The business challenge:
We know that organisations need to be able to respond and adapt more quickly to cope with rapid changes in technology, demands, competition and regulations.
Because of this, AGILITY is becoming the most important capability for organisations who have to be dynamic and innovative to stay ahead and be successful. In fact, the IT world has been developing an ‘Agile’ approach to work for some years and we are now seeing more organisations considering how this can apply much more broadly across their business.
What is Agile?
The Agile philosophy seeks to deliver value, creating/protecting opportunities at speed, by involving key stakeholders, customers and consumers, testing out new ideas and ways of working, constantly learning and iterating in a nimble way. You’ll hear ‘agile’ organisations talk about stand-up meetings, learning sprints and scrums.
“Demands and needs are changing too quickly for the traditional, linear, well planned and lengthy approaches to organisational change to remain effective.”
There is growing research and understanding about how to create an agile organisation and a recognition that developing a coaching culture is at the core of developing agile capability across an organisation (Harvard Business Review April 2018).
We believe developing great coaching capability and culture is about creating new ways of thinking, encouraging a growth mindset and looking for constant learning. It helps people see new ways of tackling issues and builds confidence. So, it’s no surprise it is becoming increasingly important for organisations to seriously consider how they create this capability and culture if agile working is critical to success.
We already know that creating a coaching culture adds value to bottom line performance. McKinsey research (2017) reports organisations with a coaching culture are 1.5 times more likely to financially outperform and 1.7 times more likely to outperform on non-financial measures. The case is clear.
So how do you go about creating a coaching culture to build agility? Here are the essential ingredients:
Top level sponsorship is vital
Involve significant team members – ideally leaders with coaching and mentoring experience
Outline your goals and create a strategic approach to how you will achieve this – it’s not a one hit wonder, it will take time
Make sure you can describe how it helps to deliver the wider business strategy, what’s in it for leaders, employees, customers, stakeholders?
Develop your managers and leaders to have great coaching conversations, (it’s not about making everyone an expert coach)
But you do need some expert coaching capability, so develop an internal cohort of skilled coaches
Build in agile processes like peer to peer feedback, learning cohorts and learning sessions to share ideas, iterate and move forwards
Use external coaches selectively
You’ll be likely to need external support and resource initially to kick start the development of a coaching culture, then you can reduce this as you develop capability and reach further into the organisation.
As experts in building coaching capability over the last 20 years, we have been helping organisations develop their managers and leaders to have great coaching conversations. We also train and develop internal expert coaches and provide ongoing supervision.
“A recent leader we were working with told us,
“I have been overwhelmed with the response I have had from my team as I have stated to have coaching conversations with them rather than tell them what to do. Now I’m not thinking for them, they are really stepping up, taking real responsibility and delivering so much more”.”
We’d love to hear from you about how we could support you in creating the agility your organisation needs through building coaching capability.
Contact us:
Call: +44 (0)7881 915657
Email: claire@downtoearth-development.co.uk
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