Culture Coaching

A workplace culture has the power to become a strategic advantage or a liability. The outcome depends on leadership.

What does Culture Coaching involve?

Given the importance of “getting culture right,” Culture Coaching works with you to make that happen. It builds off what’s been done and provides outside perspective, best practices experience, questions and suggestions to push thinking to create greater alignment and engagement. Values, bigger purpose, communication and behaviors play a big role in culture health in companies of all sizes. A culture of engagement depends on how deep alignment is between words, values, behaviors, actions and business strategy. As appropriate, Culture Coaching also involves facilitating leadership discussions or focus groups, a culture assessment to increase inclusive and actionable information and follow up touchpoints to support you in the effective reinforcing of the culture blueprint.

How do you close the gap between the culture a company wants and what it has?

“…Culture is the number one reason (job) candidates choose a company” replacing salary/benefits from previous years (Korn Ferry’s 2017 Talent Forecast Survey) which adds to the culture-focus imperative. You start by clarifying the aspirations for the desired culture and the strengths and limitations of the current culture. Focus groups discussions provide a sampling of insight. A more comprehensive approach is to select the leadership group, representative departments or the entire company to answer questions in The Leadership Circle Culture assessment I’m certified to administer and interpret. Questions are asked about the current culture as well as the desired culture to illustrate by diagram the specific gap areas with facilitated discussion on specific ways to close the gap.

For a startup, why is creating a clear, authentic culture of purpose so important?

“Culture is insanely important for startups….To be sustainable, culture has to be intentional.”
– David Cummings, Co-Founder, Pardot

From the earliest glimmers of a startup’s reality, founders increase momentum when they clarify their desired environment to fuel teamwork and company success. When you clarify the values, purpose and spirit to define your culture, you set in motion a powerful energy. That process, done early, makes clearer expectations, focus, hiring and how teams work together, handle challenges and build relationships with customers. It takes away ambiguity that leads to problems later that can derail momentum.

Culture Coaching facilitates your process. It’s tailored to your needs and goals: providing a sounding board, processes to advance your thinking, facilitation of discussions, strategies and best practice options that simplify the process of creating a framework for the environment you envision. Once the framework is identified, culture coaching supports you as needed in ways to communicate to engage and reinforce the behaviors that support the culture as it takes root.

Startup success has enough challenges. Culture coaching works with you so that you can make sure your culture drives enterprise value!

“The best thing leaders can do is create an environment where behaving ethically is easy.”
— Joanne Ciulla, Director, Institute for Ethical Leadership, Rutgers