📖 Edition 2 of The Coaching Culture Effect

Written by Paul Smith, MD, Author, Educator

When you hear the word ‘coaching’ in a business context, what comes to your mind?

For most people, it is a senior leader working one-to-one with an external expert (or an in-house employed coach) to improve their leadership presence, communication style, or strategic thinking. This is what is known as Executive Coaching.

Whilst this approach to coaching is great, if your organisation invests in executive coaching for a handful of senior leaders while leaving the broader culture untouched, you are treating a systemic challenge with an individual solution. The coached leader returns to a culture that has not changed. Their new behaviours fade. The organisation stays the same.

Organisational coaching is different. It is about transforming the system.

In this edition, I explain the critical distinction between these two approaches and why organisations serious about building a coaching culture must embrace the broader, systemic perspective.

The Key Differences Between ‘Executive’ and ‘Organisational’

Executive coaching is a goal-orientated, solution-focused, question-based conversation to support the development of an individual leader and the achievement of their professional goals. Typically, the organisation pays for the coaching, and there is a three-way relationship (known as a tripartite contract) between the coach, the coachee, and a sponsor (often HR or the coachee’s manager).

Executive coaching is often sought after to improve interpersonal and professional communication, enhance personal performance, develop executive presence, enrich strategic thinking, and build high-performing teams. It targets the individual’s development needs and typically comprises standalone engagements.

Organisational coaching operates at a different level. It aims at developing positive, systemic transformation within organisations. It is frequently used to help organisations achieve strategic objectives, enhance leadership capability, and create culture change. Broader organisational needs are placed front and centre, and the coaching is used to scale-up change across the enterprise.

As John Raymond, Head of Coaching at the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership, puts it, organisational coaching is:

“Any coaching that goes on within the context and systems of organisations: often around leadership”

The underlying purpose of organisational coaching is the long-term sustainability of the organisation. This is achieved by improving the skills and capacity of individuals and teams, as well as facilitating leadership and career development. In a nutshell, the organisation itself is our client.

What This Means for Your Organisation

Executive coaching is an investment in an individual. It helps a senior leader refine their talents, guide their decisions, and advance towards success in their business projects. It is very valuable, but it is not sufficient.

Organisational coaching is an investment in the system. It helps organisations build resilience, retain talent, improve workforce capacity, spark creativity and innovation, and enhance overall results.

There are three approaches organisations generally take towards coaching:

• A random approach.

• A pool approach.

• A formal intervention.

Most organisations adopt what we might call a ‘random’ approach to coaching. This is when individuals find their own coaches and set off on their own journeys (with costs being reimbursed by the company). There is little coordination. The coaching is disconnected from organisational strategy and does not always tie in with the wider objectives of the business. In some cases, we might even witness senior managers being coached out of the organisation for a role in another company.

Alternatively, some organisations progress to a ‘pool’ approach. Here, they create a process to build a pool of coaches from which individuals can select from. There is not a lot of coordination to this process.

The most effective approach an organisation can take is what is known as a ‘formal intervention’, where a coach scopes a project within the organisation coaching multiple participants (at an individual and team level), that set off on a shared journey, with common outcomes in a coordinated process. According to Procoaching’s John Paisley, this is the most effective approach in achieving organisational outcomes and a positive return on investment.

Figure 1: Showing the Three Approaches to Organisational Coaching

But even a formal coaching programme will fail if:

• Management is not committed

• There is a lack of understanding about what coaching is and how it works

• There is a lack of coordination

• There is a lack of trust between the organisation, the coach, and the coachee

As Margaret Wheatley, the American management consultant, says:

“People support what they create and resist what they are excluded from.”

Figure 2: Barriers to Successful Organisational Coaching

What Coaches and HR Leaders Can Do Right Now

If you are serious about embedding organisational coaching, here is a practical framework to get started. HR Leaders can also study Organisational Coaching to gain a qualification or hire a coach that specialises in Organisational Coaching.

