Driving Your Strategic Agenda: Coaching For Transformation Within Your Organisation

As a long term partner of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) ChapmanCG was delighted to co-host the India Virtual People and Culture Lab in November. In a large country like India where the HR fraternity is so geographically dispersed, the virtual setup of this session on Driving Your Strategic Agenda: Coaching for Transformation within Your Organisation offered a fantastic opportunity for our vast HR leader network to come together, learn about best practices in the field of coaching and apply the knowledge to their own roles.

We had four very experienced HR leaders joining us for the panel discussion to share their thoughts and anecdotes on this very topical subject:

• Kavita Kurup, Global Head for Human Resources at UST
• Ans Raja Joseph, Head of People and Organization at Novartis India
• Vandana Vishnu, Director of Coaching for CCL APAC
• Muniinder Anand, Managing Director at CCL for India, South Asia and the Global Support Centre

Essentials For a Successful Coaching Culture

Senior buy-in at an early stage is essential for the success of any coaching program. When the need for coaching arises from business needs and strategic objectives rather than simply being a development tool, it is proven to lead to a stronger buy-in from the C-suite leaders which is a key success factor. With an early adoption, the coaching culture permeates and enables the development of internal coaches as they move beyond the roles of managers or mentors into becoming coaches. 

Trust was another critical factor highlighted during the discussion. When the coaching mechanisms in the organisation are designed around the trust factor they create a strong feeling of belonging and ownership in the employees. 

The frameworks of LACE and RACSR depict the underlying principles and models of coaching. Here the panellists highlighted the importance of asking the right questions, listening without any agenda or bias, building a trust-based relationship, challenging as well as supporting the coachee, and finally building consensus around the next steps and desired outcomes.

We then touched upon CCL’s Holistic Leadership and their button metamorph, emphasising that a leader can truly unleash their potential only when they are able to bring in a balance between self, career, community and family. A good coaching culture would help enable this. 

Key Take Aways

At ChapmanCG the we find that the topic of coaching is always relevant amongst the HR community, and it was inspiring to see the shift from coaching being used for development to a tool that enables the achievement of business goals. While this transformation comes with its obvious challenges due to the human nature of biases and expectations, there are systems and processes available to make the coaching experience more authentic. 

Growth stops when we stop learning, and we were happy to learn that having a coaching culture ensures we are constantly evolving. When employees see their leaders coach, and being coached, and when a sense of pride is attached to the coaching culture, that’s when an organisation moves from being an ‘earning organisation’ to a ‘learning organisation’. 

It was great to see the exchange of these thoughts and techniques to enable coaching in the organisation from a strategic point of view. We hope everyone found the session engaging and we look forward to hosting more inspiring sessions with The Center for Creative Leadership in the future. 

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