Unlock Potential: Building a Coaching Culture for Exceptional Employee Experience

Unlock Potential: Building a Coaching Culture for Exceptional Employee Experience
In this powerful session, experts unpacked how building a coaching culture can transform employee experience by empowering teams, improving performance, and increasing satisfaction. From practical frameworks to real-world success stories, the webinar delivered actionable insights for HR and business leaders looking to unlock potential at every level of the organization.
Key Takeaways and Insights
• Coaching Drives Growth and Engagement
A culture of coaching keeps employees continuously learning, evolving, and motivated. When employees feel supported in their development, they are more engaged and committed to their roles—and to the organization.
• Managers Are the Key to Everyday Coaching
A formal coaching program isn't required to make an impact. Empowering managers with the tools and confidence to coach in everyday moments—during check-ins, feedback loops, and project reviews—can create consistent development opportunities.
• Build Coaching into Daily Routines
Coaching doesn't have to be a standalone initiative. By weaving coaching conversations into regular workflows, organizations can normalize growth conversations and make development a shared responsibility across teams.
• A Coaching Culture Strengthens Retention and Performance
Organizations that prioritize coaching see stronger retention rates and improved performance outcomes. Coaching enhances communication, builds trust, and reinforces a culture of accountability.
• Measuring the Impact Matters
Track outcomes of your coaching initiatives by measuring changes in employee engagement, promotion rates, performance reviews, and retention. Use these metrics to refine and scale your approach.
Session Highlights
- The mindset shift required to make coaching part of your leadership DNA
- Real-world examples of companies building sustainable coaching cultures
- Simple frameworks for starting coaching conversations
- Data on the ROI of coaching and its impact on performance
- Tips to train and empower managers to coach effectively
Final Thoughts
In today’s talent landscape, career development isn’t optional—it’s expected. A coaching culture meets that demand by fostering growth, enhancing experience, and aligning individual potential with organizational goals. Leaders who prioritize coaching don’t just retain talent—they unlock it.
If you're looking to strengthen culture, drive performance, and future-proof your workforce, start by building a coaching-first organization.
So we're gonna talk about coaching culture today, which is something Viva and I are both very passionate about. Um, and we'd love to know like, what are you hoping to learn about coaching culture today? Pop it in the chat and I'll do some talking as you guys are putting that in the chat. Um, but yeah, a little bit more about me. My name's uh, Mandy Barley. I am the principal behavioral scientist at Torch. I'm also an executive coach myself, so I'm very passionate about how to use coaching, how to measure coaching, how to spread coaching, how to like show everyone what a powerful tool coaching is, um, in sometimes unexpected ways as well. So we do a lot with one-on-one coaching. Um, I also am very passionate about group coaching, so there's a number of different ways to use coaching and we'll get into talking about how to use it within your organization today. And for anyone who's not familiar with Torch, just a teensy bit about Porch, um, we help to unlock the potential of leaders of teams, of organizations. And we do that predominantly through the use of coaching. So that can be one-on-one that can be group coaching, um, but basically being a partner and how to have some of those programs within your organization make it a lighter lift. So that's a bit about me. I'm gonna pass to Beva to introduce herself. Thanks Mandy. Hello everyone. Um, so as Mandy mentioned, I, I give a little bit more context about Torch 'cause that will make more sense in the context of my role. Um, so as Mandy mentioned, uh, torch is really a leader in the coaching space. And what really sets us apart is that we align your business strategy, company values, uh, and mission to a development program, whether that be a one-on-one or a group or mixed modality type of program. And really my role at Torch is to better understand our customers and potential customers needs and desired outcomes to really map and incorporate them into this type of program. A little bit about me. Um, I am a Gallup strengths certified coach with about a 10 year track record in supporting customers achieving their objectives. I am one of my love language. Mandy always hears me, says this, it is a Gallup Strength finders. So for any of you folks who have done the assessment, would love to see it in the chat. I'll add mine in there in a second. Um, but it's always fun to see what folks' top five are as we jump into the conversation and really appreciate all of the, um, desired outcomes for today's session. I think we're gonna hit a good chunk of these measuring the impact of coaching strategies for implementing coaching. Kind of what is the difference, uh, and what's the definition of coaching and what is it telling? Is it lecturing? What does it actually mean? How can you benefit from coaching? So these are all, all great, um, pieces that, that we will absolutely be covering. Uh, but before we dive into the agenda, Mandy, what have we been noodling on? Mm-Hmm. Thank you Viva. And you'll see me like reading the chat and taking some notes 'cause I have seen some really interesting questions come in. So things that I'm taking away that y'all wanna hear about are around kind of framing coaching. How can this be seen as a benefit? How do you implement coaching? Um, are there any breakthroughs in coaching? Yes. So we'll talk about those. Um, we'll talk about measurement. There's a really interesting question that I'm just gonna spontaneously take about, um, telling versus lecturing and coaching because I think that is a very interesting point. Um, so if we're gonna look at coaching as a change process, it's really how to support someone in changing their behavior, is the way that I look at it. And so you go to the International Coach Federation, they, um, talk about how a coach partners with someone who wants to make changes and helps them identify what those changes are, make a plan to do it, um, actually make the changes, hold them accountable, and then see where they want to go after that. So it's a continual cycle of identifying a gap, making a plan to close the gap, and then closing the gap and then kind of repeat over and over. And so today we're gonna talk a little bit more about what it means when you have a coaching culture and you have more of your managers acting as coaches and what that looks like to a greater extent. So to quickly answer the question in the chat kind of a way