According to Gallup's recent State of the Global Workplace Report, employee engagement levels are at 20%. It's even worse in the UK at 11%. That's 80% (89% in the UK) of employees who don't really give a stuff about their work or who they work for. This lack of engagement is being countered by those organisations who, amongst other things, invest in the learning and development of their people, and that now includes coaching. Once the birthright of Executives only, personal coaching is now being bought to more and more employees.
Episode 28 of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, hosted by Andy Goram from Bizjuicer, speaks to Jo Wright, CEO of Coaching Culture. A company that's leading the charge of bringing coaching to the masses, digitally and creating cultures of coaching from within businesses. In this lively conversation the pair discuss what's wrong with the traditional approach to Organisation Design and Learning & Development, and how things can and need to change for the better.
Below is a full transcript of the conversation, but you can listen to it here.
00:00:00 Andy Goram
Hello, and welcome to sticky from the inside. The Employee Engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition, smashing consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn their lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone.
This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that. Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it.
So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
00:01:10 Andy Goram
OK. It's time to make a declaration. I'm excited. I'm excited by a negative fact. Now bear with me, the recent state of the global workplace report by Gallup suggests only 20% of the workforce is engaged at work. That means 80% of employees are sitting there watching the clock, nonplused about actually going to work, and completely ambivalent about the job they're doing when they're there. Now, how can that get me excited?
For me, it has to mean that we really have to do something about that now. And the time is now, because I genuinely get a sense from listening and talking to many people, that we're finally, slowly coming out of all that the pandemic has thrown us, with a better perspective of what's really important, and that having a little more humanity at the core of what we do, either at work or home, matters.
I really think we have a chance at creating better places to work, where far more people are engaged at work in the future. I think one of the keys to growing that engagement comes from presenting employees with more learning opportunities. The more we learn and experience, the more confident of our abilities we are, the more motivated we are to continue to learn and improve. And coaching can play a big role in that, right?
It used to be that only executives in a business received personal coaching, because everybody else could go on a technical course to learn something. But now more and more businesses are seeing the benefits of using this personalised approach to development right across their business, in both formal and informal practices.
Now my guest today is Jo Wright. You could say she's spearheading this approach as co-founder of Coaching Culture, a company that's trying and by all accounts, from what I see, achieving to bring a genuine coaching mindset to businesses. Now I'm very lucky to have Jo with me today, as finding time in her diary is a skill in itself. If she's not coaching or leading a team, she's hosting her own podcast or appearing at conferences or editing her newsletter, or growing the coaching culture client list or fan base or whatever. So now she's actually here, why don't we just get on with the conversation?
Welcome to the show, Jo, how are you doing?
00:03:34 Jo Wright
Oh, thanks Andy. That was a brilliant introduction into why we're talking today and so thank you for having me. I'm really, really pleased to be here, and I know we're going to have a great conversation because we've got a very mutual passion for this very topic. So thank you.
00:03:49 Andy Goram
We do, but was it always that way? I mean, we have to fess up to the audience right now, OK, we've known each other... well, for a long time, right? Where did we meet?
00:04:00 Jo Wright
Oh, how many years ago would have been? I'm going... dare I say 25, 23 years? I think it is, it is.
00:04:09 Andy Goram
It's something crazy like that mate. It is about... I think it's about 24 years or so. Yeah, crazy! In the pub game, doing very different jobs to what we're doing today. But we had a kindred spirit back then, mate, and so look, I know you. I love you dearly and know you very well, but just for my listeners, just explain who Jo Wright is and what's Coaching Culture?
00:04:36 Jo Wright
Ah, well, who's Jo Wright? Well, you know, I'm the co-founder of Coaching Culture. I’m rapidly approaching my 50th birthday. I like to get that in 'cause I kind of think “Wow! Wow is that really a thing? Is that really happening?” And so I've kind of known you nearly half my life, and in the corporate world, for many years. And five years ago, decided to go it alone and realised going it alone was probably not ideal for me. And I hooked up with my now business partner to collaborate, just over a glass of wine and a beer, talking about... we were putting the world of organizational development to rights. I’d had a career expanding sales, marketing, learning and development, change management, leadership development, coaching. All of the great things. I always lead and managed teams and I wanted to make a difference. And I'd done a coaching qualification that I often tell people changed my life, but not only learning how to coach, but being coached. And we got chatting, putting the world to rights and kind of the rest is history. Coaching Culture was born.
