Customer Reviews
Creating a Coaching Culture in an Organization - By: Keith E. Webb, 11 Aug 2007 
Until recently, there haven't been any books on how to implement a coaching style of leadership throughout an organization. In steps The Coaching Organization. This book provides leaders with a thoughtful strategy for introducing developmental coaching throughout an organization.
The Coaching Organization is straightforward, mixing helpful instruction with actual case studies. The authors also wrote The Coaching Manager & have obvious expertise in this area.
After reviewing what developmental coaching is, the authors provide an organization assessment of readiness to implement a coaching culture. The assessment has four sections: 1) the cultural context; 2) the business context; 3) the human resource management context; & 4) organizational experiences with coaching. The last assessment section leads into one of the more innovative (and therefore worth reading) chapters, that of A Strategic Approach to Coaching.
Here the authors go beyond the obvious of "linking coaching to business outcomes" & go deeper to the systemic level. The goal is to create a coaching initiative that promotes a sustainable coaching capacity. Here's where the book pays off: the authors show how some "common sense" initiatives to introduce coaching actuallly work against the long-term sustainability of coaching. For example, if a coach is assigned to a poorly performing manager, what is communicated is that coaching is for those not doing well, thus, managers resist the coaching initiative so they won't be labeled a "poor performer."
Two other especiallly useful chapters are about how to build & lead a coaching capacity, & how to develop an Internal coaching capacity. These two processes are at the heart of creating a coaching organization. In my view, it will still take partnership with a coaching provider or trainer to do it, but the chapters serve as a guide for the overalll process.
The Coaching Organization is one of only a few books on organization-wide implementation of coaching.
