Corporate Coaching Culture – A New Map for a New Age
By Charlie Lang
Traditional corporate cultures based on orders and obedience lead to increased staff turnover and mediocre performance. What worked in the Industrial Age is increasingly becoming a liability for organizations in the age of the knowledge worker or Information Age.
In 2002, around the same time I founded Progress-U Ltd, I was also co-founder of what has now become one of the largest coaching associations in Asia, the Hong Kong International Coaching Community (http://www.coachinghk.org).
At that time, I personally got to know almost all professionally trained coaches based in Hong Kong, which was comprised of about 20 professionals who were passionate about pioneering coaching in Hong Kong. Today, less than six years later, this number has grown beyond 100 and I don’t know them all personally anymore.
Is coaching just a new fad or is it part of an evolution that is here to stay?
Let’s first have a look how coaching is different from other approaches.
Coaching can be applied to develop people and also as a leadership style.
Traditional approaches towards learning (teaching, training, etc.) and leading (commanding, directing, delegating, etc.) have one point in common: the teacher/ trainer or manager is supposed to be the one who knows better and therefore ‘advises’ the trainee or subordinate what to do.
Coaching is not (!) 1:1 consulting or training, for which it is often mistaken, perhaps due to the way a ‘coach’ is used in sports. On the contrary, it is based on the premise that the coachee is an intelligent person with unique experience, skills and knowledge that can be tapped into and fostered through effective questioning techniques. In its pure form, the coachee is supposed to ‘own’ any goals and subsequent actions she wants to take.
The coach’s job is to ensure that all potential options, as well as possible pitfalls inherent to them, have been looked at.
For example, Erica, the Finance Director, wants to improve the efficiency in creating the monthly financial reports and also increase their accuracy.
She may think that the best way to do so is by looking for a more modern software and replacing the old system. As a ‘traditional’ leader, she would tell Tom, Head of Controlling, to look for better software solutions to this problem.
As a coaching manager, however, Erica would explain to Tom that she’d like to see an increase in efficiency in report generation combined with higher accuracy. She would ask him which solutions he would consider.
Tom as a result may come up with the same idea as Erica, or he may have different ideas which might be less costly and less disruptive, yet achieve the same results.
The benefits of this approach are three-fold:
- Tom has ownership, i.e. he feels more responsible and is likely to be more engaged in executing whatever plan he commits to.
- Erica benefits from the intimate knowledge and experience of Tom and also his creativity which is likely to lead to better solutions.
- Tom is encouraged to think by himself and thus develops as a leader – another important element for talent retention and development.
While coaching was rather unknown in most organizations in Hong Kong in 2002, today the demand for qualified coaches is soaring because word of its benefits is spreading quickly. Also, it becomes increasingly clearer that managers need to develop coaching as part of their leadership repertoire.
The most advanced organizations consider coaching as part of their culture and develop a corporate coaching culture. They hire or develop internal coaches for their middle management, hire external executive coaches for their senior management and train the complete management in basic coaching skills and frameworks. They develop a culture of openness and trust through the use of 360 degree feedback assessments and employee surveys.
They realize that a corporate coaching culture is an appropriate ‘map’ for the knowledge worker age and as a result reap the benefits of high talent retention rates and extraordinary engagement of their people.
Charlie Lang is the founder of Progress-U Ltd., a company focusing on executive coaching, training and assessments. Charlie is the current president of the Hong Kong International Coaching Community and specializes in assisting organizations in establishing corporate coaching cultures. Email him at charlie.lang@progressu.com .
