Join us as we discuss what a coaching culture really looks like, and the key benefits for driving performance.
As organisations move away from traditional command-and-control leadership, coaching is becoming an essential leadership capability. But creating a coaching culture isn't about introducing another HR initiative. It's about changing how leaders support, develop, and empower their people.
In this episode, Chief Change Officer, Dr Petrina Carmody, explores what a coaching culture really looks like, why it matters for modern workplaces, and how leaders can create environments built on trust, accountability, and continuous development.
• 20 min
What a Coaching Culture Really Means
Great Talks
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Key Takeaways
A coaching culture isn't soft
The biggest misconception about coaching culture, says Petrina, is that it is soft, overly collaborative, or simply defined by being nice.
In reality, Petrina shared, "effective coaching cultures are strong cultures which are built on respect and accountability and high performance, and at the heart of them is honest, constructive dialogue because they're based on trust."
Trust, as with all areas of workplace culture, is vital because is enables the psychological safety that allows people to be honest, vulnerable, and open to feedback.
Leadership behaviours deliver the biggest impact
As the Great Place To Work effect proves, leadership behaviours are the catalyst that great cultures start with – and a coaching culture is no different.
"Leaders set the emotional tone for the organisation," explains Petrina. "Their voice has a disproportionate impact on the culture. So it's critically important that they drive psychological safety."
A coaching culture has measurable performance impact
"Coaching has a very real and powerful impact on performance," says Petrina. "It improves communication, decision-making, resilience, accountability, and team effectiveness."
At it's core, coaching is about unlocking the potential of your people. When your leaders act as facilitators, or "conductors of the orchestra rather than players" as Petrina puts it, every member of the team can perform at their best.
Show Transcript
Beth
Hello, and welcome to Great Talks, the series where we explore what great workplace culture really looks like and how leaders can turn culture into genuine business advantage. I'm Beth, content manager at Great Place to Work UK, and I'll be your host. Today, we're talking about coaching culture.It's a phrase we hear more and more in discussions about leadership, talent, and performance. But what does it actually mean? And more importantly, what does it take to build one?I'm joined by Chief Change Officer, Dr. Petrina Carmody. Petrina is an executive leadership advisor, organisational psychologist, and executive coach with more than 20 years' experience. At Great Place to Work, she partners with organisations to improve performance through better leadership, culture, and decision-making.We'll be exploring why coaching has become such an important capability for modern leaders, what it really means to build a coaching culture, and how organisations can move beyond command and control leadership to create environments built on trust, accountability, and continuous development. Hi, Petrina, it's lovely to have you with us today.
Petrina
Oh, hi, Beth, thank you so much for welcoming me today. I look forward to our conversation.
Beth
Of course, as do I. So let's start with a phrase that gets used a lot, I think, especially at the moment, this idea of a coaching culture. When people hear that term, what do you think they most often misunderstand?
Petrina
Thank you for getting straight to a really powerful question, Beth. I think the word coaching culture is used so much at the moment, and I think, like many things, it has real value and power, when well-defined, but it's quite often ill-defined. People may often think of it as a culture where people are nice or perhaps overly collaborative, or simply that it's just another fluffy leadership term or trend.But actually, from the admittedly biased position of being an executive coach, effective coaching cultures are strong cultures which are built on respect and accountability and high performance, and at the heart of them is honest, constructive dialogue because they're based on trust. And I think very much at the heart of a coaching culture is the notion of everybody working together as adult-to-adult relationships, not perhaps a more parent-child interaction. It's about everybody being empowered and contributing.
Beth
Yeah, I think that's such an important distinction, the idea that it's not about lowering the bar or making leadership softer, it's about creating the conditions for people to actually perform more effectively. So if we strip it right back, what actually defines a true coaching culture?
Petrina
I think at the heart of this is a culture where development is part of everyday leadership, both for the leaders and the people that they are looking after and supporting and enabling. It's not just something reserved for training programmes or annual reviews. A coaching culture is a mindset.It shapes how we as individuals communicate, lead, challenge and support each other through the day. And it's about having quality conversations where I and others feel heard and the feedback is honest and constructive and we all together are accountable. At the heart of it is high trust.
Beth
I really like that idea of it being sort of a mindset rather than like a tick box programme. And it's something that we've actually talked about on the podcast in the past about development, how much more effective it is when it's embedded in the everyday rather than seen as something to just kind of tick off annually or quarterly. But despite that, there is still quite a persistent kind of perception issue here.Why does so many leaders, do you think, still associate coaching with being soft or less performance focused?
