I was recently certified as an Executive Culture Coach in an emerging discipline called Organizational Culture Coaching (OCC). OCC, which was pioneered by the Maslow Leadership Center, is a research driven and empirically validated field of coaching. Recognizing the need for a new leadership approach in the post-covid era, some OCC resulting interventions include a focus on leadership competencies, performance management, and sub-cultures management.
Organizational Culture Coaching Defined
The workplace is facing its share of challenges. As mentioned in my last article, leaders must engage in the work of centering workplace culture. Simply put, workplace culture must transform with the times and with employee demands. At a time when priorities have dramatically shifted, curating workplace culture is a business imperative.
OCC takes a systems approach and focuses on implementation support to help leaders and managers role model culture change & transformation. It correctly highlights and fosters links between strategy, culture, and leadership. The intervention:
- Measure culture
- Align on organizational North Star
- Co-create
- Build action plans
- Focus on implementation support
Employee Listening
My vision is to optimize the workplace for all! Having worked as an HR professional, I routinely saw and experienced the internal struggle between prioritizing people and prioritizing performance.
I watched adept individual contributors be promoted without the support to become equally adept managers. I watched people at various levels burnout, become cynical, disaffected, quietly quit, or leave organizations.
Too often there’s a disconnect between leadership’s perception and what employees experience. OCC recognizes culture as north star (mission, vision, values etc.) and operational fabric (structure, governance, processes, etc.). However, part of its brilliance is that it assesses culture as a function of the employee experience from a needs perspective. This gets to the heart of closing the gap between leadership perception and employee experience and works toward the goal of culture actualization which is the practice of individuals, teams, and organizations realizing their collective full potential.
Call for Culture Change
People are demanding more and better from the workplace and its leaders, leaving both in a quandary about what to do and how best to engage with employees in ways that resonate. Covid had a profound and lasting effect on the workplace. It fundamentally changed the value proposition – the mutually beneficial relationship between people and their employers. People are prioritizing balance and their mental wellbeing right up there with the need to make a living. They want to work for great leaders, and experience epic and optimized workplace cultures where they are valued, respected, and included.
I’m passionate about improving workplace culture and equipping leaders to win by leading with heart and humanity. OCC offers a solution equally prioritizes relationships & results, people & performance, culture & strategy. For more information on how The Perry Perspective can support you with organizational culture coaching, schedule a consultation.
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