 million in payroll. But it's paid 95 percent by the government. So if we have a level 3 for new managers, a level 5 for experienced managers, and level 7 for senior leaders. And due to government funding, Level 3 is just £250 for a full year course. Level 5 is for £450 for a 18 month course and level 7 is £700 for a full two year programme of senior leaders.

Um, Claire, you couldn't recommend it enough. Tell us more.

Claire: I'm on it. I'm on the level 7 and it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. Um, the, the group that we have. which sort of dynamically changes based on people's circumstances, um, but the support, the little support network we've created and the things that we're learning and Yes, just the development is just, um, it's honestly the best thing I've done. And I promise I have not been paid to say this in any way. It really, really is fantastic. It's like the best part of my month, especially when we get to come to Happy as well. Um, we usually do, the monthly sessions are online, but every three months we come to Happy and we've just had one at Happy and it was, I haven't laughed so much in a very long time and it really is, really is amazing.

Henry Stewart: Excellent. So do put in the yes in chat if you want, or do put in the, in the Calendly.

But let me just ask you again, ask you again, do you have a coaching culture? Let me just put you into breakout rooms for that, for that question. Do you have a coaching culture?

Um, okay. So let's just do that for about three minutes.

Do you have a coaching culture in your organisation? Um, uh, here we go.

So I know there are a few people here who are coaches themselves, but um, do you have a coaching culture in your organisation? Um, any thoughts?

Gloria: Yes, we do. Yes. That's the thread. That's the thread that runs my organisation from board level right to the, um, administrator in my organisation. We coach each other and we coach externally because my organisation is a housing charity, and many of our tenants have been homeless and, um, destitute. So when they come to us, we coach them to believe in themselves, to salvage their lives with hope and a future. And it's such a success story. When, um, you see somebody who came to your doors, you know, feeling so helpless and by the time they leave after two, three years, they're empowered, they're, um, into employment, they're into good relationships. So for me, I think it's very powerful.

Henry Stewart: Wow. That is brilliant. That is brilliant, Gloria, thank you.

Any others? Any others? Does, is there anybody that doesn't have a coaching culture?

Probably if you came to this, this session, you, you, you, you would... Hugh?

Hugh: Yeah, in our group, Henry, we talked about the difference between a performance culture and a coaching culture. And for one person, coaching was an enabler for a performance culture. And another person, coaching was seen as performance management, a tool for performance management.

Henry Stewart: Oh, okay. Okay. Right. Um, intriguing. Intriguing. Any, any other thoughts, Robert?

Robert: Um, I've been doing interim contracts for the last 12 years, and so when I arrive in places, I have to do an awful lot of asking questions and listening to get to know places and know what people are doing and so on. I'm quite surprised how often feedback I get from the people I'm talking to say that, you know, what I'm doing is new and different and where they don't have that, where they're not used to that culture and where they are used to being much more kind of sort of hierarchical, hierarchical.

Henry Stewart: More hierarchical with managers telling you what to do.

Robert: Yeah.

Henry Stewart: Okay. Any other thoughts?

Stefan: Maybe Henry, just from my side, um, you know, in the engineering environment that I've worked in, um, I think we all knew the value of coaching and we've seen it in practice and, and, and, you know, certain individuals were great coaches, you know, soon we get overwhelmed by the pressures of, you know, performing organisation and client delivery and just lots of projects going on. And, and you sort of forget about it. And then a year later, you realise nobody's doing any coaching anymore.

Henry Stewart: And, and yeah.

Stefan: Yeah. So just said that, that we get overwhelmed so quickly with the pressures of, of performance and then, you know, neglect such an important aspect of any business. Um, yeah, we all struggled with that.

Henry Stewart: Absolutely. Absolutely. And as, as Google says, you know, the most important management behaviour, you know, is, is, is being a good coach.

Um, any questions on coaching?

Steve: I'll pose a slightly different question if I may, Henry, is how many coaches are approached by somebody who would like to be coached? And is that the indicator of a coaching culture in an organisation?

You know, if somebody comes running to you and says, you know what, I've got a problem and I hear you're a coach, could you help me?

Henry Stewart: Yeah.

Steve: Does that encourage a coaching culture or is it seen as a, uh, by the individual as a weakness? I mean, it's certainly a cry for help in some cases. And I've had that scenario where people come to me on that basis. But, you know, there's, there's another sort of aspect of the, the coaching spectrum, if you like, is the plea for help versus the, the structured. And I always use a sporting analogy. A sportsman will have a coach that keeps them going and keeps pushing them and keeps pushing those boundaries. That's when you get the true coaching, coaching culture in my view is that people are actually hungry for that bit to keep going.

Henry Stewart: Yeah. Yes, and we certainly work with some organisations that, um, where there is a kind of hierarchical thing, but we work with, with coaches that, you know, that aren't managers, um, but just, just work as coaches.

Any other thoughts about that?

No?

Rachel: Henry, as I say, um, we've got next week, I've got a heads department meeting, um, just an hour quick catchup. I'm going to ask them that question. I'm going to ask them whether or not they think we've, have we lost our way with coaching in the organisation? Do they still feel like they are? Because they've all been trained to be coaches.

Henry Stewart: Right. Okay.

Rachel: I'm going to pose it as a question to them to see how they're feeling about it.

Henry Stewart: Excellent. Do let me know what, what, uh, what happens.

Okay. So, um, Today was about, uh, about coaching. Um, uh, as I say, we have, you know, a one day programme on coaching. We have the apprenticeship programmes. But I, what I wanted to do was to let, let you be coached.

Okay, so, um, make sure if you're a manager that you build confidence, ask questions and help people find their own solution. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. Cheers.