Elena is the Chief People Officer of a rapidly growing biotech company. The organization has invested in leadership training before, but six months later managers tend to return to old habits. Some give answers. Some avoid difficult conversations. Others solve problems for their teams in the name of being supportive. Elena does not want another program people attend and forget.
She wants something different: an environment where developing people's thinking becomes part of how leadership happens every day.
The question is "How do we make this simply the way our leaders lead?"
Managers attend training and revert because the surrounding norms, reinforcement, and senior-leader modeling never changed. The full breakdown is below.
What Is a Coaching Culture?
The Lenserf Group defines a coaching culture as an environment where developing people's thinking is built into how leadership happens every day. It is not an isolated training event. It is what everyday leadership conversations start to sound like: leaders ask questions that build capacity instead of only telling people what to do.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Human Capital Institute (HCI) have benchmarked strong coaching cultures for more than a decade. Organizations with a strong coaching culture meet these five criteria:
- Coaching is explicitly valued at the executive level.
- Managers and leaders receive formal coach training.
- Multiple modalities of coaching (internal, external, and peer) are present.
- Coaching initiatives are aligned with a dedicated budget.
- All employees have opportunities to receive coaching.
The Knowing-Doing Gap: Why Training Alone Does Not Stick
Elena's situation is an example of the knowing-doing gap, a term from Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton for the distance between what organizations know and what they actually do. In leadership development it is often called the training-transfer gap: individual learning never becomes organizational practice.
Managers attend training and then revert because the surrounding norms, reinforcement, and senior-leader modeling never changed. Old habits (giving answers, avoiding hard conversations, over-helping) reassert themselves. When development is treated as an event instead of a daily leadership behavior, the organization keeps generating the leadership capacity shortage it is trying to fix.
How to Build a Coaching Culture
These steps follow the five ICF and HCI benchmarks:
- Make coaching visible at the top. Executives model it and say that it matters.
- Train managers and leaders in coaching skills, and reinforce the skills after the training ends.
- Offer more than one kind of coaching: internal, external, and peer.
- Fund it so it continues after the first program.
- Open access to everyone, not only senior leaders.
The Lenserf Group's Leader as Coach program addresses the second benchmark: formal coach training for managers and leaders.
How The Lenserf Group Helps Organizations Build a Coaching Culture
A coaching culture takes more than a single training event. The Lenserf Group helps organizations make coaching part of everyday leadership conversations, starting with formal coach training for managers and leaders through the Leader as Coach program.
Watch: Make Coaching the Norm, from Leadership COGS (Season 2, Episode 45)
The real test of a coaching culture is staying in coaching mode when pressure is on and you already know the answer. Three practices to make it stick: ask before you answer, return the thinking, and close with ownership.
Watch: Coach in 10 Minutes, from Leadership COGS (Season 2, Episode 42)
A 10-minute coaching conversation has three parts: Focus on the single most important challenge, Explore their thinking with open-ended questions, and Commit to a specific action they own before they leave.
For More Information: Building a Coaching Culture
Building a Coaching Culture
The ICF and Human Capital Institute's research on what organizations with strong coaching cultures do differently.
ICF5 Steps to Creating a Robust Coaching Culture
A practical framework for embedding coaching into how leadership happens at every level of the organization.
HCIBuilding Strong Coaching Cultures for the Future
Research from the Human Capital Institute on the characteristics and outcomes of strong coaching cultures.
Frequently Asked Questions About Coaching Culture
A coaching program is a set of activities people attend. A coaching culture is the daily behavior of leaders, supported by norms, reinforcement, and modeling from senior leaders.
Because the surrounding norms and reinforcement do not change. Managers revert to old habits, a pattern known as the knowing-doing gap or training-transfer gap.
It spreads judgment and ownership across more people. When leaders routinely ask questions that build capacity, decisions move closer to the people doing the work.
Ready to build a coaching culture that lasts?
Enroll in The Lenserf Group's Leader as Coach program and start building leadership capacity in your organization.
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