When People Really Matter, Organizations Really Excel: How Building a Coaching Culture Transformed Employee Engagement

S Bock, C Conlinn The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations 2011

Integrating a bona-fide coaching culture into an organization to support a shift from “managing performance” to “coaching for performance” so that coaching is understood and practiced at all levels and becomes a way of being takes BOLD leadership and vision – and patience! This article tells the story of how Kootenay Savings Credit Union, a regional credit union in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada, identified the need for and engineered a profound shift in its organizational culture using coaching over a five-year period. In a phased implementation, Kootenay Savings, working with Sue Bock of Bock and Associates, and with the support of Essential Impact Coaching, Inc., shifted its organizational culture from managing performance to coaching for performance that resulted in a dramatically higher level of employee engagement. The authors explain the process and tools used to implement this shift to a coaching culture and to measure its impact on the organization. They also share the lessons they learned along the way.