He was busy running his own E-learning company at the time, and we got talking about what was wrong about the world of OD. And what was wrong about the world. And it was a quite a cathartic conversation. You can imagine, you know, a glass of wine and a beer. Putting the world to rights.
00:06:00 Andy Goram
And how many things have been solved over a glass of wine and a beer?
00:06:06 Jo Wright
Do you know what we had such a good conversation? And actually he started asking me some fabulous coaching questions, and I was drawing out my thoughts and ideas about what was wrong with the world and what needed to change, and here we are now, and we are absolutely making change in organisations. And you know I, I genuinely sometimes well, no not... I pinch myself, Andy, every single day that I am sat here, having this conversation with you, making a difference to so many people, organisations, teams and we've only just really started. Even though we've been going kind of four and a half years, it feels like we've only really started. We've got 100 customers, we've got 5000 members of our community globally and just growing all the time. It's brilliant and I can tell you more about the story of how it started with just the two of us. Because it's quite entertaining when you listen to it.
00:07:01 Andy Goram
Well, I think this is typical you. You're kind of like 100 miles an hour. Oh yeah, we've just been... we've just started four and a half years just started. And we're now, you know this, this, this, this this... Take a breath love, and let's just take a step back, right?
00:07:12 Jo Wright
Ha ha!
00:07:14 Andy Goram
So, the transition from what you were doing, to what you are doing, what road did you travel? What was the moment that made you go, “Bang! Right, I need to change. I'm going to follow this path towards coaching.”
00:07:28 Jo Wright
Well, this is where I'm going to try and not even start to get emotional, because when you say, “What, what kind of triggered the change?” I think my coaching qualification did and it made me reflect on me as a human being. And I kind of went on that on the coaching qualification thinking you know, I'm getting a qualification on the back of it, right. I've got other, you know, badges and qualifications, but actually, I feel like I went into some sort of human sausage machine. I went in as one person and came out a different one.
00:08:03 Andy Goram
And was that your intention, Jo? Were you looking to change the sausage that you were, or what was it? What was going on inside?
00:08:10 Jo Wright
I didn't know I needed to change the sausage to be honest, Andy. When you go on the qualification the sausage starts to change without you realising to be honest. So if we're using the sausage, Jo as a sausage analogy. I didn't go into change. I went in to build my knowledge and skills on how to set up my own business as a coach/consultant. And actually I went in one person, came... I literally came out a different person. And it was down to me. I did the work. I did the self-reflection, and I did the, you know, inward thinking about what was happening. And what it what was my biggest reflection, Andy, was that... It felt like I had some sort of... And I describe it as a rucksack on my back, full of rocks. And those rocks were limiting beliefs about myself, my capability, my worth, everything. And I've been carrying them around and I'd lugged them around my whole career. And they probably got more and more. The rocks got bigger in there. And actually, the coaching qualification, being coached and learning how to coach and self-coach really, allowed me to get rid of that rucksack, and literally that rucksack, Whoa! Is gone. I have now zero limiting beliefs based on all the learnings. And going... that was kind of... I didn’t know I needed to change, but on the back of it I did change and throwing myself out there into the world of self-employment and now building our own business, you know, we're a team of 14 now. You know it's just been a phenomenal journey. And the epiphany.... I knew I needed to go self-employed. I gave myself a year, or should I say, I gave my husband a year 'cause I kind of went, “Don't worry, don't worry, I'll give it a year.”
00:10:04 Andy Goram
Now we’re getting to the truth. Yeah, come on.