that I think about like the different ways a manager could show up with coaching is, if I wanna wear my coach hat, I'm gonna say, um, how might you or how might we, and if I'm going to lead with my, um, mentor hat, if I put on my mentor hat, I would say something like, I've done this before and this is why I did that. And so then sharing information and then my other hat, if I need to be really directive 'cause there's just a really clear way to do something or running outta time for whatever reason, it can sound more like you should, or I recommend you do this, or I need you to do this. And so that takes on a much more directive feel. So it is a spectrum from coaching to directive in my opinion. And now I'll go back to what we put on the screen, which is one of the things that kind of has been inspiring biba and I we've been talking about it a lot, is, you know, what's a good way to orient ourselves? What's a good way to think about spreading? Um, all the good things that Zach was talking about our intro throughout organizations. And so I officially sit on our product team and I as a coach and a scientist, love this product question. And it all starts with how might we, so I think that's an incredibly powerful question for many different experiences. And this instance, VIBA and I were orienting ourselves. And so we were thinking about like, how might we build an organizational culture where employees are empowered, engaged, and constantly learning? And so when you frame it from that perspective, the answer Viva and I always come up with, so we've discussed it at length, is building a coaching culture. Um, and we really double down on the importance of having people being willing to act as coaches, expanding that spectrum from being directive to also being willing to go into that coach space. And so we're gonna talk more about what that means and how to do it. Um, and we can spend probably more time on the how, um, because that's usually what people are looking for. But in the meantime, we'll pass it to Biba and we'll do a poll. Yes. So you will see a poll pop up on your screen. We wanna hear a little bit from you on if you currently have a coaching culture at your organization. So 20 seconds, really quick answer in here. Uh, we'd love to hear from you. And if the answer is uh, no or in some parts in the chat, we'd love to hear what is, uh, maybe blocking you or stopping you from reaching, uh, where you want to go as far as building a coaching culture. So as you're answering that quick poll, feel free to start writing in the chat. What are your blockers right now to getting to where you're looking to go? All right, we should be getting some of those responses in. Ooh, Wow. Mandy, what are we seeing? Okay, there's a, like a lot of people have kind of in some parts of the organization, uh, more yeses than I typically see. So that's great. You guys have something to build on for the nos. Don't worry about it. We're here to support you. If you feel like you are in the yes bucket or in some parts of the organization, tell your no friends. Like feel free to chime in as we're giving advice or, you know, saying how to do different things on what's worked for you and give some other people some ideas. That's a great use of this time together. Um, but yeah, um, it's interesting. And then you wanna tell us what's in the chat? Bebes Yes, in the chat. Whoops. I went a step forward. I think we're gonna be hitting quite a few of these. Uh, you know, we're seeing things from getting alignment from the executive team, more of this keeping up with the modern times and how do you break past processes and mindsets, um, siloed organizations and team, uh, how do we really support those middle managers who might not have the up-leveled skills to really kind of spread the benefits of that coaching culture. So I think we're on the right track, which is a perfect segue into what we're gonna be covering first, ensuring that we're all operating from the same space. We're gonna do quick little definitions of the terminology that Mandy and I are gonna be talking about today. Uh, second, we're gonna dive into the how, how do we actually do it? What is the four step framework and uh, to really build a coaching culture at your organization. And third, stick with us until the very end, but we're, Mandy and I are gonna put our coaching hats and we're gonna hold you all accountable to a little activity at the very end. Um, so you can take out your pen and paper, take notes, take pictures of the deck to remind you of where you're at, but we will be sending this out as a follow-up as Zach mentioned. And don't forget to stay tuned for the research. We've got a research report that we are offering at the end about how coaching just spreads beyond the person receiving coaching. Some really cool research. We'll touch on a little bit more, but we'll tie it to the end. Yes, we'll send you a QR code. That's a carrot that we're gonna dangle here. All right, so let's talk a little bit about some of these definitions. A few of you are like, Hey, what is coaching culture? Um, so we really wanted to take a zoomed out step back of what are the three key, um, concepts that we're gonna be talking about today. First and foremost, it's probably what matters most to the this audience is the employee experience. It's the journey that your employees take at your company from onboarding to exit, and it really embodies how they feel, what they experience all and, and feel and see at work. So the example that I like to give is think about, uh, a guest's experience at a hotel. We want it to be positive, engaging, and really leaving them wanting more. So let's zoom out a little bit and talk about organizational culture. And that's really the underlying personality of your company. It's those values, beliefs, behaviors that define how things get done. So the, it's really that invisible script that everyone follows, even if it's not, you know, fully written down. So the example for sticking with this hotel analogy, it is, uh, the ambiance, the style, the background music, the air freshener scent, the energy that you feel walking into, uh, a space. Now I feel like we all need to go on a vacation after putting our minds in that, in that space. So organizational culture can be tricky if you don't intentionally decide what your culture will be, um, because then you might end up with something that you didn't intentionally want. So for example, you can have a positive culture where the values that leaders, employees embody and live out on a daily basis is connected to collaboration, engagement, really driving that exceptional team performance. Or you could have a more, a negative culture where employees are fearful more likely to act competitively or beat each other down rather than winning as a team and solving problems as a team. So where does coaching culture really fit in here? This is a type of organizational culture where your organization actively supports the growth and development where leaders become coaches providing guidance and feedback to help their employees reach their full potential. Rather than telling someone how to do something or how they would do it. Uh, this coaching culture really helps them discover how to best do it themselves. