Communicate with Mastery

9Creating a Coaching Culture

By now you know that no great coaching relationship can exist in a vacuum. As with any endeavor we undertake, we excel when we operate within a culture that's conducive to our success. So what kind of culture promotes coaching success? We can promote radical candor in our organizations, model and mirror the behaviors we hope others will try, and ensure that the right coaching is coming from (and to!) the right people. In this chapter, we tell you more about each of these key components to fostering a culture where coaching relationships can grow.

Everyone Can Coach (But Not Everyone Should)

A few years ago, Kara had the lucky experience of working with a highly motivated client. Billie (not her real name), a senior director in a large tech organization, was not only excited to use the tools from her coaching sessions in her own leadership, but to offer them to her team. Nearly every time Kara and Billie would practice a new framework, stance, or approach, Billie would say, “I have got to get my team to try this!” (Music to a coach's ears—we love when being coached creates a coaching mindset.) So Billie asked Kara to write a “brief one-pager” of the exercises, techniques, and best practices from their work so that she could share it with her team.

Kara asked Billie, whose schedule was incredibly fast-paced, how she planned to find time to coach her team through the skills on this one-pager.

“Oh, they're super quick. They'll catch right on!” Billie ...