00:10:06 Jo Wright
I'll give it a year, and if it doesn't work, I'll always go and find a job. I've worked for so many years now. I've got plenty of skills in in the toolkit. I can go and get a job. And I think, you know, I didn't just surprise my hubby, I could tell I shocked him. Because I actually... I just became me. And I freed myself of everything. I just went out and made a difference. And with my passion and energy and knowledge and skills it all started coming together.
00:10:37 Andy Goram
That's a heady combination, isn't it? Passion and knowledge, right, and will? I think it's a heady, heady combination? Go back then to, I'm assuming it was a... was it a red wine and or are you the beer? I don't want to make too many gender assumptions here and get in trouble.
00:10:54 Jo Wright
No, you were right. I was the wine. He was the beer. It was quite funny 'cause it all started... the conversation all started... I mean, it's even more. That's only one bit of it. I actually went on a course, so Adam’s, my business partner, I went on a course that Adam was running on a Saturday. And this is a great little bit of story, and I was sat in a room full of entrepreneurs and we went round the table like some sort of AA meeting, kind of introducing ourselves. And everybodies like, “I do this. I run this business. I run this business. I did this.” and I said, “I've recently just been made redundant for the first time in my career” and I got the loudest cheer of the room. And I was like looking around going, “What? This is not the feedback I've been getting.” You know I've been getting, “Commiserations, your life is about to end.” You know, everything from so many people in my life, and I sat in that room, and I thought, “I want to hang out with these people. They have got the biggest growth minds that I've ever experienced.” And they were like, “You are now free to go and make a difference in the world that you want to.” And I'm kind of the rest is history.
And Adam and I stayed connected on Facebook and then about, I can't remember, a year later, maybe? I can't remember the timings, about a year later I think I got a message from him saying, “Oh, I've just moved to the village” that he kept seeing me checking in on Facebook. He said it was the wine kitchen I kept checking in on. I'm sure It wasn't. It might have been. And I said, “Oh, you've moved to the same village as me.” Anyway, I just wrote back and said, “Are you driving a Range Rover by any chance?” And he went, “Yes.”
00:12:27 Andy Goram
This is beginning to sound a bit stalky. I’ll be honest.
00:12:29 Jo Wright
Oh I told him. I said, “You stalked me.” Without a shadow of a doubt, I tell him that all the time. he's like convinced that he hasn’t. He moved next door but one.
00:12:39 Andy Goram
No, come on.
00:12:39 Jo Wright
He did, so you need to challenge him whether he stalked, but he reckons he didn't. He moved next door but one, him and his family, and we just got stuck talking about business. My husband still to this day, moans about how many of his beers that Adam drank. He still moans about it. I think he'll pay him back one day. And while we were talking about business and ideas, and this is where the conversation started. So he was drinking my husband’s beers in our kitchen and the world of organisational development was being put to rights, whilst my husband was watching football.
00:13:20 Andy Goram
OK. OK, I now have the scene firmly emblazoned on my brain. OK, so when you got into this conversation then, and you've talked about putting the world to rights, or putting the world of O.D. to rights?
00:13:34 Jo Wright
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:34 Andy Goram
So what were the standout things that you thought, “This is wrong. These are the problems. These are the things I need to solve?”
00:13:42 Jo Wright
There are two things actually, Andy that really stuck out for me. We got chatting, and you know, it's kind of like, “And another thing!” And I was completing my coaching qualification and obviously you know, he could tell I had these life-changing epiphanies, and I just went, it is my words I can remember them now,
“It's criminal.”
Was my... the criminal that only professional executive coaching happens or professional coaching happens with the execs? I was like, “It's criminal. Why is everybody in the organisation not being impacted by fabulous coaching qualifications?” Professional coaching tends to link more to psychology and a lot deeper.
00:14:25 Andy Goram
Lots of self-awareness and that sort of stuff.
00:14:26 Jo Wright
And I was like, “It's criminal. It's not fair. If I’d have known some of this stuff, that I now know about myself, back in my 20s, would things have been different in my career?” So that was one moment and and we've created a product on the back of that. And the other was, I said,
“Organisations are focusing too much on knowledge and skills, when actually it's mindset that changes behaviour and creates sustainable behaviour change.”
