PART 3:

Building a Coaching Culture

In part 3, you will learn how an organization can mindfully create a coaching culture that permeates the entire enterprise. In addition, you will be equipped with the necessary tools and strategies to sustain a coaching mindset over time. Finally, you will discover what a coaching organization can look like. What would a person need to see and hear to walk into an organization and say, “Wow, it is obvious that the traditions, language, results, stories, and ‘how things get done’ are all based on the principles and practices of coaching”? The major strategy to achieve this goal is to design and implement a systems approach.

The first step is to define a coaching culture, “where all the infrastructures facilitate and reward everyone to learn, practice, and engage in mindful coaching conversations to get work done, accomplish goals, and reach both personal and strategic growth and success” (Bianco-Mathis and Nabors 2016, 2). Chapter 7, “Implementing a Systems Infrastructure,” outlines a process for building a coaching culture—one that includes a perfect storm of the popular learning and organization development research of recent years; namely, but not limited to, emotional intelligence, employee engagement, strategic planning, monthly coaching meetings instead of yearly appraisals, apps for in-the-moment feedback, and change management. Finally, chapter 8, “Looking to the Future,” imagines workplaces to come and outlines how they will likely evolve as more individuals practice dialogue and coaching, making organizations and the individuals within them curious, collaborative, and strong.