Leveraging leadership coaching to align your organizational culture with yourcompany’s strategic vision

When is it time to strengthen an existing organizational culture and when is it time for a

change? How can leadership coaching be used to help?

One of the most important roles of a leader is the formation and management of an organization’s culture. Founding leaders instill their personal beliefs and values in the organizations they create. These influence their strategic vision, decisions, and frankly all HR policies and procedures necessary in order to establish a solid organizational foundation and set their companies up for success. The generation of leaders that follow continue to shape the organization’s culture through the reinforcement of the strategic vision, standards for decision making, and the clarity of the communication behavior norms they pass along to those that succeed them.

As an organization grows and matures, the leader may begin to be stifled by an existing

culture. The core beliefs and values have become deeply entrenched and may

potentially be outdated. Successful organizations begin to ask themselves: “Are the

norms, values, and performance behaviors of my company still relevant to the strategic

vision that is necessary for continued success?” They take action accordingly!

Leadership coaching be leveraged as an organizational intervention to guide leaders

through every stage of culture formation and management. Here are some examples of

how coaching can be used to help you as the leader manage your culture rather than

having your culture manage you.

Coaching for leadership development:

When a leader lacks an attribute that is highly valued by an organization as evidenced

by its norms of behavior, the pressure to align with that value is high. Failure to do so

can result in unfavorable consequences such as turnover or failure to advance.

Coaching in this capacity can center around skill development, identification of ongoing

feedback opportunities and internal mentoring, as well as the development of a

psychologically safe environment in which the leader can develop.

Identifying teaching opportunities for leaders:

When both the top leadership team and the current organizational culture are in

alignment with attributes and values that are necessary for continued organizational

success, coaching can center around identifying teaching opportunities for leaders. In

this case, things are going well and we want to capitalize on that to help develop our

employees.

Coaching in this capacity can take the form of positive psychology where the primary

role is to improve upon and actualize attributes and values leaders already possess.

Leaders can then be coached into taking internal teaching opportunities that can be

used to uphold cultural identity with insiders, while ingraining emerging positive

attributes throughout the organization.

Of course these new emerging attributes should always be aligned with a relevant

corporate strategy!

When we want to develop the leader as an agent of culture change:

In this case the leader possesses a positive attribute/value that is either absent or

weakly present in the organization, and that has been deemed as important for the

continued success of the organization.

This is a much more complex situation to be in. The scope of the coaching, as well as

the leader’s role, is more large scale and takes more time. Failure to do so, however

can have some very detrimental effects on the continued success of the organization.

Before we begin this type of coaching, we must assess an organization’s readiness for

culture change and address any limiting factors accordingly. We want to ensure that any

internal obstacles to the transference of the leader’s developed skills and attributes as a

result of coaching are addressed. A foundation of trust and a supportive environment is

paramount to the success of this type of intervention. Ideally coaching in this capacity is

aligned with the early stages of culture change and can be used to aid in empowering

the leader to carefully select a team that will help them lead the process of unfreezing

current cultural norms and values.

When it is time to develop both the leader and the culture:

This type of coaching and change management is also a longer and more challenging

process, but one that is necessary in order to avoid the stagnation and even the

potential decline of your company. The primary goal here in coaching is to overcome

culture as a constraint in leader development.

When organizational requirements demand the development of attributes that are not

supported by the current organizational culture and are also weakly represented by the

current leadership team, the challenge centers around first overcoming the lack of

capabilities for the leader’s development.

Coaching in this capacity can help by raising the leader’s awareness to these

challenges and identifying potential external opportunities for development. The leader

is coached and developed to embrace any new values and attributes he/she may lack,

but that are necessary for the alignment of the new strategic vision of the organization.

Once the leader is developed, they can then be used as the agent of change to

establish and uphold new cultural attributes and values that are in alignment with their

company’s new strategic vision.

If you are a business leader, ask yourself, is my culture managing me or am I managing

my organizational culture? Is it time for a change? How can you I use the support of a

leadership coach to help my company gain and maintain it’s competitive edge?