Step 1: Define Your Organisational Coaching Approach

Figure 3: Comparison of Coaching Approaches

Step 2: Build Your Coaching Panel

Exceptional coaching panels are thoughtfully created with these questions answered:

1. What standards? What is the standard required from coaches (e.g. advanced degree in psychology or human change, coach accreditation)? Define the quality, ethics and competencies expected of every coach.

2. What purpose? What are we aiming to collectively achieve from a coaching intervention? What KPIs and objectives will tie into the coaching? Clarify why the panel exists and the impact it is designed to create.

3. What expertise? What expertise coverage is needed from the panel? Ensure a diverse range of skills, experience and perspectives.

4. Where sourced? Will external coaching organisations, external individual coaches, or internal coaches be used? Attract and select the right coaches to build a credible and trusted panel.

Figure 4: Building a Coaching Panel Framework

Most organisations use a combined approach, ensuring that each coach is handpicked and a good fit for the organisation. The coach needs to understand the organisation, how it operates and its direction.

Regardless of what a coach looks like on paper, much of the success of the coaching intervention will depend on the relationship, trust, and rapport between the coach and the stakeholders involved in the intervention.

Step 3: Ensure Systemic Intervention

Given the aim of systemic transformation, it is important to plan how the community of coaches (or qualified Organisational Coach) will learn deeper about and understand the broader organisational context and priorities.

Effective options include:

• Sponsor briefings to coaches on key organisational challenges and strategies

• Opportunities to share themes on organisational issues (e.g. lack of flexibility hindering employee engagement), while maintaining client confidentiality, generally pulled from surveys and other tools to map the landscape.

A qualified Organisational Coach will lead on this area and effectively map out your organisation’s landscape with various tools and stakeholder meetings. They will work with the sponsor to scope the whole coaching project.

Step 4: Augment Leadership Development with Coaching

Organisational coaching can be integrated into leadership development programmes with the purpose of targeting specific leadership capabilities (e.g. authenticity, teaming, collaboration, innovation). Research shows that coaching as a complement to leadership development training enhances outcomes.

This type of coaching can be integrated at various stages of the leadership programme:

• Before: To prepare leaders’ thinking and readiness for the leadership development work

• During: To work through leadership questions and challenges that have arisen during the structured programme

• After: To enhance post-programme learning and change, and/or to coach groups of participants to meet specific objectives

Your Challenge This Week

Do not coach an individual. Coach the system.

Identify one organisational process that could benefit from a coaching approach, perhaps your talent review process, your performance management system, or your leadership development programme.

Audit that process against the organisational coaching principles we have explored:

• Does it prioritise long-term organisational sustainability?

• Does it aim to create positive, systemic transformation?

• Does it connect to current affairs within the organisation?

• Is it interactive, action-oriented, and pragmatic?

• Does it provide on-the-job guidance rather than offsite interventions?

Implement one change to make that process more aligned with organisational coaching principles. Observe what happens to engagement, alignment, and performance.

Document the before and after. That is your evidence for scaling the change.

Conclusion

Executive coaching develops individuals. Organisational coaching transforms systems.

If you are investing in individual coaching while ignoring the culture that surrounds those individuals, you are leaving money on the table. The coached leader returns to an unchanged system. Their new behaviours fade. The organisation stays the same.

Organisational coaching changes the system. It embeds coaching into the fabric of how work gets done, through performance reviews, team meetings, leadership development, and day-to-day interactions.

The organisations that understand this will build cultures where coaching is not a programme but a way of being. Those that do not will continue to wonder why their expensive individual coaching investments fail to deliver sustainable change. The question is not whether you can afford to invest in organisational coaching. The question is whether you can afford to settle for individual fixes to systemic challenges.

About This Series: The Coaching Culture Effect

This article is the second in a biweekly series called The Coaching Culture Effect.

