By Donna Howes, CHRP, PCC

Research consistently shows that low levels of employee engagement are detrimental to performance.  According to Q12® Meta-Analysis (2009) from Gallup, highly engaged employees are twice as likely to be top performers, and that “organizations enjoy 26 per cent higher revenue per employee when employees are highly engaged, including 13 per cent greater total returns to shareholders.”

The bottom line? Greater employee engagement delivers better performance…..and coaching delivers more highly engaged employees.

Building a Coaching Culture
The key then is to inspire even more organizations to embed coaching into their DNA. The challenge and the opportunity is to help organizations build a coaching culture which supports individuals to confidently pursue new ideas and alternative solutions with greater resilience—particularly in the face of growing complexity and uncertainty—through creative and thought-provoking conversations.

In the 2014 Building a Coaching Culture Report, the International Coaching Federation (ICF) in partnership with the Human Capital Institute identified that “to ensure successful results that go beyond skills training and truly enable the company to increase employee engagement and retention, the organization must develop a comprehensive coaching plan that addresses both current and future need.  The challenge arises not only in determining the types of coaching that will be most impactful, but also in attaining the internal buy-in and support for such a program.”

In Conversation with Thomas Crane
For more than 20 years, Thomas Crane’s work has made a positive impact on leadership styles and organizational cultures through his transformational approach to coaching.  On behalf of the ICF, I spoke with the Heart of Coaching author about building a coaching culture in the workplace.

You’ve talked about not defining culture as ‘the way we do things.’ What is the deeper truth that captures what ‘culture’ is really about?
Crane: We’ve heard it for a long time now that organizational culture is typically defined as the ‘way we do things around here.’  But I think the deeper dive on that is that it is really about how we treat people and the relationships we have.  How much trust, rapport and respect is there so that we can get the work of the organization done—and done well.

So it is this deeper dive about paying attention to the relationships that are in place; and of course that has to do with our value system and how we actually regard people, the unconditional positive regard; and the idea that people have ideas to contribute and that they want to be engaged.

If we miss this by only focusing on how we ‘do’ things through the processes, procedures, tactics and protocols we follow, then we miss what is really going on, which is that everything gets done because we are in relationship with our colleagues.

How does coaching contribute to this rapport and greater engagement?
Crane: The benefits come gradually and the insights come one person at a time. When people have coaching conversations, they learn ways to better relate, better connect, and better deliver feedback.  The experiences they have with others as a result, help them learn that greater rapport and more trust within the relationship makes it easier to talk about hard things.

It’s certainly easier to raise a contentious issue or discuss a problem because there’s this reservoir.  Steven Covey talks about the idea of emotional goodwill, this emotional bank account that we have.  When people can have an experience of opening up a conversation from a foundation of trust, it becomes possible to have deeper rapport and greater engagement.   Coaching contributes to this because it is a relationship development process.

How do you define a coaching culture?
Crane: Twenty years ago we began to see the term ‘coaching culture’ and it has come to mean different things at different times.  In my way of looking at this, coaching cultures are built on creating feedback-rich conversations that flow in all directions: up to the manager, across to peers and down to direct reports.

We want people to want to learn from other perspectives and to engage in robust, deep learning conversations. When this happens, coaching naturally becomes part of the culture where people work together in partnership to achieve results.

Explore the Heart of Coaching
Meet Thomas Crane and explore the Heart of Coaching at a full-day workshop on Wednesday, May 20, 2015. To redeem your special HRMA rate of $150 use PROMO code HRMA2015.

Donna Howes, CHRP, PCC is principal of Humanity at Work, and vice president of ICF Vancouver Charter Chapter.