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about how these are connected over to Mandy. Thanks Viva. Uh, like Viva said, I think kind of one of the main concepts here is that coaching culture is a type of organizational culture. So when you're driving for a positive employee experience, right at the tippy top of this little pyramid, um, one of the people was talking about like being really intentional about about the culture you shape. And I really agree with that. If you are not thinking about what it would like to feel like to work at your organization, how things are getting done, that's gonna be really difficult to start building and reinforcing through a number of different mechanisms. So also one of the things I should point out that I think we all know is, um, a lot of the research coming out of Pew and a couple of other places at this point are some of the reasons why people leave your organization are because they don't feel like they have opportunities to develop. So that might mean they actually exit. It might mean quiet quitting, it might be less productivity. And so, and to solve for this, we don't always have to like give everyone a promotion. I think that's kind of like, oh, well we can't develop people 'cause there's nowhere to promote them up to. There's actually a lot of different ways that we can be engaging people. And one of the mechanisms that I think works really well is this idea of intentionally setting the culture of coaching, saying that this is really a way that you want to do business, that is strategic for your organization, helps you meet your priorities. Um, it can be, you know, a little challenging to scale depending on where you're at. Um, but it can really have a massive impact, uh, on having positive employee experiences. Um, having your leadership team, um, your managers actually join your l and d team to an extent because they are actually spending the time coaching, mentoring folks around them, helping to develop people that maybe you don't touch directly with your programs or if you have a mandate where you touch everyone directly with your programs, um, sometimes coaching is a really interesting indirect way to be able to do that. So with that, we've kind of put these all together and now Viva's gonna tell us a little bit about the types of ways that your roles have been changing Spot on the last five years. Uh, a lot has changed and when Mandy and I not only speaking to our customers going to events, we really see the role of l and d shift shifting in these three ways. So if you, if you didn't know now, you know, uh, we're kind of putting some definitions behind probably some of the things that you have felt at your organizations. First is being a boundary spanner. It's going beyond your department lines to really build those relationships and connecting the dots of what is needed from a business perspective and how to align it into a more programmatic way. Um, this can be particularly challenging if you have a fragmented l and d and HR department that is very separate from the other lines of areas of the business, um, which is really essential when it comes to program delivery and me measurement. Um, Mandy will say this, and I a hundred percent agree, you are all social scientists. You are all being tasked to measure the impacts of your programs by quantifying human behavior changes and how that human behavior change impacts the organization organizational objectives. And this is one of the toughest forms of science because humans are very noisy, there are so many moving pieces and it's tricky to isolate changes that come from your specific programs and then also capturing the data that you feel really comfortable and confident in. And third, I call this the influencer. Uh, maybe you are or are not connected on social media, but hey, now you are really focused on getting buy-in building internal champions. So you are not only having to build the case for a type of culture or coaching culture, but you're also capturing the followers who are willing, active and engaged and to keep people engaged and interested with the content and insights that you develop from the programs that you measure. And this is an ongoing cycle, which we'll talk more about humans love stories and finding the best way to tell those stories so that they start to get buy-in, in the different programs that you are going through. So this might be the first time you're seeing these three roles and maybe we're putting names to something that you've already felt I would love to see in the chat. Or maybe you take out a pen and paper. What is one of these roles that you feel really, really strong in? And what is one area that you're looking as a leader, as a manager, as an individual to further develop? What is that opportunity for growth? So feel free to write that in the chat and that will also be helpful as Mandy and I go into the next section, which is really the juicy, how we can really double click into those areas that are most impactful for your own growth opportunity, but also at your business or your organizations as well. All right, now to the how Mandy, take us away. Excellent, excellent. I think let's just, let's just click to the cycle. Let's just move ahead. Yes, you guys are ready, you're primed. You wanna know more about the different pieces. So we like cycles, we like frameworks, it helps to break down information, make it more consumable. So we came up with a four step cycle to build a coaching culture in your organization. And so when we're looking at step one, that's showing the value, that's wearing your boundary spanner hat going in, talking to the execs, making the case, explaining what coaching is like. Hey, coaching isn't just for people who messed up anymore. It's for people who wanna grow, grow and develop and it's cool. And so being able to build that case showing the value. Then step two is that learning piece. So what are the skills that your internal people need to act as coaches? What do those look like? What does it feel like to receive that sort of stuff? How do you spread that information within your organization? Step three is measure, which we've got a bunch of people in the chat, um, talking about social experiments and social scientists. So welcome my friends, uh, join the club, you're all social scientists with me and we can, we can talk even more about that offline if you wanna follow up with me, link in with me, those sorts of things. I welcome that if I don't give you enough content today, so feel free to hold me accountable there. And then the fourth piece is really about creating ownership. So you can't really get a culture off the ground by yourselves. I know y'all are