Our Purpose:
To educate organisations on what organisational coaching truly is, and, more importantly, how it can be embedded into how work gets done. We are moving coaching from the periphery to the core.

Who This Series Is For:

• Organisations seeking to build resilient, agile, and high-performing cultures.

• HR and L&D leaders tasked with developing talent and driving cultural change.

• Coaches and aspiring coaches (particularly those considering our Level 7 Organisational Coaching Programme) who want to move beyond 1:1 interventions and learn how to coach at the systemic level.

What to Expect:
Every two weeks, we publish a research-backed, practically focused article exploring a different dimension of organisational coaching. Future articles will cover:

• The art of listening at scale

• The science of asking better questions

• Coaching for psychological safety

• Measuring the ROI of coaching culture

• Coaching in hybrid and remote environments

• And much more.

Our Invitation:
If you are an organisation ready to embed coaching into your culture (or a coach ready to step up to the systemic level), we would love to walk this journey with you.

We deliver a Level 7 Organisational Coaching Programme designed specifically for professionals who want to lead this transformation. If that sounds like you or your organisation, let’s talk.

I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts.

What is your organisation’s approach to coaching? Is it focused on individuals or the system?

Drop your reflections in the comments; let’s learn from each other.

Footnotes & References

1. Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19455173/

2. McCraty, R., Barrios-Choplin, B., Rozman, D., Atkinson, M., & Watkins, A. D. (1998). The impact of a new emotional self-management program on stress, emotions, heart rate variability, DHEA and cortisol. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 33(2), 151–170. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02688660

3. Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499

4. Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 84(10), 62–70. https://newventureswest.com/the-neuroscience-of-leadership/

5. Boyatzis, R. E., & Jack, A. I. (2018). The neuroscience of coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 70(1), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000095

6. Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ589456

📖 Edition 1 of The Coaching Culture Effect

Written by Paul Smith, MD, Author, Educator

How many times have you watched a perfectly capable leader fall apart under pressure? They are smart, talented, and experienced. However, when the heat turns up (a restructure, a missed target, a difficult client), they stop thinking clearly. They get reactive. Defensive. Short-sighted.

We tend to blame the individual. “They couldn’t handle the pressure,” but what if we rephrased our question and asked the following:

What if the problem is the environment they are operating in?

Here is what the neuroscience tells us:

“Under sustained threat, the human brain literally shuts down its strategic thinking centre and defaults to survival mode. Ironically, in modern corporate environments, most organisations are accidentally designed to keep their leaders in survival mode.”

The antidote? A Coaching Culture. Why? Because it protects the brain’s ability to think clearly when it matters most.

Explaining the Neuroscience

Let me introduce you to the part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex, or PFC for short. Think of it as your strategic brain. It handles:

• Long-term thinking

• Complex problem-solving

• Impulse control

• Emotional regulation

• Seeing the big picture

When your PFC is working well, you are at your best as a leader.

Now, meet your amygdala. Think of this as your alarm system. It scans for threats (physical or psychological) and when it detects one, it takes over.

When your amygdala is in charge:

• You get defensive

• You make quick, reactive decisions

• You lose perspective

• You struggle to listen or collaborate

This is what psychologists call the “amygdala hijack,” (which happens to all of us).

The problem is that in most organisations, leaders are walking around in a state of chronic, low-grade amygdala activation. Unrealistic targets. Political manoeuvring. Fear of failure. Blame cultures. All of these keep the alarm system ringing (and we wonder why burnout figures are rising each year.)

When we explore research in this area, Carol Dweck’s famous work on Mindset (2006) showed that people who believe they can grow and learn are more resilient and successful.

But wait, neuroscience takes this further.

Research by Davidson and McEwen (2012) proved that our brains are plastic, “they physically change in response to our experiences.” When we engage in reflective, curious, non-judgemental thinking (the type of thinking coaching encourages), we actually thicken the prefrontal cortex. I.e. we build a stronger strategic brain.

