Coastal Community Credit Union recently introduced and championed a coaching culture within their organization. This three-part series explains the need behind their transformation of culture, the process of how it was achieved and the results.

Part Three: The Results!

The results of a coaching culture are best described by listening to employees and the buzz about coaching:

“Coastal has shown its dedication by bringing in coaching experts, and continuing the momentum towards internal coaches. This is an organization that truly has the courage to put people first and will succeed in their undertaking to do so,” said Lorraine Richardson, branch manager with Coastal Community Credit Union.

Solid results were tracked by the HR team using the following methods:

• Manager as Coach training feedback forms. Overall, 92.2% of 58 participant forms indicated the program was very valuable or exceeded expectations.
• During the Manager as Coach group coaching follow-up calls the early success of participants was also measured. Of the 39 participants in the group coaching follow up program, 69.2% indicated initial success at implementing coaching practices and 25.6% indicated dramatic skill adoption.
• After the Manager as Coach Program a post 90-day coaching survey was conducted with 23 participants that measured coaching integration and organizational impact. Overall the survey found a 71.7% adoption rate of core coaching skills.
• The Sales Champion program saw 84.0% of respondents indicating they received consistent coaching from their manager.
• Coastal’s Commercial Services Succession program has been identified as a best practice example for credit unions across Canada and Commercial Services is in the process of running it for a second time.
• Coastal’s Employee Performance review process now emphasizes a shared performance conversation between managers and employees. This shift to a more collaborative performance review process has encouraged an increase in participation. The percentage of annual reviews completed in 2008 was 70% and in 2009 it jumped to 95%.
• Coastal’s Hewitt Employee Survey has shown improvement in engagement scores and employee confidence in their leadership over the past three years. In 2008 Coastal’s engagement score was 61% and in 2009 the score was 63%, showing a 2% increase in engagement across the entire organization.  In 2010, the engagement score has soared to 71%.

By January of 2010, coaching was seen as a core competency and coaching is now embedded into “everything we do at Coastal”.  Coastal’s employee performance management system emphasizes a shared performance conversation between managers and employees. Managers are expected to recognize employees throughout the year and are encouraged to use a “leadership coaching style” to gather information from the employee and find what they need to succeed.

Leadership coaching, career coaching, employee development and relationship building are all considered a core managerial accountability. Managers are supported to ensure that coaching meetings occur and coaching principles are integrated with and balanced against other managerial accountabilities.

“Formalized coaching has created stronger relationships with my staff. It has allowed me to better understand their workplace experience and better ensure I am abreast of their career path goals,” said Robert Buckley, branch manager. “There have been so many positive results from my formalized coaching sessions.”

In July of 2010, a formal relationship-building and sales training program was rolled out to the entire retail division and by 2011 to the entire organization – coaching is the cornerstone to this program which is called Coastal Connections.

At Coastal, coaching is now considered an organizational foundation, intertwined with overall corporate strategy, performance management systems and leadership initiatives. The funding for coaching is now a line item built into the HR budget available to all levels of the organization. Coastal’s coaching culture is completely aligned to the corporate strategy: “Building relationships… one conversation at a time.”

Deborah Lang EQi, ConRes, CHRP, MBA is the Associate Vice President, Organizational Development for Coastal Community Credit Union. She was the in-house coaching champion and mentor for the coaching culture transformation.

Paul Gossen, Founder, Business Transformed, ICF Professionally Certified Coach, PCC.  Paul was the external coach trainer for the leadership coach training initiatives – to date sixty (60) Managers at Coastal have completed Manager as Coach training.