mighty and passionate and like got a lot of enthusiasm and energy, but one person can't make a culture. And so where can you recruit other people to come in and start to create a sense that everyone owns the culture, everyone's responsible for how things get done around here and what it feels like to do that. So we'll go through all of these in more detail, but to kind of like give a little bit more clarity, we can go to the next slide and I'll talk you through, uh, an example with one of our customers. Um, they're in the financial service industry and they're being very intentional about building a culture of coaching. And so I've been working with them a number of years. They're delightful folks. Um, and really where they were starting off is getting buy-in from their leadership about the value of leadership development. And in particular they've landed a lot on developing their managers. And by managers I mean people within your organization that are responsible for other humans. So they are a steward of other humans. There's a number of different things that they have to do there, but they really want to focus on their manager population. And so this involves things like outlining a proposal for leadership, um, to kind of secure budget to say, here's what we expect to come out of it. Um, thinking through ways to teach the leaders the skills that they're gonna need. And so we are partnering with them along kind of designing what that experience might look like for participants. Um, and then they were strategic in how they started to roll coaching out. So in order to kind of isolate the effect of coaching aha sciencey language, they did it in particular regions. And so that kind of eliminates the idea that, um, it helps to make a case. And I'm trying to think like, how do I phrase this? Um, it isolates the change to being coaching. So if everything else is the same with all of these different regions, but one region has coaching, then anything that changes in that region, you have the ability to attribute to coaching. That's a good way to describe it. Sometimes it gets stuck in my noggins. Thanks for your patience. Um, okay, so that's all on the value piece. Now when we're talking about the learning and the coaching skills piece. Um, this customer decided to lean really heavily into a one-on-one coaching program. Um, and we've actually designed one out of the box at Torch, um, that I had a big hand in and I I think is really excellent, but it's thinking through what it means to be a manager, what that psychological shift is like. Uh, you want people to show up, being willing to, um, make their team psychologically safe, develop other people usually with a coaching hat and also be able to delegate. So those are kind of some of the key things that we're looking for there. Um, and then in this next iteration of the program, they're also adding in group coaching, um, specifically for, uh, developing coaching skills further and taking that to a greater degree. So that's kind of that learning piece. By receiving coaching, oftentimes people start to learn those skills and they can explicitly pick out skills that they wanna work on that might be coaching related. Um, then in terms of measuring success, we did some three sixties with them. They customized their 360 so that people could get feedback from folks around them, understand how they're performing on different competencies that are important to the organization. Uh, as they went through coaching, they were setting particular goals, things they wanted to work on. Um, then they have the ability at the end of the program to assess themselves and say like, here's how I thought I've changed. Um, they also have the ability to meet with their manager, talk to their manager and see like, Hey manager, are you seeing the same things? Do we agree on the goals that I PR should pursue? And also they have the ability to ask their colleagues for feedback. So there's many different sources of data to come in. Um, and then they're starting to look more long term. So that's kind of the immediate outcome of the program. Looking more long term, they're starting to look at things like, how is this impacting employee engagement? How is this, um, impacting retention rates for mo promotability, all these different pieces, employee satisfaction. And they're able to isolate that by region. 'cause again, they didn't roll it out everywhere. They selectively rolled it out in a few regions. Um, the other thing I'll mention too, so the research we're gonna show is, um, about the ripple effect of coaching. And so we did some interesting analysis to see like how do the people that report into someone who receives coaching feel like their manager is different? Um, does anything change for those direct reports? And the answer is yes, actually. Um, the direct reports of someone who receives coaching, they're more likely to improve their own skills. They're more likely to be satisfied at work. Communication in those teams is better overall. And so they being able to kind of bring that research in combination with what our customer is doing gives us a really compelling set of data sources that we can start to weave into a story. Um, and I know we need to move on, but I'll go through four. So four is the creating ownership piece. And this is where our customer is right now. They're being very, very intentional. They've run a number of successful, successful programs. They've been reporting on the outcomes, creating a story. Um, they're really smart and partnering with someone from your communications team who has been helping to guide, like, here's how you tell this story, here's how you get people's attention. Um, and then also having leaders themselves come forward and say, Hey, this had a really powerful impact on me. I am different because of coaching and now I spend a lot more time coaching my team. And I think that's very important and I'm spending time coaching my team hoping that they feel that they are being coached and turn around and coach the person that reports into them. So it's very intentionally rippling out into a coaching culture by who you select to be in the program. Um, having those people, being willing to tell their stories, telling those stories very widely stories of change are really powerful. Um, and they're able to, to utilize those to show how effective the program is. Okay, that's our example, but hopefully that kind of shines through the cycle pretty easily. So maybe we maybe we'll truncate the explanation of the steps to pick up for time here. Sorry. Absolutely. So, so step one, uh, those that mentioned influencer and boundary spanner, in order to influence a culture, um, understanding the context and the political landscape is a really helpful starting point to not only get those executive buy-in, but also introducing something new. You kind of need to know where you're operating. So we suggest kind of looking at these three key questions. First, why is coaching