Petrina
It's a very interesting question. And the word soft, I think, is very sort of emotionally laden. And I think perhaps some of this is because traditional leadership models were often more focused around the leader holding the power and the answers and her or him being more directive.But actually coaching is a method and a symbol of shifting us from leadership, which is predominantly directive and I as the leader own the answers to more collaborative and enabling and empowering everybody. And I think it's, I think the less performance focused nature is because actually a coaching culture drives more collaborative style of leadership. And I think it's back to this notion that I said that the true coaching approach is based on adult to adult relationships.And it's firm and clear and respectful and honest, but it's not the parent child style where I as a manager or leader might rescue or closely manage or provide the answers. It's very much the coaching culture notion is reality is very much about the leader as the facilitator or conductor of the orchestra rather than one of the players. I suppose it's important to say that coaching has a very real and powerful impact on performance.It improves communication, decision-making, resilience, accountability, and team effectiveness. But like all things worth doing, it isn't without effort and there are conscious practical steps that one can take in order to drive a more empowering coaching culture. And I should also say that while clearly I'm a passionate advocate of coaching cultures, it's important to say that as leaders, we have a toolkit from which to draw and sometimes it may be right to be more directive and sometimes it might be right to be less.It's about matching one style and approach to the situation.
Beth
Yeah, I think that's, it's really interesting because what you're saying there, I think is true of the kind of idea of workplace culture more generally. It can be seen as sort of soft or a nice to have when actually it's kind of foundational to strategy and performance. And we know that when it comes to culture, trust is imperative and that trust always starts with the leaders and obviously coaching is no different.So why does a coaching culture live or die on trust and how do leadership behaviours play into that?
Petrina
Oh gosh, so how does it live or die of trust and how do leadership behaviours play in? I would say coaching culture lives or dies on trust because it is most powerful and at its best and most effective when people feel, we as humans feel psychologically safe enough to be honest and challenged and vulnerable and open to growth. If the culture is such that people fear, they feel there'll be judgment or embarrassment or negative consequences, they're less likely to have those adult to adult or open conversations where accountability and true performance can really thrive.Where there is psychological safety, we're more likely to feel able to speak up, share ideas of course, admit mistakes, challenge appropriately and just have those honest conversations without fear. Leadership behaviour is critical in that because well, I would say leaders set the emotional tone for the organisation and their voice can be argued to have a disproportionate impact on the culture. So it's critically important that they drive, in the healthiest cultures, they drive psychological safety.In our work, A Great Place to Work, we, at the heart of what we do is help organisations actively understand their cultures and the power of essentially how we treat each other on not only how we feel, but what we achieve. And our strong research, what we call The Great Place to Work Effect shows time and time again, that if you get your culture right, it leads consistently to high level, higher, much higher bottom line performance. At the heart of getting your culture right in a vertical, and I realise that's a big statement, and trust is central.Trust is not just a nice to have, it's a really important commercial imperative. And at the heart of that are some key leadership behaviours. For example, the trust and coaching cultures are strengthened when leaders display consistency, respect, curiosity, accountability, and also this notion of vulnerability, which we, I think, hear more about at the moment for good reason.So in answer to your question, coaching cultures have trust at the heart of them where they are successful, because that sense of trust and psychological safety needs to be there to have those adult to adult interactions that really unlock everybody's contribution in the organisation and drive high performance. And as leaders, we can have a disproportionate impact onto that because our voices are strong and influential in terms of shaping the culture. Not that every voice doesn't count, it absolutely does.
Beth
Yeah, I think we've talked a little bit about The Great Place to Work Effect on previous podcasts, so hopefully listeners will be familiar, although if you're not, you can always go back and listen. So yeah, clearly trust is a vital basis for coaching to work, and it also helps build that kind of style of leadership that also breeds trust and therefore drives performance as well. But I think a lot of leaders might be listening and thinking, it's easier said than done.As you said, it does require a lot of kind of work and strategy behind it. From your work with organisations, where do you think leaders most often get stuck when trying to build that coaching culture and how could they maybe overcome those obstacles?
Petrina
I think the heart of it is perhaps seeing building a coaching culture as an additional task on the task list. But actually it's about embedding some ways of thinking and some approaches to how we interact with others in our day-to-day tasks. So I think that's one thing.I think another common challenge is a tension between time and pressure and the sense that perhaps it takes longer for me to coach and empower someone to deliver on something than it does goodness just to do it myself. And I've done it before and I know how to do it. And it can be tempting to default back to the telling or directing or problem solving.But actually a coaching conversation may feel slower initially. However, over time it enables others to take their full place at the table and have ownership and make better decisions and collaborate more strongly together. And it drives long-term efficiency because essentially you've got more capable brains on the job, it's unlocking other people's potential.But it's not without effort. And there are some, like most things in life, there are some clear skills or tips for success. So for example, effective listening, asking powerful questions and balancing effectively support with challenge are hallmarks of a coaching culture.And they are aspects of how we treat each other that we can mindfully focus on and learn tips and techniques to succeed in. So I suppose the short answer to your question, shorter answer would be, people may get stuck for a variety of reasons. At the heart of them perhaps are seeing coaching, driving a coaching culture as an add-on task rather than central to how the way I interact with others should be.And second, it's about recognising that most things in life, one can demystify it and there are some tips for success. So it might be upskilling people or it might be helping them to focus on that. And it's also seeing the long-term focus that this may take more of an investment of time now but ultimately will pay off.And that vision is important for individual leaders but it's also important for the organisation to embrace. So I think most effective coaching cultures are in organisations where there is that recognition of the importance of leadership style. And we talked a lot about the coaching culture today, clearly, because that's the topic of our conversation but I would underline, of course, the coaching approach is one of a number of powerful tools that a leader will have to use in whatever situation she or he finds themselves in and sometimes may need to be more direct to and sometimes less.