At the same time, Amy Arnsten from Yale (2009) demonstrated that when stress hormones spike, the prefrontal cortex literally goes offline. The alarm system takes over. We literally cannot think strategically, no matter how smart we are.

A 1998 study by McCraty and colleagues found soemthing, I personally found fascinating:

“That just four weeks of emotional self-management training (techniques that share core principles with coaching) reduced cortisol levels by an average of 23% and significantly improved emotional well-being.”

We are not talking therapy here; we are talking about how coaching can be a cognitive performance enhancer.

However, (and this is the critical point for organisations) these benefits don’t last unless the environment reinforces them. A meta-analysis by Theeboom, Beersma, and van Vianen (2014) looked at 37 coaching studies. They found that coaching works brilliantly, but only when the surrounding culture supports it. Send a leader to a coaching programme, and they return to a threat-ridden, command-and-control culture, and their new behaviours fade within weeks (I’m sure many of us have experienced or witnessed this).

As Rock and Schwartz (2006) wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

“Our brains are deeply social. They are shaped by the quality of our interactions with others. One coached leader swimming against a toxic cultural tide will eventually drown.”

The conclusion is unavoidable: coaching must be embedded into the entire organisation, not just offered to a few individuals for a temporary period of time.

What This Means for Your Organisation

If your organisation is high-pressure, target-driven, and risk-averse, you are probably keeping your leaders’ strategic brains offline. They are making reactive decisions, avoiding innovation, and burning out. Although many of us believe so, that is not a leadership problem, it is a cultural design problem.

Organisations that embed coaching into their culture (not as a programme, but as the way things are done) create a completely different environment:

The results speak for themselves:

• Faster decision-making because leaders retain their strategic brain under pressure.

• Better retention because people feel safe, valued, and developed.

• More innovation because curiosity replaces fear.

As Boyatzis and Jack (2018) argue in their neuroscience research, “lasting behavioural change requires both individual coaching and a supportive social environment.” The organisation itself must become the coach.

What Coaches and HR Leaders Can Do Right Now

If you are a coach, an HR leader, or an organisational development professional, your job is no longer just coaching individuals. Your job needs to become focused on coaching the system.

Here is a simple, four-step framework to start embedding coaching into your organisation’s DNA.

Step 1: Find the Threat Triggers

Before you can build a coaching culture, you need to know where the organisation is actively destroying it. In our Level 7 Organisational Coaching Programme we equip our coaches with several tools to map these out. Here,we have simplified this step into a few questions.

Ask yourself:

• Performance reviews: Do they feel like a judgement or a conversation?

• Meetings: Are they status updates or genuine discussions?

• Failure: When someone makes a mistake, is it punished or investigated with curiosity?

• Communication: Do leaders say “Do this” or “What do you think?”

The exercise: Rate each of these areas from 1 (high threat) to 10 (high safety). Anything below a 5 could be keeping your leaders’ strategic brains offline.

Step 2: Teach Leaders to Coach, Not Fix

Most leaders have been promoted because they are good at solving problems. Coaching requires a completely different skill set.

You need to teach your leaders:

• Deep listening: Listening to understand, not just to reply.

• Curious questioning: Replacing advice with inquiry. Instead of “Here is what I would do,” ask, “What have you tried, and what have you learned?”

• Feedback as data: Shifting feedback from “You did this wrong” to “Here is what I observed, what do you make of it?”

A practical metric: In your next leadership team meeting, count how many questions are asked versus how many statements are made. A coaching culture starts with at least three questions for every statement.

Step 3: Weave Coaching into Everyday Processes

Coaching cannot be a standalone intervention. It must become part of how work gets done.

Step 4: Measure What Matters

If you want to prove the ROI of embedding coaching, track the right things:

• Psychological safety scores: (there is a simple, validated 7-question survey by Amy Edmondson which can be found online).