culture a good fit for your organization? So figuring out how this is going to add value to the organization, the business priorities, things like a foundation of open communication feedback and a willingness to learn leaders acting as coaches and how that will ultimately impact the greater kind of business objectives. It's not all about giving those answers, but rather empowering others to be self-sufficient. Uh, we can't force a horse to water to then drink. So we're teaching how to fish. We're teaching how to do all of these different pieces to build some of that self-sufficiency who is willing to support a coaching culture. This is getting an aspect of that political landscape, seeing who are your executive tra uh, your, uh, executive champions who is committed to really this approach and leading by example from the top bottom, who are the managers who are willing investors in the time, energy, and effort to really develop those skills. And the employees play a very active role here. There are folks looking actively looking for that development. That feedback, as Mandy mentioned, leaving due to lack of development is a big topic that we're hearing in the workforce today. Great opportunity for those eager folks to dive in and become even more impactful and powerful in their role. And then many of you in the, in the, in the poll survey at the very start said, Hey, coaching culture is happening at different parts of the organization. That is a phenomenal starting point. Double click into that. Where is it happening? How is it happening? What does it look like? And how can you amplify what is already working and working really well? So you have a starting point versus recreating the wheel. And Mandy, I don't know if we have time to jump into some of these buckets, but we can also send this afterwards. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you'll get a recording of this. We hadn't included the slide, so if you want the slides, feel free to link in with Viba or I ask for, uh, that, um, or put in the chat like, Hey, I really want the slides. But we've created a couple of kind of answer key sorts of slides to support you as you have to play these different roles and within the different steps of creating the coaching culture. And so this is kind of a fast lightning answer. Someone's like, why should we have a coaching culture? It solves organizational problems, it scales and it supports organizational changes. And then there's some additional talking points below that. And if you want more support, feel free to, um, Beba and I are always happy to meet with folks to talk through these things in more detail. So just you'll have an opportunity to tell us that at the end of the webinar as well. All right, I'll let you keep cruising beebs, Keep cruising onto, uh, step two. So those that mentioned boundary spanner, um, this is a big bucket on learning coaching skills. Um, so when Mandy and I in Torch as an organization, we're really talking about kind of three key buckets, coaching skills in general, coaching within the context of your company values and organization, and then how do we actually put it into practice? So starting from a coaching skills perspective, uh, we've identified four very critical skills that can help amplify a coaching culture. First, active listening. It's really the cornerstone for coaching. The ability to listen intensely, understand the employee's perspective and the ability to not only listen, but listen to what's not being said non-verbally. And this really starts the psychological safety, that safe space for people to open communication and allow employees to explore changes and develop and find their own solutions. Powerful questioning. Mandy and I did a webinar a few weeks ago and one of, uh, the attendees takeaways was, I wanna put on a curiosity hat. And I absolutely loved that. Asking thought provoking how, what questions, helping employees analyze their own situations. Putting on that curiosity hat a great question can lead to great results. Empowerment, a good coach does not dictate solutions. It's not, hey, this is how I did it, this is how you should do it. But rather empowering employees to find their own answers. Let's go back to that curiosity asking really power thought provoking questions. And third, it's timing. It's knowing when to be a coach, especially in a manager or in a leadership position. And knowing when to be more directive is also mission critical when learning how to be an effective leader coach. Now all of this is great, but you also need to con contextualize it within your organization. So understanding what are your organization's values and goals that coaching, uh, skills, uh, might look a little bit different, right? There might be, I I saw someone in in the chat mentioning, um, healthcare or phar pharmaceutical. It is naturally a risk adverse organization because decisions have consequences. So a coaching culture might look slightly different when it comes to these key skills to really foster this empowerment and mindset. So leveraging your competency models, your skill models becomes really valuable and being more adaptive to what we're thinking about more generically in the context of your organization. And all of this sounds great in in, in, in theory, but putting it into the, the practical day-to-day tactical use, we at Torch see one-on-one coaching being in a really effective way to create a safe space for folks to receive personalized feed feedback, develop a tailored development plan, uh, within the context of your organization and what matters most to them as well as group coaching. I saw someone in the chat mentioned, Hey, I'd love to learn more about group coaching so I can have a larger impact across my organization. Phenomenal. We can talk more about, uh, the why behind that desire if you wanna connect with Mandy and I offline, but putting it into practice is so, so critical so that you can make these behaviors sustainable change within the organization. Alright, Mandy, how do we measure success? Awesome. I wanna get into that, but first I'm gonna quickly answer ward's question about mentoring versus coaching. Mm-Hmm. Um, and so in an organizational context, uh, if it's a manager, I think you're switching between your hats. So I mentioned my directive hat, my mentor hat and my coach hat. So coaching's predominantly question based and it's helping the person that you're coaching figure out what works best for them in that situation. They will pick the way that will make them most successful. They'll pick things that align with their values, they'll pick ways to solve problems that draw on their natural strengths. Um, versus coming in and saying how you've done it. That's how I think typically of more mentoring. If you're incredibly in sync with the person that you're coaching, maybe your mentorship would apply very well to them. So like, here's how I've done it in the past. Here's how, here's different strategies that I've tried. Can