A recent report from the Harvard Institute of Coaching states that a coaching culture emerge when leaders, managers, and staff engage and develop their people in ways that create increased individual, team and organizational performance.  TLD Group Coach, Loren Margolis, offers the following advice to organizations looking to move toward a coaching culture.

1. Rethink Hierarchy

A hierarchical culture still remains in medicine where command and control leadership remains the norm. With volatility, uncertainty and change permeating healthcare organizations, optimizing employee performance is more essential than ever for employee engagement and retention, patient outcomes and organizational effectiveness. Leaders need to be shown the proof that a culture in which employees are empowered to contribute and share their ideas is tied to these results.

2. Use Metrics as a Baseline

Leaders often view employee development as a “nice to have,” not a business imperative. And, with so many consulting/training/coaching companies not measuring their results, this approach reinforces their skepticism. Development should be measurable. In other words, measure the impact that a coaching culture has on employee engagement scores, increased reports of near-misses, patient/nurse/doctor communication, and other quality metrics. Determine what metrics matter early in your initiative and tie them to your evaluations.

3. Demonstrate the ROI of the Culture

Tie cultural outcomes to the bottom line. How did the culture change effect reimbursements for providers? Did deeper psychological safety for employees lead to greater innovation? Fail-safe behavior and bottom up approach deepens employee engagement, so demonstrating that there is ROI linked to the culture is important.

4. Tie the Culture to Values

Embed a coaching culture into company values and create values that prize an environment where employees are empowered to make decisions and are appreciated for their ideas. This will form the basis of your business strategy.

5. Link Cultural Outcomes to Stakeholders

Make the case that by creating an engaging culture (which is one that empowers all) – all stakeholders are effected. Employees are empowered by the environment and patients are empowered by involving them in their own care which helps improve health outcomes, drives better patient care, and lowers costs. Tying patient engagement to employee engagement, you can begin to create an overall coaching culture.

Loren is an executive coach and has a background in psychology and training in adult learning. Her previous experience leading cross-functional teams in the creation and implementation of large-scale leadership and professional development programs enables her to understand the business and organizational development issues that her clients face. Loren established her expertise at Columbia Business School where she trained and coached global executive-track MBAs in the financial services, management consulting, consumer goods and healthcare sectors. She founded Columbia’s peer coaching program where she certified and managed a large cadre of leadership coaches and headed organization-wide career development curriculum that drove the professional growth of 2,500 of business leaders a year. During her tenure she also created and led the Management Communication Program that helped thousands of business leaders tackle their fear of public speaking and hone their leadership presence.