• Retention rates: particularly among your high-potential talent.

• Internal promotion rates: coaching cultures develop people from within.

• Innovation metrics: how many new ideas are generated and implemented?

The business case is simple: Organisations with high psychological safety and embedded coaching cultures outperform their peers. The neuroscience explains why. This data should help you prove it.

Your Challenge This Week

Here is your practical, no-nonsense challenge for the next two weeks (because I love a bit of action):

Do not coach an individual. Coach a process instead.

Pick one organisational process that feels broken (perhaps the annual performance review, or the weekly team meeting). Redesign that single process using coaching principles:

• Replace judgement with curiosity.

• Replace reporting with reflection.

• Replace directives with questions.

Implement it with one team. Observe what happens to their energy, engagement, and quality of thinking. Document the before and after. Then evaluate this evidence to look at the scaling change.

The Bottom Line

Organisational coaching is not a luxury. It is not a soft skill. It is not just for senior leaders.

It is a scientifically-proven infrastructure that protects and enhances the very thing your organisation depends on: the collective brainpower of your people.

Organisations that get this will build leaders who think clearly under pressure, adapt quickly to complexity, and innovate fearlessly, not because they were sent to a coaching course, but because they operate inside a coaching ecosystem.

Those that don’t will keep wondering why their expensive leadership programmes fail to deliver lasting change. The question is not whether you can afford to embed coaching into your culture. The question is whether you can afford not to.

About This Series: The Coaching Culture Effect

This article is the first in a bi-weekly series called The Coaching Culture Effect.

Our Purpose:
To educate organisations and aspiring organisational coaches on what organisational coaching truly is, and, more importantly, how it can be embedded into the very fabric of how work gets done. We are moving coaching from the periphery to the core.

Who This Series Is For:

• Organisations seeking to build resilient, agile, and high-performing cultures.

• HR and L&D leaders tasked with developing talent and driving cultural change.

• Coaches and aspiring coaches (particularly those considering our Level 7 Organisational Coaching Programme) who want to move beyond 1:1 interventions and learn how to coach at the systemic level.

What to Expect:
Every two weeks, we will publish a research-backed, practically-focused article exploring a different dimension of organisational coaching. Future articles will cover:

• The art of listening at scale

• The science of asking better questions

• Coaching for psychological safety

• Measuring the ROI of coaching culture

• Coaching in hybrid and remote environments

• And much more.

Our Invitation:
If you are an organisation ready to embed coaching into your culture (or a coach ready to step up to the systemic level) we would love to walk this journey with you.

We deliver a Level 7 Organisational Coaching Programme designed specifically for professionals who want to lead this transformation. Those interested can join one of our cohorts as an individual or we can discuss delivering tailored cohorts within an organisation. If that sounds like you or your organisation, let’s talk.

On a final note, I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts.

What processes in your organisation keep leaders in threat mode? Have you ever tried to embed coaching into a system? Drop your reflections in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to theis newsletter and let’s learn from each other.

Footnotes & References

1. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House. https://www.proemergency.com/assets/dokumen/ebook_platinum/20231124092918-Mindset_The_New_Psychology_of_Success.pdf

2. Davidson, R. J., & McEwen, B. S. (2012). Social influences on neuroplasticity: Stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nature Neuroscience, 15(5), 689–695. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3491815/pdf/nihms366958.pdf

3. Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2907136/pdf/nihms197465.pdf

4. McCraty, R., Barrios-Choplin, B., Rozman, D., Atkinson, M., & Watkins, A. D. (1998). The impact of a new emotional self-management program on stress, emotions, heart rate variability, DHEA and cortisol. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 33(2), 151–170. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02688660

5. Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499

6. Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 84(10), 62–70. https://newventureswest.com/the-neuroscience-of-leadership/

7. Boyatzis, R. E., & Jack, A. I. (2018). The neuroscience of coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 70(1), 1–16. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fcpb0000095

8. Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ589456