00:14:48 Andy Goram
OK.
00:14:50 Jo Wright
And coaching is that answer. Coaching is the silver bullet. It's that, why are they all focussing on something over here, when actually it's time to really start having valuable conversations that enable self-reflection, raise self-awareness and get people thinking differently? Because when people think differently for themselves, change happens.
00:15:10 Andy Goram
So, you've got these two things. You've got, “It's the bastion of the execs. Wrong!” Or to your words, “criminal.” And then you've got on the other side, “They're focusing on technical skills, not mindset change”, right? So, these are your two spheres, that you thought, right, that's what I'm going to attack. That's what I'm going to change. So then what happened?
00:15:31 Jo Wright
So then then we carried on talking, carried on talking, carried on drinking beer and wine. And then out of the blue, I think, whether it's out of the blue, or connect the dots, whatever, Adam sold his business that he was in at the time. It was a Digital e-learning company, and we talked about how do we get coaching to the masses? He asked me whether coaching could be done digitally. And I was just about to go, “No, no!”, and I went, “Well, actually, coaching is just asking some great questions and allowing people to self-reflect.” So actually I went, “Yes it could be done.” Well, that I think is the first sort of disruptive conversation about disrupting the coaching market and getting it out to the masses. Because I felt at the time, Andy, that I was coaching people and sprinkling fairy dust. Sprinkling fairy dust on one person here, and one person there is not a scalable solution.
00:16:21 Andy Goram
No, it's an addictive solution, let me tell you. When you get to land that dust on people and you see it take effect, that's an addictive thing, right? That feeling of helping somebody.
00:16:33 Jo Wright
Oh absolutely. But I wanted it to be...
00:16:36 Andy Goram
Wide-scale addiction.
00:16:37 Jo Wright
Scalable, this had to go... I wanted to end the criminal side of it and get it out to the masses. So, we got chatting and we started looking into coaching culture and just Googling it. And not a lot came up to be honest. And now it’s everywhere, but not a lot came up. And we decided to get that word out, to get the word out to the masses, to create a magazine. Literally to bring together some thought leadership articles, some interviews, industry insights to really start say to people, “Look, this is going to make a difference. This is going to change the world.” And I remember to this day sitting on the floor stuffing envelopes, because we’d put it out there that we would be doing a free subscription to a magazine, and we had a just shy of 200 people signed up, and to be honest they’re mainly our friends and family anyway. And we were so excited and we got it out there and that was February 2018. And we're now just... we've now just gone to print on issue 12 of the same sort of magazine and it's going out to 5000 people around the world. And because we knew we'd hit on something we were really excited by the 200. Now you can imagine by the 5000 where we're going to go with this. It's phenomenal.
And on the back of that we were able to start talking to more people and finding out what the problems they were finding. What were the issues? And our first digital product came about based on what they were telling us, but also what I knew which was, mindset mattered. And it was we needed to get coaching out to the masses. And mindset... we created our first digital solution called Mindset, which is a self-coaching tool. Which is probably one of the most innovative digital coaching tools, because it allows people to go on their own exploration, but digitally. So it can get out to the masses. It can get out to people early in their career. It can get out to the grads, to the apprentices, to the leaders on the leadership development programme, and they all start raising awareness on topics I had no idea about, at the age of, well, up until my mid 40s, such as imposter syndrome. Such as my own wellbeing, such as emotional intelligence, such as resilience. All these sort of topics are making a huge difference. And mindset was born. And then we just took more feedback, iterated it, typical entrepreneurial way. Listen to what people want, design something, make it better, do it again. And now we've got six products. That we're just launching our new platform. And so we've gone from one product to two products to now six. We're just about to launch our sixth product platform.
