Why Most Coaching Culture Initiatives Fail (and How to Succeed)

When a company successfully creates a coaching culture, it can be revolutionary.

Every employee wants to grow, learn, and evolve. People share feedback freely to help each other get better. Employees are open about their challenges and ask for help so that they learn faster and make better decisions.

And everyone is more confident, engaged, and productive. So naturally, they want to stick around for longer.

This can be an incredible experience for employees and leadership alike.

If your company’s culture doesn’t currently embody a coaching mindset, you can definitely get there, but it’ll take some intention. 

I worked as a leader in HR for over two decades, and I’ve seen plenty of companies try to make a culture shift and fail miserably. But I’ve also seen many succeed!

So, in this article, I’ll help you avoid the pitfalls of a failed culture shift so that you can successfully implement a coaching culture in your company.

What is a Coaching Culture?

A coaching culture is a work environment that values communication, empowerment, and personal development.

Successful coaching cultures focus on developing their people. When done right, work can become a transformational environment. People may join your company thinking it’s just another job, but they’ll come away more empowered, capable, and further along their path.

We each have huge untapped potential, and a coaching cultures draw impressive amounts of potential from everyone who works there without it feeling like extra work, for leaders and employees alike.

Coaching cultures aren’t just better for employees. They offer huge benefits to the company as well. Namely, when companies invest in a coaching culture:

• Their stock grows faster (on average)
  

• Top performers stick around longer
  

• Companies attract top talent more effectively
  

• Employees feel more motivated and engaged at work (so better work gets done)
  

• Employees are more productive and procrastinate less (so more work gets done)

For most companies, a coaching culture is a no-brainer.

But there are plenty of HR and leadership teams who try to transform their organizational culture, and nothing changes.

Fortunately, we can learn from their errors and successes to help you do it right.

Below are the top mistakes that companies make that sabotage their efforts to create a coaching culture. If you can avoid these, you’ll be in great shape.

Mistake 1: Leadership Isn’t Fully Bought In

Culture always trickles down from the top.

If your leaders aren’t bought in, then your coaching culture initiative will come off as a mandatory HR task and not an actual priority.

To truly embody a strong coaching culture, it’s imperative that your leaders genuinely see and believe in the value of coaching.

How to avoid this pitfall: Hire executive coaches for your senior leaders. 

If your execs use executive coaches and have a good experience, they’ll be singing the gospels of coaching for the whole company.

You probably won’t regret the investment—from a financial perspective, studies suggest that executive coaching has an ROI of 788%. So, every $100 spent on coaching earns back $788. 

Plus, 86% of execs (and 74% stakeholders) are very or extremely satisfied with executive coaching.

There’s a reason why Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt both worked with coaches—executive coaches can help even the best leaders make better decisions. 

Mistake 2: There Are No Regular Systems for Feedback

A key element of effective coaching cultures is a constant flow of constructive feedback. Welcoming and integrating feedback is one of the fastest paths to growth. 

Ideally, you’ll have a culture where feedback flows in all directions—top-down, bottom-up, and peer-to-peer.

That said, it’s easy for a company to say it values feedback. But if there aren’t systems in place, then it’s just lip service.

The reality is that employees won’t give feedback to each other, let alone to leadership, unless they feel safe doing so. And that safety is built through feedback systems.

How to avoid this pitfall: Normalize feedback by setting up frequent opportunities for employees to speak their minds.

Make sure leaders ask for feedback at the end of every meeting, every 1-on-1, and every opportunity they get. 

And reward people for their honesty. Thank them for speaking authentically. In a true feedback culture, employees can’t be afraid that they’ll be punished for being honest.

We can learn from Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund. 

He’s an extreme believer in feedback. His company has a system where at every meeting, you rate everyone present based on how effective they are in different qualities. 

People don’t hold back–in this example, a 24-year-old gave Dalio a 3/10 in a particular meeting based on how open-minded he was.

Most of your employees will be afraid to give feedback. So you can’t merely “tolerate” it; you have to want it, seek it, and love it. And when you receive feedback, you must show non-defensive appreciation and actually take it in.

Mistake 3: They Aren’t Measuring Success

It’s hard to improve what you don’t measure. 

Plenty of companies say they want a coaching culture, but they never define what success actually looks like. 

To know if your coaching initiatives are “working,” you need to set some measurements. 

