Create a Coaching Culture in 5 Proven Steps

Do You Want to Create a Coaching Culture?

Smart leaders learn how to create a coaching culture.  When integrated into talent management, coaching drives the attraction, development, engagement, and retention of top performers. Research from leadership simulation assessments consistently shows that most individuals and teams possess far more potential than their current performance reveals — unlocking it requires intentional, skillful coaching at every level.

What The Research Says About Coaching and Engagement
Employee engagement surveys at top workplaces reveal a striking pattern: 85% of highly disengaged employees report receiving insufficient coaching from their managers. Complementing this, organizational culture assessments show that employees who value coaching from their direct supervisors as a key development tool are, on average, 5.6 percentage points more engaged than those who do not seek it. These findings underscore that coaching is a measurable driver of engagement and performance.

Embed Coaching Into Your Workplace Culture
For coaching to truly elevate performance, it must be more than an occasional activity — it needs to be woven into the fabric of how work gets done. Think of it as an organization-wide program and a core cultural element that shapes day-to-day interactions, fuels employee development, and drives measurable business success. When coaching is normalized across every level, it becomes a powerful engine for engagement, growth, and sustained organizational impact.

Proven Ways to Create a Coaching Culture

1. Train Both Coaches and Coachees
   Giving and receiving feedback are critical yet often underdeveloped workplace skills. Without clear guidance, coaches may deliver feedback ineffectively, and employees may misinterpret it—undermining the potential impact of coaching. Invest in training for both coaches and coachees to ensure feedback is constructive, actionable, and drives real performance improvement across your organization.
2. Set The Tone From The Top
   A coaching culture begins with leadership. To embed coaching into daily operations, leaders and managers must model it consistently — demonstrating strong performance coaching skills, seeking 360-degree feedback, receiving it with openness, acting on it, and repeating the cycle. When leaders visibly embrace coaching, it signals to the entire organization that development, feedback, and growth are not optional — they are expected and valued.
3. Clearly Communicate Coaching Expectations
   If giving and receiving feedback is a skill your organization values, it must be explicitly defined and reinforced. Communicate frequently and consistently, setting clear expectations for what coaching looks like at every level. Address questions such as:
   • Who provides feedback?
   • Who receives feedback?
   • How often should feedback occur?
   • What defines effective feedback?
   • What is the purpose of each coaching session?
4. Embed Coaching in Key Talent Management Processes
   Wherever it makes sense, integrate targeted coaching tools, approaches, and expectations into your new employee orientation, career development, employee engagement, retention, learning, and performance management processes.  Not only does this increase exposure, but it also increases results.

   According to Gallup, companies that incorporate coaching into their key talent management processes saw up to a 19% increase in sales, 29% increase in profits, 7% higher customer engagement, 15% increase in employee engagement, and 59% fewer safety incidents.

5. Leverage Tools to Streamline Coaching
   Leverage tools and technology to fully ingrain coaching into your culture.  Utilize software to support and facilitate one-on-one coaching sessions about goals, career development, and performance.  Technology can make coaching less complicated for employees and managing the entire initiative easier for you.

Signs of Coaching Success
You will know you are on the right path when a coaching mindset and coaching practices become part of how work gets done throughout the organization.  Evidence of success looks like people frequently:

• Requesting, giving, and receiving effective feedback
• Challenging, stretching, and supporting each other’s thinking
• Having development oriented conversations and plans

The Bottom Line
When employees receive consistent, skillful coaching, they become better equipped to perform at their best, more motivated to exceed expectations, and more capable of delivering high-quality, measurable results that drive organizational success.

Want to take your coaches to the next level to create a coaching culture? Download The Top Coaching Mistakes – Is What You Learned All Wrong?

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.