Digitalizing & Scaling an Effective Coaching Culture-Need Of The Hour

Definition:

Coaching as defined by International Coach Federation “is partnering with another person in a thought-provoking and creative process so that it inspires people to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

Sir John Whitmore, a renowned figure in the field, said, skilled coaching involves “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.” These lines themselves deliver what impact coaching has on the organization.

What exactly is coaching culture?

Putting it simply, coaching culture is a mindset where an organization uses coaching practices in educating, motivating, and developing one another. It has some key features as:

It is a culture based on three pillars: Trust, Empowerment and Co-Creation.
People in this working culture take responsibility instead of instructions.
Behind this is a mindset of continuous growth and curiosity.
People hold themselves accountable for their actions, and get recognized as well.
Above all there is a feeling of psychological safety in the atmosphere and people make their unique contributions.

Coaching in this ever-evolving digital workplace:

In the current situation of the pandemic when most of the workforce all-around is functioning remotely. The two biggest challenge that they face in such setups is lack of communication and collaboration with their own team members and feeling of isolation and loneliness. All this ends up in miscommunications, poor collaborations, disengagement, and reduced productivity. This is often the place where coaching comes to the rescue. After 2020, when most of the workforce is predicted to operate remotely, it has become far more a necessity to line up and scale an effective coaching culture. This would result in achieving the highest level of engagement and productivity.

Coaching Culture- An opportunity:

Studies have proved that coaching increases communication skills by 42%, engagement by 62%, and productivity by 39%. According to studies by Gallup meaningful and timely feedback by the coaches drastically increases the engagement levels in the remote working staff.

Coaching’s greatest aftermath is increasing a team’s effectiveness and job performance. And managers equipped with these tutoring skills are important in building a culture of performance and continuous improvement. A coaching culture is the fastest and most effective way to inculcate company values, increase employee engagement and productivity, build genuine relationships, and retain top talent.

A recent study conducted by Bersin & Associates demonstrates that equipping your managers with coaching skills can yield a 130% increase in business performance.

Barriers in creating a Coaching Culture:

According to an International Coach Federation survey the three main hindrances in creating such a culture :

Lack of time.
Inability to measure the impact and outcomes.
Lack of budget for activities involved.

Digitalize Coaching: – its role in overcoming the barriers:

In the times when everything is shifting online, why not coaching? Digital Coaching Platforms can help overcome the barriers as:

Everyone to be coached can access and learn from it at the same time.
The essence of such digital platforms is that it can be customized to your approach. Additionally, this can be aligned with the personality and history of the team members and also with the goals of the organization. Overall the approach will prevent you from wasting time in discussing irrelevant topics or strategies not required and would basically serve as a “custom-made approach“.
These platforms will help penetrate learning solutions deep down at an employee level which would create a culture at large where every individual reaps its benefit. Hence, this qualitative outcome would enrich the organization as a whole.
In comparison to traditional methods the digital coaching forums are low-cost and have a larger impact.

Digitalizing does not imply passing on physical resources to a computer and calling it “ready to use manual”. It rather involves adopting a completely new method for learning and implementing a new culture. A culture that relies on trust and empowerment. Therefore, this enables the leaders and the coaches to reach employees in overcoming their fears, ambiguity, and confusions. As the world is rapidly moving towards remote working, it has become far more important to digitalize and scale effective coaching culture This would help to make the workforce future-ready.

Digital Coaching platform at SparkUs:

SparkUs uses a blended coaching approach which consists of a Digital platform and Human Touch of professional coaches, in-house coaches, mentors, peers, or managers. To find out more, please read at https://staging.sparkus.com/about-us/

Case study:

One of our clients, AXA, who adopted this digitalized forum, was surprised to find out the results. Want to learn more about their journey with us. Please go and listen to it directly from the Learning and Development Head of AXA by clicking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dw-g_OMofE.

“The goal of coaching is the goal of good management; to make most of the organization’s valuable resources.”-HBR

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