Building and Sustaining a Coaching Culture

David Clutterbuck, David Megginson, Agnieszka Bajer

• Publisher: CIPD - Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781843984467
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Building and Sustaining a Coaching Culture is the ideal book for everyone who is passionate about coaching and who has an interest in creating an environment that supports learning and growth. Easy to navigate and logically structured, topics include the current understanding of coaching culture in organisations, coaching and mentoring culture strategy, making effective use of external coaches, formal and informal mentoring, developing and supporting internal coaches and mentors, team coaching, cross-cultural marketing coaching and cross-cultural issues. This edition of Building and Sustaining a Coaching Culture is a fully revised version of the seminal book Making Coaching Work: Creating a Coaching Culture. It analyses what has changed in the field of coaching culture and provides update on new knowledge and experience. A wide variety of international case studies and engaging tools such as chapter overviews, templates, and reflective questions will take you clearly through the development and implementation of a successful and integrated training culture. Whether you are an HR Manager looking to maximise the positive impact of coaching in your organisation, a business leader wanting to facilitate growth, or a consultant or coach seeking to place your work in the relevant organisational context, you will be shown how to implement an effective coaching and mentoring strategy that meets your needs.

PART ONE

THE ABCS OF COACHING CULTURE PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION

CHAPTER 1

So, What is a Coaching Culture After All?

‘If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.’

Tony Hsieh, Founder and CEO of Zappos.com

OVERVIEW

This chapter sets out to explore what organisational culture is and why it is so important. It then moves on to present our definition and model of coaching culture, giving examples of what a coaching culture may look like on each level. It also describes the four distinct stages of coaching culture development and looks at the business case for developing a coaching culture. Finally, it describes how leading organisations define a coaching culture.

WHAT IS CULTURE AND WHY BOTHER?

We have asked the above question a number of times during various workshops and it always leads to the same result: a heated debate. What is interesting is that nobody ever questions or disagrees with the two basic assumptions implied in it, that:

• culture exists, and
• there are valid reasons we should bother.

It seems that culture and the experience of its impact are such an integral part of human existence that questioning it would be as unthinkable as questioning gravity.

The intuitive belief most people hold about the power of culture to make or break organisations has been widely supported by research and repeatedly documented in academic literature. Most management theorists and researchers agree that culture can be one of the key determinants of how successful the company will be. Empirical research has produced a large number of findings demonstrating the impact of culture on performance (Cameron and Ettington 1998; Denison 1990; Trice and Beyer 1993; Kotter and Heskett 1992).

Edgar Schein (1992), the American guru of culture and leadership, said that ‘culture is the key to organisational excellence and the function of leadership is the creation and management of culture’. Dutch cultural expert Geert Hofstede wrote: ‘In general, we find that outstandingly successful organisations usually have strong and unique cultures … Unsuccessful organisations have weak indifferent sub-cultures or old sub-cultures that become sclerosed and can actually prevent the organisation’s adaptation to changed circumstances’ (Hofstede 1980, p394).

Culture is important because it determines:

• decision-making processes and criteria (how decisions are made and what is considered to be the ‘right decisions’ for the organisation)
• what is deemed to be appropriate behaviour and acceptable ways of interacting with others
• how people perceive their responsibilities and deal with tasks that are assigned to them
• the promptness and efficiency with which the organisation performs its key functions
• an organisation’s agility and adaptability to change
• the way the organisation perceives and interacts with the main stakeholders outside of the organisation.

WHAT CULTURE LOOKS AND FEELS LIKE

Before looking at culture definitions, it might be helpful to see what culture looks and feels like. The story below is based on an experiment performed by Stephenson in 1967. Although it had nothing to do with organisational culture per se, it is relevant to the subject.

Five rhesus monkeys were placed in a cage with a few bananas hanging from the ceiling.

A ladder was conveniently placed underneath. Whenever one of the monkeys attempted to climb the ladder to reach for the bananas, ALL the monkeys were sprayed with ice-cold water.