For example, if you encourage your team leaders to use coaching skills, but after one month, your employee engagement scores stay stagnant, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

How to Avoid This Pitfall: Pick several success metrics and measure them before and after your culture initiative to track progress and shift course as need be. Here are a few ideas:

• Employee engagement scores
  

• Quantity of feedback submissions
  

• Number of internal promotions
  

• Manager effectiveness ratings

Mistake 4: Leaders Never Show Vulnerability

Authenticity, vulnerability, and transparency.

If these values aren’t present, then you’ll be unable to step fully into a coaching culture.

Part of a coaching culture is feeling like your workmates and leaders are fellow humans with their own struggles, dreams, strengths, and weaknesses. 

To bring these values in, you’ll need leadership to model. It can set a powerful, relatable, and inspiring example when leaders reveal their own personal challenges, own up to their mistakes, and share what they are learning along the way. 

As Brené Brown poetically writes in her leadership guide, Dare to Lead:

To be the person who we long to be—we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.

How to avoid this pitfall: Encourage “leadership storytelling.” 

Whether in all-hands meetings, team check-ins, or company-wide emails, encourage executives and managers to share personal stories about lessons learned and challenges overcome.  

Additionally, the more leaders take accountability for their mistakes, the more employees will feel compelled to do the same. If someone does make a mistake and owns up to it, make a point to acknowledge their integrity.  

Mistake 5: Coaching is Treated as a One-Time Fix

Some companies will run a single goal-setting workshop for employees and hope that’ll be enough to make a culture change. But that approach is a recipe for failure.

Lasting change will require more consistency.

Just like you can’t transform your self-talk with a single therapy session or change your fitness with a single run.

Your company culture is an intricate social system made up of communication norms, company values, and beliefs around what’s possible. There’s a momentum to the way things have been done.

So, changing your culture will require ongoing focus and attention.

How to avoid this pitfall: Set up regular systems that consistently reinforce the type of culture you want to create. Here are some ideas:

• Leader-led coaching conversations where managers bring coaching skills into their 1on1s
  

• A mentorship program where employees can sign up for a mentorship relationship
  

• A coaching recognition system where you publicly acknowledge and reward individual employees who show growth and teamwork

Mistake 6: Failing to Prioritize Values When Hiring

One of the fastest and most effective ways to shift a culture is by bringing in new employees who meet your ideal values.

For example, if you want team players, think of how much easier it’d be to hire a natural collaborator than to teach a self-centered employee how to become genuinely invested in their teammates' success.

I’m definitely not saying you should replace your current team.

But in all your future hiring decisions, be very aware that these new hires you bring on will shape your company culture–and this becomes more true the more senior the hire is.

How to avoid this pitfall: Clarify what values make up a coaching culture in your eyes. Then, when hiring new candidates, make sure they fit those values to a T.

Here are a few values to consider:

• Growth mindset
  

• Empathy
  

• Transparency
  

• Accountability
  

• Collaboration

Mistake 7: Leaders Aren’t Genuinely Committed to Employees’ Development

In a coaching culture, leaders need to be able to put on two distinct hats: their “get sh*t done hat,” and their “coach” hat.

When their “get sh*t done” hat is on, they need to make sure KPIs are getting hit, projects are getting completed, and progress is being made. 

When their “coach” hat is on, they’re not looking at the success of the project but at the personal evolution of each team member. They need to ask themselves questions like “How is Tina faring with the added pressure? How can I help her rise to the challenge?” and “How can I help Rameez break through his limiting beliefs?”

For many leaders, the “get sh*t done hat* is well-worn. But the “coach” hat can require a whole mindset shift. It requires cranking up your empathy and reframing the workplace not just as a place to hit goals but as a place to empower your team.

And why does this matter?

Put yourself in the shoes of an employee for a moment. It’s not hard to imagine that you’d want to invest deeply in a company that actually wants you to learn new skills, build your problem-solving abilities, and be your best.

How to avoid this pitfall: Get all your leaders - not just HR -  trained as coaches. This will equip them with coaching skills and the mindset to better empower their team. 

Take a First Step Toward a Coaching Culture

If you’re serious about instilling a coaching culture in your entire organization, there are two powerful steps you can take to get started:

1. Hire in-house coaches to regularly support and empower your employees.
   

2. Train your leaders in coaching skills so they can embed coaching values into your team.

If either of those sounds like the right next step, check out the International Association of Career Coaches, where we offer both internal coaches and coaching training for managers. 

If you’re unsure, you can set up a free 15-minute consultation with me to see if it’s a good fit.