Towards a coaching culture

Designed in response to numerous conversations we’ve had with clients, this coaching programme can help you start off the process of embedding aspects of coaching into your culture. 

What we hear time and again is that whilst Trusts want to provide personal and professional development for senior leaders through access to an executive coach, they also want to maximise the benefit of this investment to the Trust. So, whilst recognising it’s not feasible to offer a coach for everyone, Trusts increasingly are interested in the benefits of creating a coaching culture.  

Whilst we cannot guarantee the creation of coaching culture (we all know how much hard work goes into creating and refining an organisational culture) this programme is designed to help you get off to a great start in embedding aspects of coaching into your culture. 

There are three core components to our programme that are all designed to assist you in creating a coaching culture in your Trust:

• Individual coaching
• Discussion forums
• Skills workshops

We’d also be happy to discuss incorporating a profile report into the process. This could either involve drawing on an existing report you’ve used with the leadership team or helping you identify a suitable profiling tool that could be used.

Together these core components are intended to support senior leaders in starting to move towards a coaching culture in your organisation.

We’ve set out below our core approach, but we’d be very happy to tailor the approach to your specific needs, be it a slightly different approach or an increase or decrease in coachee numbers or sessions.

Building blocks

Our team of coaches would meet with you at the outset to have a discussion about your organisational culture and the aspects of a coaching culture that you are seeking to develop further and/or embed.

Individual coaching

We would provide a 12-month programme of coaching for three senior leaders. Each programme consists of:

• a meeting with our team of coaches which will provide an opportunity for your team to get to know the individual coaches as well as receive from them an introduction to coaching.
• we would look to match your team with our coaches and then provide a ‘chemistry’ session (to check you’re comfortable with the coach you have chosen).
• an initial ‘contracting’ session to identify coaching goals (outcomes), agree the boundaries of the coaching engagement (process) and agree the nature of our coaching relationship.
• eight coaching sessions (three per term approximately three weeks apart – the contracting session is the first session of the first term).

Discussion forums

Three (one per term, usually second half after the workshop) one-hour online small group informal tutorial style sessions to discuss coaching related topics of the groups choosing. Each session would be facilitated by one of our team of coaches.

Skills workshops

Three one and a half hour (one per term) workshops to explore a range of skills that will assist in creating a coaching culture. The three workshops cover topics such as:

• listening effectively;
• coaching v line-management; and
• influencing and influencing styles.