After a while, the monkeys eventually made the link between the attempt to reach for the bananas and being collectively punished with ice-cold water. Finally, it was no longer necessary to use the ice-cold water – no monkey would even go near the ladder.

The researcher then replaced one of the monkeys with a new one. Not being aware of the ice-cold water treatment, the new monkey immediately attempted to climb the ladder to reach for the bananas. However, within a fraction of a second, the other monkeys would attack it and continue beating it up until it stopped trying.

One by one, the monkeys who experienced ice-cold water treatment were replaced with new ones. Every time a new member would attempt to reach for the bananas, it would get a beating from the rest, including the monkeys who never experienced the cold water.

Eventually, the cage was populated by five new monkeys, none of which had the experience of the ice-cold water. When the researcher introduced a new monkey, the other monkeys attacked the newcomer the moment it approached the ladder.

What is fascinating in this story is that even though none of the monkeys knew about the collective punishment with ice-cold water, somehow they learnt that reaching for the banana was off limits. They became the guardians of a norm the purpose of which they didn’t understand. It’s not surprising that the story has gone viral on social media – we can all relate to it at a deep, personal level. Most of us had the experience of being introduced to a new cultural context – a new organisation, a new team, or even just our partner’s family – and suffering the consequences of unintentionally violating the unwritten cultural norms of that group. Many of us eventually assimilated into the group’s culture and started behaving a certain way without questioning the reasons, simply because it was ‘the way we do things round here’ (Deal and Kennedy 1988).

The fact that culture can drive behaviour in such a powerful and consistent way is impossible to ignore. More and more organisations nowadays are conscious of the link between their culture and performance. Leveraging or transforming culture in a way that supports organisational mission, vision and objectives is considered a must by a lot of organisations.

DEFINING CULTURE

Management science began investigating the subject of culture in organisations as early as the 1930s. The Hawthorn studies at Western Electric Company were the first attempt to use the concept of culture in the context of the work environment. However, it wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that the researchers approached the subject of culture in organisations in a more systematic way, drawing heavily on anthropology and sociology. What sparked this interest was the impressive success of Japanese companies and curiosity as to whether culture could be one of the contributing factors.

The term ‘organisational culture’ was popularised in the early 1980s. The rapid rise of interest in this aspect of business management was triggered by four seminal books on the subject:

• Ouchi (1981) Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge.
• Pascale and Athos (1981) The Art of Japanese Management: Applications for American Executives.
• Deal and Kennedy (1981) Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.
• Peters and Waterman (1982) In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies.

Since then, organisational culture has been the subject of research by a number of distinguished management theorists. While there seems to be universal agreement that culture is a powerful force shaping an organisation’s performance, there is a surprising lack of consensus on its definition. Even at the beginning of the more systematic organisational culture research, Barney noted that: ‘Few concepts in organisational learning literature have as many competing definitions as organisational culture’ (Barney 1986, p657).

In spite of these differences, it’s possible to identify a few ideas where the literature converges:

• Culture is created over time through the interaction of people and their environment. This is clearly expressed by Schein when he portrays culture as “a pattern of basic assumptions – invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration – that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (Schein 1992).
• Culture creates consistent patterns of meaning and behaviour that bind people together and make them unique as a group. This idea has been expressed by Hofstede (1980), Martin and Siehl (1992), Schein (1992), Van den Berg and Wilderom (2004), Wagner and Hollenbeck (2010) and many others.
• Culture is a combination of visible and invisible elements that exist on multiple levels. Arguments supporting this can be found in the work of a number of academics, for example, Martin and Siehl (1983), Uttal (1983), Denison (1990).

The above points of consensus show that the majority of researchers perceive culture as a unique, shared set of beliefs and assumptions that were adopted by its members over time and which lead to consistent patterns of meaning and behaviour. They encompass both...