Beth
Yeah, I think that point about leaders kind of defaulting back under pressure, time pressure and things will definitely resonate. I think it's probably something we can all relate to whether you're a leader or not, that just getting stuck in the weeds of everyday and not taking time to take a step back and kind of reframe how you're doing things. So that brings us nicely to where we can actually support here.So given everything we've talked about, where do Great Place to Work support organisations on this journey?
Petrina
Gosh, thank you, Beth. Well, a recent example that I'm very proud of is work we've done in collaboration and partnership with Birmingham Airport and their senior leadership team where right from the top through the organisation, they recognise the powerful impact of trust and driving a healthy culture on every person's day-to-day experience at work but also on their bottom line and the experience of their customers and passengers. And we worked with the senior team in a series over a year of coaching and workshops and training to help them embed and empower people and drive connections from the top down through the organisation. Our programme had a number of clear benefits which were evidenced in our subsequent employee survey.So for example, perceptions across the organisation of manager empathy, trust in management actions and overall perception of the organisation as a great place to work and very notably increased. And as an organisation, Birmingham Airport are passionately committed to their people experience and the powerful impact of that on the bottom line and on their passengers. And they continue to invest in leadership and development and growth across the organisation, not just in the traditional category of leadership but for people across the organisation.So in simple terms, we do three things at Great Place to Work. We help organisations with insight, understanding their culture, we support them to drive their culture forward, second, and we celebrate through recognition of high-performing cultures. And our support in this area touches on all three of those.So first of all, fundamentally we help organisations provide external, impartial, confidentially gathered insight into where they're at with our trust index survey and other measures to help them understand what their culture's like at the moment in terms of leadership, decision-making, communication, so on. We support clients in terms of helping them to move their culture forward to where they want it to be with programmes such as developing values and associated behaviours to reinforce and remind groups in an organisation what the rules of engagement are, essentially how we as humans would like to treat each other and the coaching culture is often at the heart of that. We and work, having set out those, I suppose, overall rules of engagement, we support organisations with coaching across different levels in the organisation, very often starting at the top but cascading through the organisation and also associated skills training.I suppose that at the heart of this in our work with leaders and managers in particular on coaching is shifting this notion of coaching from that word you said earlier, Beth, soft, to being understood that this actually is a fundamental aspect of how we work day-to-day and it's critical to drive accountability, engagement and the bottom line. And so we support leaders to embed coaching style into day-to-day working and so drive a culture of coaching.
Beth
Yeah, those are really nice kind of tangible outcomes. I think it's really helpful to see how this translates from something sort of conceptual into that measurable impact. And you can read more about Birmingham Airport if you would like in the case study on our website.So for organisations listening who might be earlier in their journey, if they wanted to take one realistic step towards a stronger coaching culture this year, where would you suggest they start?
Petrina
Oh gosh, great question. Of course, just as each individual is unique, each organisation is unique, but as a sweeping one thought, I'd come back to my experience that coaching cultures are built through hard work and everyday conversations and habits. It's not a framework, it's not a training session on its own per se, it's about day-to-day practice.And so I would say that a realistic first step is helping leaders reflect on their key role, perhaps this notion of being conductors rather than players in the orchestra might be helpful and encourage them to make the shift from more often perhaps telling and solving to being more curious and facilitative and developmental in how they lead. So it might be simply to boil it down to something more concrete, encouraging leaders to intentionally ask more questions, listen more, create more space for reflection and increase or perhaps I'd say broaden ownership rather than hold it more to themselves more immediately providing the answers. And this may be driven in part, yes, as I said, it's not about necessarily about training or framework, it's not, but that might be part of it.It's about a mindset and fundamentally as an organisation of belief that this style is right.
Beth
I think that's nice, it makes it feel quite sort of achievable rather than overwhelming to just start with those small steps. And it brings us kind of back to where we started that that coaching culture isn't just built through one big initiative or training programmes, but through everyday leadership kind of conversations and behaviours. So thank you so much, Katrina.I think there's lots in there that will resonate with leaders and organisations. And hopefully we've challenged some of those misconceptions around coaching as well. So thank you again for joining me.Oh, it's been a great pleasure. Thank you so much, Beth. And thank you for listening to The Great Talks Podcast.If you'd like to learn more about how Great Place to Work supports organisations through coaching, leadership development and culture transformation, and about the link between culture and performance, visit us at greatplacetowork.co.uk. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your network and join us next time as we continue exploring the ideas and practices that help create great workplaces that drive business success. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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