Coachability: A Catalyst for Your Coaching Culture

Coaching – By Lauren Zervos, Ph.D., Jake Weiss, Ph.D., and Kevin Wilde

Focusing on both sides of the table makes coaching more complete

Organizations are increasingly working to build cultures around coaching given its significant, positive impact on employee development, growth and performance. All of that elevates overall organizational effectiveness and drives bottom-line results.

While many companies have experienced success through this approach, growth often stalls, leaving organizational leaders wondering how to continue strengthening and elevating this culture that has historically been so critical to driving performance.

What’s missing? An intentional and dedicated focus on the other, vitally important, side of the coaching equation – the coachability of those receiving coaching. In other words, almost all the attention and investment thus far targeted improving one side of the coaching equation – the coaching side – leaving most coaching cultures “incomplete.”

To highlight this phenomenon, take Company X, which experienced immense success and growth over a three-year period – performance increased by 60% year over year, the employee retention rate remained above 95% and the overall company expanded its market share by 10%.

Leaders attributed much of their success to building a robust, strong coaching culture, yet when these numbers started to plateau, they realized they were missing an essential element to maximize the coaching equation – the coachability of the individuals receiving coaching.

This article overviews how Company X laid the foundation for its strong coaching culture, and then how they took this culture to the next level by integrating coachability.

Coaching Culture 1.0

Company X harnessed a variety of coaching practices at all levels across the organization to accelerate growth and drive results. For example, beyond the traditional manager-employee coaching employed throughout the organization, employees were frequently coaching one another as well as providing upward feedback and coaching to their managers.

This coaching culture that Company X adopted is more formally defined as a culture in which employees of all levels continuously engage in coaching behaviors to support, teach, influence and collaborate with one another.

To create this high-impact coaching culture, Company X leveraged and invested the resources, time and money to engrain coaching throughout the organization and foster commitment from the top down. Specifically, Company X:

Aligned coaching to organizational values. Company X explicitly connected coaching to its core values of continuous learning, collaboration and accountability in order to establish expectations, develop norms around coaching, and ensure a line of sight between values, day-to-day norms and business outcomes.
Anchored coaching to a formalized framework that specified exactly how team leaders engaged and coached their teams. Having a clear coaching approach enabled Company X to align on what coaching looks like, specify its purpose within the organization, set expectations around coaching and ensure consistency and effectiveness across the leadership team.
Provided managers with formal, continuous training on coaching, including how to develop talent using the coaching framework, most effectively provide constructive feedback, ask high impact questions to elevate strategic and critical thinking, and ensure the sustainability of coaching practices throughout the organization.
Implemented systems and processes throughout the organization to track coaching interactions and effectiveness, encourage the sharing of information across teams and ensure coaching translates into performance results. Some examples include field coaching reports and measurements and rewards for coaching effectiveness.
Ensured leaders at all levels brought the coaching culture to life by providing the vision and rationale for the shift to a coaching culture, highlighting the importance of the coaching framework, establishing expectations for coaching and fulfilling those expectations by coaching their teams on a continuous basis.

Coachability Definition & Norms:

The degree to which employees demonstrate ownership over their development and performance by:

Proactively seeking constructive feedback and coaching from multiple sources.
Demonstrating keen receptivity to constructive feedback and coaching – even when they may disagree – from diverse sources without discounting the information or reacting defensively.
Implementing feedback quickly and consistently to translate coaching into action and results.

Coachability Culture 2.0

While Company X did a great job establishing their coaching culture, they hit a ceiling, failing to grow any further, with other competitors close on their tail. Company X realized they’re missing an essential piece – coachability. To accelerate, expand and maximize the impact of its initial coaching culture efforts, Company X intentionally integrated coachability into their culture. Specifically, to cultivate its coaching and coachability culture, Company X:

Connected coachability to company values and defined behavioral expectations. Similar to its coaching culture rollout, Company X connected coachability to its core values of continuous learning, collaboration and accountability. Company X also behaviorally defined “what good looks like” to set expectations and establish norms around how employees should operate relative to coachability, coaching and overall development.
Integrated coachability into the existing coaching framework. Most coaching models or frameworks define a role for the coach and outline phases they should move through and questions they should ask during coaching interactions with their coachees. But, what is the coachee’s role in this interaction? Company X expanded its existing coaching framework to explicitly define the role and responsibilities of the coachee, setting expectations for how coachees should effectively engage in the coaching process and simultaneously creating a more partner-oriented, collaborative approach to coaching.
Provided targeted coachability training to all employees, including leaders at each level. Company X developed all employees’ coachability skillsets to “highly coachable” levels through targeted training. It leveraged coachability assessment tools to elevate individuals’ self-awareness of personal enablers and derailers that prevent operating in a highly coachable way, and then implemented evidence-based training programs to enhance core coachability skills (e.g., receiving and internalizing constructive feedback we may disagree with) and equip employees with critical strategies to effectively operate in highly coachable ways.
Integrated coachability into coaching systems and processes. Company X wove coachability into its existing processes and systems and implemented new approaches for further embedding it within the organizational architecture. For example, it incorporated coachability into the existing selection, performance management and rewards systems. It also included coachability into its measurement approach to track how coachability behaviors are evolving and improving over time.
Ensured leaders ingrained coachability into the coaching culture and modeled the way. To more deeply root coachability within the fabric of the culture, leaders at Company X actively model and demonstrate the coachable way to set the tone for their team and the rest of the organization. For example, leaders frequently solicit constructive feedback from direct reports on their coaching effectiveness and subsequently apply this feedback to enhance their impact. Leaders also established a culture committee comprising employees across the organization to capture continuous feedback and provide employees across the organization a voice to effect change.

Impact

What impact did Company X see after one year of integrating coachability into the fabric of their coaching culture? Specifically:

Employees feel more empowered, engaged and in charge of their results and careers, positively impacting performance and retention.
Increased collaboration, innovation, knowledge sharing and coaching consistency and effectiveness throughout the organization.
Significant improvements in employees’ agility, stronger leadership pipeline and bench and increased performance.

Integrating coachability within the culture allowed Company X to build on its approach, amplify the benefits of coaching, stay ahead of the competition and accelerate the path to its goals without having to disrupt successful coaching approaches.

How might coachability contribute to the effectiveness of your company’s coaching initiatives and culture?

Lauren Zervos, Ph.D., is head, organizational effectiveness and learning, for Coachability Consultants. Email Lauren at lauren.zervos@coachabilityconsultants.com.