be really beneficial if the person you're coaching doesn't know where to start. Um, they can also ask other people, not just you, like what are some other strategies that have worked? Um, but especially if you're mentoring across like really significant social identities, that doesn't always mean that the same options are available to different people. And so, um, I prefer a coaching approach if someone is asking me to help them rather than mentoring, unless someone is like very curious about my story or how I do things. But usually I wait for them to ask me that pretty directly as people will attest. Um, all right, talking about measurement, um, is such a juicy topic. So where do we even start? So throughout running a program, as you're trying to build coaching culture, it's really important to be celebrating success, be telling people what's happening, acting like a champion for your program, creating that ownership throughout. It's not just at the end. And I'm gonna double down so hard on this next point because I believe in it very, very strongly. As you were designing your program, as you were figuring out what, what are we gonna do a training? Are we gonna do coaching? And what is, what's all the content gonna be in there? Measurement is part of that conversation. And actually sometimes if you decide what it is you wanna measure how you're gonna measure success, that can tell you what the content is. But a lot of meetings where people have wonderful ideas about like, well then we could have this and the people could do that, and we can have all these conversations. I love all of it. How do you decide what to include when you're really clear on what success looks like, what the outcomes you're looking for, and how you're gonna measure those. It helps you reign in all of it. I I love a lot of divergent thinking. Yeah, I love to go wide, all the ideas and then bringing it back in, it can help you converge a lot more, um, quickly and succinctly. So do not plan your program and then design the measurement. Like the measurement is part of the program design and that will keep you a lot more in sync. Just some general things that I recommend. Um, I do love having some sort of baseline, um, as before people kind of come into your intervention. That could be training, coaching, any of those sorts of things. This, this experiment that we're doing on the humans law. Um, so you know where you're starting from, then you have your intervention, then you have, um, an outcome measurement. So what happened, what changed as a result of the thing that you did? And then ideally if you can look more long-term. So you might ask the direct reports of the people that you want through a manager development training about six months later. You might look at everyone six months later and say, who was promoted, who left? Um, is engagement up. The reason why I kind of give like six months is kind of that long-term measurement thing is you need enough time for people to sort themselves into groups like being retained by the organization or getting another job and turning over or being promoted. There's like a certain amount of baking time that helps with that sort of measurement. Um, let's see, what else do I wanna tell you about measurement? Um, oh, one thing that I'm kind of trying to shift perspective, especially as it relates to coaching is a lot of l and g consultants I think are still saying this and it has been the predominant norm and it is in parts of science, like this is a legitimate form of science. Using the same question as your baseline and your outcome is traditionally what people are taught. I don't recommend it if in L and d um, or in coaching because your sample sizes are so much smaller and it's really hard to see a statistically significant effect. That's usually why you're using the same question. And so I prefer to directly ask about change. And so one of the questions we would like using is like, how much progress have you made on fill in the blank or, um, where have you changed as a result of coaching? And we really focus in on the change aspect because it makes that change in the impact of your program so much louder. It's there even if you're doing the like same question before and after, but it gets masked. And things like people don't remember what score they gave themselves on the baseline survey. And so when they take the second survey, their self-awareness is higher and actually they give themselves a four again because they realize they had so much more changing to do. So there's different things that are kind of warping the impact of your program and I don't find it to be as accurate. So I don't think it's an accurate measure. It dims your light and we wanna help that shine bright. So if you take nothing away, well two things. Hope you do something to like build a coaching culture. Anything, just make some progress and make sure you measure change directly. So that's my soapbox. We can talk more about measurement, but I think we have more content. So I'm gonna let us move on. And this will be fun in the slides if you want this in the slides. Like what if you can't get evidence directly? Some of the other ways to kind of make a compelling case for people, um, is to use evidence that other people have collected. So if you can't do this research yourself, lean on reputable sources that have also done this research. So here's a couple of fun facts with percentages and numbers that you can pepper into, um, the stories that you're telling. All right. Oh, it's still me. Okay. All right. Another slide. Here we go, y'all. All right. So of all the steps, this is probably the most important and this is really around creating ownership. So what I said before is you cannot be one person cultures. Um, how can you bring other people in? And so it's really the difference between running a coaching program once and people loving it and having this be embedded within your culture. So throughout the whole cycle, creating ownership is really key. And so being really clear with people that you give coaching to that the expectation is, okay, you're gonna receive coaching. We want you to learn coaching skills, we want you to use these with your people. And now it's in our performance review system. Now you're gonna be assessed on whether or not you spend time coaching other people. Uh, the first group that you select to come into a pilot, make 'em sign up. Like don't just put all the managers in, say like, we want to hear from the managers who really want this that are excited, that see the benefit of it, that really wanna have this experience and wanna share it with other people. They will naturally be incredible advocates for you. And if they have some really, well, I say if they people have powerful stories of change, I've not met anyone who went through coaching and was like, nah. Usually there is something that shifts for them. And so bringing those stories forward, making them front and center, letting everyone