The potential is high for hybrid working to enable people to have more fulfilled, more productive lives replete with accomplishments and fulfilment in terms of both work and personal life. The practice frequently misses the mark. Commuting may have been a pain, but it provided valuable mental down time. Working from home can easily become working longer and not being able to switch off. Without rigorous planning and discipline, we can end up with less exercise and more stress.
One of the characteristics of organisations, which have made progress towards a sustainable coaching culture is that the various elements are integrated both with each other and with the evolving business strategy.
Creating a coaching and mentoring culture isn’t easy; sustaining one even harder. Over three decades of observing attempts by organisations, one conclusion stands out. We cannot identify any examples of sustainable success that do not have a dedicated programme management team. Sometimes the team is one manager, supported by a steering group, but when they leave, the chances of sustaining gains made are minimal.
Your work-life balance 20 questions.
One of the characteristics of organisations, which have made progress towards a sustainable coaching culture is that the various elements are integrated both with each other and with the evolving business strategy.
Coaching culture is one of those concepts that everyone accepts is a good thing, but then struggles to describe what it looks like or why they need it. Here are 10 good reasons from the literature and our experience.
Over the decades, I have developed dozens of models and frameworks. One I am especially proud of is also one of the least well known – the diversity awareness ladder. Created in the early 1990s, it was an attempt to understand the relationship between our internal, silent conversations when we encounter someone different and the spoken or written conversations we have with or about them. The more instinctive and lacking in reflection/ self-awareness that the internal conversation is, the more guarded and politically over-correct the external conversation we will be.
The Japanese concept of Ikegai is based around four questions. In any discussion of career aspirations, starting with these questions is a very practical way of focussing on what’s important.
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Building the habit of reflection isn’t easy. Yet, some questions can give a much-needed prompt. Ask someone what they earned this week and they can usually remember something. Yet ask what they learned about themselves requires a much deeper level of introspection.
Manfred Kets de Vries, at INSEAD, the French business school, is a veteran of team coaching and an authority on the psychology of both coaching and group dynamics. His latest book, The Path to Individual and Organizational Transformation (Palgrave, 2025) contains many nuggets, but I was particularly struck by a list of 25 key benefits that executive teams perceive from team coaching. These range from identifying hidden conflict to clarifying roles and deeper understanding of team challenges, to aligning team norms with an accountability structure. It’s a valuable checklist to apply when engaging with a team, to answer the question: “What would you like team coaching to do for you as a team?”