Build a Coaching Culture the Right Way
If you ask a five-year-old to tell her about your coach, you’ll probably hear about the adult who helps keep her soccer or T-ball practices running smoothly.
Ask the same question of a five-year-old enrolled at Turkey’s Isikkent Schools, and you can expect a very different answer. That’s because there’s a good chance she has already partnered with a member of the Isikkent faculty who completed a coach-training program accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF). Isikkent’s innovative coaching program impacts the lives of every member of the Isikkent community, from students and teachers to administrators, support staff, and even parents. Coaching at Isikkent is more than just a student- or faculty-development service: The administrators who implemented the program took pains to ensure that coaching would form the very foundation of the school’s culture. (Read the full story of Isikkent’s award-winning coaching program here.)
Although the specifics of Isikkent’s coaching program are unique, the story of its beginnings is not. ICF’s 2013 research on organizational coaching revealed that most coaching initiatives take hold via a trickle-down effect, whereby a high-ranking leader discovers the benefits of professional coaching (often firsthand) and proceeds to advocate for coaching throughout the organization. Once perceived as a “perk” that was only available to the C-suite, coaching is increasingly being used at all levels of organizations to enhance the effectiveness of individuals and teams.
We know that consumer awareness of professional coaching and its benefits is on the rise globally. According to the 2014 ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study, designed as a follow-up to ICF’s benchmarking 2010 consumer research, consumer awareness of coaching rose by seven percentage points between 2010 and 2013, from 51 percent to 58 percent. Despite a challenging economic climate, participation in coaching also increased slightly between 2010 and 2013, with 17 percent of respondents in the 2014 study indicating that they had participated in a coaching relationship. Among all respondents who had participated in a coaching relationship, the No. 1 reason cited for seeking coaching was to optimize individual/team work performance (42 percent).
However, the partnership between an individual or team and an internal or external coach is only one facet of a true coaching culture. Organizations with vibrant coaching cultures may also offer coaching-skills training to managers and front-line staff, provide for an environment of creative collaboration (versus one operating on a command-and-control model), or incorporate the core competencies of coaching into a broader definition of leadership competencies. The forms a coaching culture can take are as diverse and varied as the organizations that have chosen to use coaching.
HCI and the ICF are both committed to better understanding what organizations’ coaching cultures look like. This is why we are excited to announce the launch of a new research initiative to connect us with the stories of successful organizational coaching initiatives and empower organizations around the globe to build their own coaching cultures. With this signature research, we will investigate the ways in which companies and leaders establish and support a coaching culture, and further identify the motivation application and outcomes of coaching practices today.