see, um, them telling their story rather than you telling their story is really, really powerful. Um, the other piece of this too, and the ownership is like there is a willingness to receive coaching as well as a willingness to provide coaching. So if your manager populations are willing to provide coaching, are there direct reports in a place where they want to receive coaching? Are they ready for that? Um, will they commit to asking for feedback, for asking for help for raising their hand? And so all these sorts of things start to change the culture over time. Um, but you're baking into your review structure, into the, into the performance reviews as well as expectations that you're setting with people. Uh oh. And also your leaders are modeling it. So that's another one too. Okay, I think I've covered most of the points there. Sorry guys. Try to speed to speed. We Have one more answer key that folks can, can take a, a quick photo of or, um, if we wanna hit those really quick. Yes. Mainly, um, we live in a distracted society now. And so when you're thinking of telling your story and all the different channels, think microlearning bite-size things, infographics, testimonials, videos, um, all any success stories that you find being able to bring them up in different places. Um, and some of this is really about finding your own voice. Like some people are gonna wanna hear the hard facts and the data, but your passion and enthusiasm for this type of work is a lot more. What's the adjective I would use? Engaging and inspiring than you might believe. And also some of the things that you already know that you think everyone knows, they probably don't. I find that out over and over again when I talk to folks outside of l and d, the things that I just think like everyone, yeah, everyone knows about psych safety, they don't and they might want to know more about it. So think about that as you're putting on your influencer hat. All right, you Beautiful. Alright, let's do a quick recap of what we learned. So first we walked through kind of the, the l and d landscape has shifted. There are a few different roles that now we have names for. There are areas that you all might feel really strong and comfortable in and then other areas that you're looking to expand and grow into and having an understanding of where you're at as well as what are the definitions that we're operating within employee experience, organizational culture, and what type of culture or subtype of organizational culture are you looking to cultivate. And what we talked a lot about about today is this idea of building a coaching culture. Then we watch through our four step life cycle of how to actually put this into action. First and foremost is value speaking the language of your executives and knowing what is most important for the business and the leaders and incorporating that into your strategy and execution. Really being that boundary spanner and part of being that influence is using the same terminology that the broader business is using that is important to them and that they can relate to learning what are the skills that are most important to cultivate the behaviors, those tangible behaviors that are important to cultivate and foster this type of coaching culture. And what makes sense within the context of your industry and your company. And how do you actually put that into practice so that it can become sticky? Measurement, measurement, measurement, having a strategy before you deploy a program. What is your baseline? How are you gonna measure it? Uh, maybe going instead of a asking that same question at the start and at the end asking them how did they change? What are the areas that they changed? What progress have they made and how has it impacted their role? And then ownership, this is a group effort, but you have to put on your influencer cap and, and go beyond your boundaries in order to really make something happen. Understand that political landscape, have different players own different pieces of this puzzle so it can continue to foster, grow and be everyone being involved in kind of, uh, building this up from the executives to the managers to the employees. So now that we covered a lot of these different pieces, Mandy and I are putting our coaching hat on and we're gonna hold everyone in this group accountable. So you can either share in the chat, I actually like that because that means we're actually holding you accountable 'cause we're seeing what you're putting in. But I want you to do two things. First is your now what moment? And in order to get into now what you have to have a moment to reflect. So I want you to write down one thing in the chat that stood out to you. This could be a negative information, this could be something that you didn't realize or this could be something that sparked your curiosity that you want to dig into more. So that's number one. And then number two, what is one thing that you want to action on today? One thing, what is that micro step that you wanna take in a positive direction? And that could be you as your own leader and moving more into your social scientist or your influence or your boundary spanner or that could be more organizationally where you jump in, talk to your CEO. Why is this type, what type of co culture do we wanna cultivate and why is it important for us to really foster that? Alright, so do not be overwhelmed if you're like, Hey, where do we go from here? 'cause as Mandy mentioned, we are here to support you, whether that it's a LinkedIn connection or anything like that. Zach is about to launch a poll on your screen. Um, and this is gonna give us some insights into how can we support you. Do you wanna have a con uh, a consulting conversation where we can dig deeper into the challenges that you're facing, measurement strategy, any of those buckets or if you want access to some of the research and information or maybe you need some time to noodle. So we'd love to hear from you. So we can not only hold y'all accountable, but make sure that we're helping you drive things forward. And as you're writing that out, I'm gonna call some of these out because this is honestly my favorite part. All right? So we see folks seeing myself as an influencer with something that stood out, building the case and seeking, seeking the language of my executives. Huge one, find supporters to this pilot. Being an influencer, I've never seen myself as someone who can be an influencer. All right, takeaway differentiation between coaching and mentoring. That's a big one. Um, action taking is identify one executive to get on board. Love that. A action, that's a great one, Angie. Um, improve measurement of our program impact and maybe looking at what is your baseline, what is that, um, question that you can ask at the start, but then at the end, to capture some of these pieces, being a social scientist and influencer takeaway is a four step cycle. That's a big one, Theresa. Let us know if we can help break that