Research shows that 70% of strategic organizational change programs fail to meet their objectives.
While each failure is unique, one common factor unites most change initiatives: often, leaders anchor their transformation success on the hard tangibles of change — like products, processes, and technology — while underestimating the softer human intangibles of change, like personal behavior and organizational culture. This represents the classic change leadership challenge of focusing on the full change equation.
For a strategic change to be successful, leaders and employees must shift their perceptions and behaviors. Otherwise, an organization’s strategic agenda can be undermined by fear, distrust, and resistance to change.
Coaching for Transformation: A Matter of Mindset
Broad methodologies like communication strategies, employee engagement programs, and training are important elements of the change management process. But they rarely influence the mindset shift needed to overcome distrust and resistance to change.
Shifting mindsets requires a deeper and more personalized intervention. This is where coaching for transformation comes in.
Coaching has long been regarded as the gold standard for individual development. However, in recent years, leaders have started using coaching for transformation at the organizational level — expanding it from a development tool for individuals to one that enables key strategies at the enterprise level, including in support of change leadership.
Learn How Companies Use Coaching for Transformation to Achieve Lasting Organizational Change
Our team of researchers in APAC examined how 5 different organizations have successfully used coaching for transformation and analyzed commonalities from this approach.
While the transformation journey and coaching strategy for each of these case studies is unique, we identified common principles which can be applied by any organization seeking to use coaching for transformation at the enterprise level:
- Start the coaching process at the very top.
- Allow sufficient time for behavioral change to stick.
- Invest in your middle managers.
- Weave coaching with other change strategies and approaches.
- Enlist internal change coaches.
Learn more about how you can use the tool of coaching for transformation in your own organization by downloading our white paper, Driving Your Strategic Agenda: Coaching for Transformation Within Your Organization, below.
Download White Paper
Download this white paper to discover the ways that the role of coaching for transformation has expanded in recent years, from enabling individual-level to enterprise-level change. Plus, get our research-based recommendations for using this powerful intervention within your organization.
