Why tone at the top matters more than training

In most organisations, coaching has a shelf life. Most people who have spent a few years in the world of coaching can tell stories of organisations that invested huge sums of money in coaching skills training for their middle management, only to watch the well-intended initiative quietly die eighteen months later. The story is similar regardless of the nature or size of organisation: Initial enthusiasm by a vocal few, patchy adoption, organic and/or manufactured exit of the key champions, a gradual return to the old ways of working and eventually someone quietly archiving the once-prominent posters and slides that reference a coaching culture.

The problem isn't the quality of the training or the commitment of the participants. The ingredients are all there for success...except that we've fundamentally misunderstood what creates sustainable culture change. The focus is too often on building capability, rather than recognising the spacetime-defining gravitational pull of senior leadership attitudes.

The disappointing truth about coaching

Organisations trying to introduce coaching at scale tend to display a consistent pattern. Success isn't correlated solely with the level of sophistication around training programmes, or even the biggest budgets (as helpful as they can be). But success is directly correlated with the extent to which senior leaders genuinely throw their weight behind coaching as a concept, in more than simply saying that they're in favour of it. Actions do tend to speak louder than words.

This can feel uncomfortable. Most coaching initiatives begin with a catalytic individual with an empowering positive vision, and yet they're doomed from the start. They're trying to encourage one type of behaviour within a system that rewards the opposite of it.

I've written about this before - there's a tension between coaching ideals and organisational realities - but I almost wonder if I didn't go far enough in that article. It's not just about finding the right balance, it's about recognising that without properly thinking things through we essentially end up asking people to adopt behaviours that will make them less successful in their current environment.

You can't make me Chinese!

I love learning languages, and have been enjoying the challenge for the past couple of years of learning Chinese. One day I might get brave enough to enter into a conversation that's longer than a takeaway order. But I'm yet to visit China, and no number of flashcards is going to make it spontaneously appear.

Unfortunately, it feels like a lot of coaching change programmes seem to run with the assumption that if we train enough people in coaching skills, coaching behaviours and mindsets will naturally emerge among the population. When some people start learning a language they can't help themselves but immediately book a trip there, but while those two things might be connected it's not a guaranteed cause and effect.

Culture isn't created by individual skill or motivation. Organisations are the way they are because of the systems, processes and leadership behaviours that reward certain ways of working over others. When we train middle managers in coaching skills but continue to promote people based only on their ability to hit short-term targets through directive leadership, we're sending mixed messages that undermine our own efforts.

The result is a disappointingly surface-level version of coaching, in which we encourage people to go through the motions of coaching conversations while decisions continue to get made outside of them. That can be disheartening for the most passionate coaches, who end up likely to leave the organisation, maybe even to set up their own independent practice. Ultimately, this approach builds out its own business case to one day axe coaching altogether. At some point the organisation will need to save money, and pleasant conversations about personal growth and emotions just aren't aligned with what's needed.

A strategic solution

I'm a fan of coaching. I love seeing coaching culture initiatives get started. But it is worth approaching them with much greater strategic clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve, why that matters to the organisation, and how we're going to measure success.

Firstly, let's pay attention to the organisational purpose that coaching is intended to serve. I wrote at the beginning of the year about how coaching can't just be a "nice to have" development intervention. Positioning coaching as a strategic necessity that directly supports business objectives makes it much 'stickier'.

This means having explicit conversations with senior leaders about what specific organisational challenges coaching is meant to address. Is it about improving employee engagement and retention? Is it about building resilience and adaptive leadership skills? Every organisation will have its own answer, and that can then shape what form the coaching takes in this context.

Secondly, we need to measure impact in ways that resonate. Individual development outcomes aren't enough, and miss the fact that this is an organisational investment. Paying for an upgraded firewall is an easily justified expense because it protects the organisation, not because the colour scheme of the management console is going to make the information security manager feel nostalgic (or, at least, it shouldn't).

What matters to senior leaders is whether coaching is helping the organisation become more effective at achieving its strategic objectives. This is not ROI, unless the stated purpose somehow justifies that. For most organisations, trying to capture coaching ROI isn't even worth trying.

A next step

I'm going to suggest something that feels a bit counter-intuitive. I spend a lot of time saying that we should democratise coaching - AIcoach.chat has just gone through a massive upgrade and it's an extraordinary and affordable way to make really good quality non-directive coaching available to everyone. But today I'm offering a different challenge.

If you're responsible for coaching in your organisation, try spending less time on training, and more time on deep leadership development at the most senior levels. The question most coaching culture change programmes is trying to ask isn't actually whether managers can coach. Rather, it's whether the senior leadership has created - and is creating - the conditions in which coaching behaviours and mindsets are more effective in this organisation than directive ones are.

This might mean working with the leadership team to redesign decision-making processes. It might mean overhauling performance management systems. It might mean introducing alternative approaches to meetings. Regardless of how that works out for you, the principle remains the same: Sustainable coaching cultures are built from the top down.