down for you. Um, loved hearing about the ripple effect. Awesome. This is so, so great. Um, so Andy, tell us a little bit more about what we have available for this crew. Awesome. I'm gonna throw it in the chat now. Um, we are including a copy of our ripple effect research. So I gave you some like very brief highlights about that. So if you wanna read it in more depth, please use the link here. Uh, QR code, all of that is great. Uh, I love having these kind of conversations, um, getting to talk to people about the fact that you're a social scientist and influencer and y'all are pumped about that. Like that's gonna give me joy for the rest of the day. So thank you for, for sharing that, for being open to coaching, for being willing to spread coaching, um, and getting to come to these sorts of things and have these sorts of conversations. Really why I love working at Torch. I get to bring my science hat and my coach hat and put them on together and figure out how to, well Zach said it best at the beginning, how to change the world at work. Um, something I'm very deeply passionate about, uh, what I focused about all my PhD research on. So, um, and I still continue to do that research. Um, so do you wanna talk more about that? If you wanna connect with Biba and I, if you want to hear more about what we do at Torch, we'd love to do any and all of those things. So, um, and now we can officially turn it over to the Q and a where you have LinkedIn things, LinkedIn links for us in the chat, but you can also use a QR code here if you wanna link in with us. And I'm gonna kick off a question that I saw in the chat already, Biba if you wanna scan for some others. But Diana had a good one about hints on matching folks in peer to peer coaching. Um, and I think it's a really good question because coach match, like the quality of the coaching relationship is something that we know from a lot of research is what drives successful outcomes from a coaching engagement. So if we're gonna kind of like start at the very beginning, I would say recruit people who are interested in being a coach and receiving coaching. So that's gonna be kind of the first key to success. Um, we did a webinar with one of our customers, Waymo, and when we talked about group coaching, 'cause you do get a lot of peer-to-peer coaching in group coaching as well. And she talked specifically about their recruitment strategy. She feels really passionately about recruiting people with a generosity of spirit. And I think that is beautiful and right on the money. So someone who is willing to give and also wants to receive. And if you think your execs are too busy, there's also some really interesting um, kind of like theoretical research out there that providing coaching and having and like slowing down and having these sorts of conversations and actually renewing. And so if you have a leader who's really busy, overwhelmed, actually if they take the time to coach someone else that can give them more energy, it can give them more vitality, it can get put them um, back in touch with with why they do the job they do and um, make them feel greater purpose and meaning in their life, which we all know should be to be really key. Um, other things to consider in matching on peer to peer. I mean when I think about, I think about it from framework of group coaching, usually if people have something they wanna work on together, if they have a similar challenge, something they're trying to overcome, those make really good group coaching groups. And I would say also from a peer to peer perspective, um, or so you could go like, Hey, we're both trying to work for the same thing and what are you doing? What am I doing? How can we learn from each other? Or you could put them kind of like totally opposite where someone already excels in the thing that person B wants to learn and person A already excels anyway. You get what I'm saying? I kind of confused myself halfway through that, but like someone is good at the thing and so is this kind of pairing as opposed to this kind of pairing. Um, so yeah, and then also being mindful, um, I think of social identity is gonna be important in that piece as well. So you can either use that like people across different social identities working with each other and seeing they have a lot in common kind of building across differences that can be really exciting and powerful. Um, or you might, uh, if you have like an ERG group, you might have just members of that ERIG group partner with each other 'cause they're experiencing similar challenges and they want to have support from someone who really gets it. So the TLDR of the question is it depends on the outcome that you want. Hence why I always recommend designing the measurement as you're designing the program. So when you know what your outcome's gonna be, then it's a lot clearer how to do the thing you wanna do. Any other questions that you're seeing come in? Viva? I am not seeing any other ones recently and I feel like a few at the start from what folks wanted to get out of it. We hit a big chunk of these, which is great. Awesome, awesome. Any other spontaneous Aw, best lunch ever. We're here alongside food and uh, that warms my heart. Thank you. Thank you Kirsten. Um, if there's any other questions, uh, we're happy to take those. I don't think any came in the q and a box itself. Um, but yeah, we will follow up with you. Um, send you the slides if you requested those. Um, if you ask to get in touch with us, great. Otherwise link in with us and I can turn it back over to Zach. I love it. Thank you so much. Uh, everyone attending, can we give like a virtual appreciation and applause for these amazing experts and hosts for today's learning session? Uh, seriously amazing packed with so much expertise and insight. I feel like this is something I'm gonna wanna re-listen to. So I appreciate both of you really sharing your time and expertise, expertise with us. And I encourage everyone who attended, obviously we shared the research and the chat there, take a look on that. It's gonna provide some great insight, some research as well as like, I think just some numbers that you can bring to the table with your team internally to continue to get buy-in and engagement into building this cult, this coaching culture and program that you're trying to bring to life, right? Um, on top of that, connect with torch, follow them, connect with these, both, both of these amazing experts and, and continue to learning from 'em. Otherwise, that concludes our session today. I'll repost the credits and the chat here again as well if you want to take advantage of those right in the chat right there. Otherwise we'll have the recording within a few days. Look for that update in the email. But yeah, thank you again for dedicating your lunch and and day, uh, to learn and advance your development and to building this better world of work. And we hope to see you again at the next one. So talk soon, everyone. Thank you so much.