Creating a Coaching Culture

Over the past few years as a tutor on the Barefoot Coaching flagship programme, I’ve met many delegates who’ve been asked to “learn coaching and come back and build a coaching culture”. It’s always said with good intent. And yet, each time, I find myself thinking the same thing: that’s a big ask for one person.

Because a coaching culture isn’t created by sending a handful of people on a workshop, or by introducing 1:1 coaching for senior leaders. Those things can absolutely help, but they are activities, not the culture itself. A coaching culture is something broader and deeper. For me, it’s best understood through the simplest definition of culture: how we do things around here.

So if an organisation wants to build a coaching culture, the real question is not “How do we add coaching?” It’s “How do we want people to experience leadership, development and support here?” What should colleagues notice, feel and talk about if coaching is genuinely part of the way the organisation operates?

That’s why the work has to begin with people. Decision-makers, colleagues, and often customers or service users too. Before designing solutions, it’s important to understand the organisation as it is today, and the future it wants to grow into. In our work, that starts with a fact find. We explore three simple questions: what is the future vision, what is the current reality, and what is known to be in or out of scope?

Alongside that, we look at five themes drawn from a systemic view of coaching in organisations: goals, roles and relationships, development activities, processes and evaluation.

This matters because what works in one organisation may not work in another. A non-prescriptive approach is essential. Rather than arriving with a fixed model, we look at what already exists, where the gaps are, and what needs to be prioritised. Sometimes that means external coaching. Sometimes it means leader-as-coach development. Sometimes it means policy design, supervision for internal coaches, better access routes, or stronger evaluation measures. Usually, it means a combination.

The framework developed by [David Clutterbuck] and [David Megginson] is useful here. They describe four stages in the development of a coaching culture: nascent, tactical, strategic and embedded. That helps clients understand not only where they are now, but what it may realistically take to move forward over time. Building a coaching culture is rarely a quick win; it’s a staged, cumulative process.

It also requires more than good intentions from L&D or HR. If coaching is going to be part of how things are done, then systems need to support it. Leaders need to model it. Processes need to account for it. Measures need to evidence it. As [Herminia Ibarra] and [Anne Scoular] argue, the role of the manager is increasingly becoming that of a coach — not because it’s fashionable, but because command-and-control leadership no longer serves organisations well in complexity and change.

So what is a coaching culture? For me, it’s when coaching — formally and informally — is authentically embedded in leadership, values, colleague experience and organisational design. It’s purposeful, it’s measurable, and it feels coherent. In the end, it’s simply this: coaching becomes part of the way we do things around here.