Whereas up until recently it's been two products. Because what we did with mindset, we got our first customers, and big-name customers as well, and then they said, “But this is all well and good, but when I'm reflecting on learning more about myself, I'm talking to my line manager, and they don't understand what I'm talking about. I need my line manager to know how to coach me. They're not. They're not knowing how to coach.” So we then created a whole suite of coaching e-learning, again, it's probably the largest in the world on specifically focus on coaching. It's a catalogue, so it's coaching for non-coaches and there's 10 topics in there, how to coach. Coaching for skills, and there's 5 topics in there. Coaching for mindset, 5 topics in there. Coaching conversations, there's 5 topics in there. There's lots of little collections. We're about to do a D&I collection. All sorts of new things coming on board. And again, that's gone down brilliantly, and it supports. It's not about replacing the human coach, absolutely not. It's about and & and. It's about getting it out there to the masses and blending their solution.
00:20:23 Andy Goram
Clearly your thing is all about kind of broadening this stuff, and then creating wider access for people, to it. And this thing that you've talked about in the past about, well, it's linked to the to the name of your business, in terms of coaching culture, you're very, very keen on creating an internal, coaching culture as opposed to having individual responsible coaches or bringing in external coaches. Not that you're putting that away, but you're trying to create sort of an ecosystem with coaching within a business, right? And so, if you're talking to a business, or you're talking to individuals, where do you start in that conversation? What is it you're saying to these guys that gets them to realise that this is something that's required in their business?
00:21:13 Jo Wright
Well, that's really interesting. I think, the way that we talk something’s through our community. Through our magazine. Through our marketing, in terms of how we communicate. So, they've already... people who come to us, Andy, are already on the journey. They're already... they're not going, “Oh! What's this coaching thing?” Which is conversations we had four and a half years ago, like it's, you know, “We know it's important, but it's not now for us now.” And genuinely, the pandemic has definitely accelerated this. People are coming to us now. They're ringing us going, “We know we need this. Really, we need it now. We should have been doing this before the pandemic. The pandemics forced this now on to us.” So, they're already bought in, and they just don't know where to start. And then we go with wherever they are on their strategic journey. So every organization is different. Some may want to start having a conversation about what should my strategy look like to the whole organisation to build their coaching culture. Others maybe, I actually just want to build capability with my leaders and managers. Where do I start there? Others may come and say, I really need... They're the two main ones, actually. “How do I get this into our strategy and actually, how do I get my leaders and managers coaching more?”
Because we talk about the coaching capability spectrum. Back to what you just said before, I've got a triangle that I've created. The top is external coaching with a professionally accredited coach. Somebody like me. Then you've got your internal accredited coaches, who may have not spent as many hours coaching or because they're doing it internally. Then you've got leaders and managers. Then you've got peer to peer. And then at the very bottom of the triangle is everybody self-coaching. And we talk about the magic happens with the leaders and managers. Because they’re having the conversations every single day. They're the ones who are making... and that could be somebody on The Board, because they're still a leader, that's where the magic happens. So we love to encourage that. And people may go there first. So somebody once said to me, “Start small. Then go everywhere.” And “start small” could just be doing a pilot of getting some people and seeing the difference, feeling the difference. And then they start growing, and growing, and growing, and then eventually, you know, it becomes part of their organisational strategy. Others do it the other way around, which is fine. It depends where they are on their journey, like I said. So it could be you've already got an absolute advocate on the board going, “We have to do this.” You know, we're working on one of our biggest customers, you know, we work with the CEO and The Board, because the CEO's had a coach for many years, and he's like, “I know this is the answer. This is the silver bullet we need to change our culture and we need to be having better quality conversations.” And so, we're working with the board, the leaders and managers, and we're seeing the journey as they go through that cultural change.
00:24:05 Andy Goram
I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because look, I work in a similar, not the same field, right, engagement. So I'm frankly sick of hearing, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get this. Get the engagement thing. Get the culture thing. It's really, really important, which we will get to as soon as we sort the numbers out, right? We’ll come back to the people stuff.” Which infuriates me because that's just the wrong way...
00:24:25 Jo Wright
Wrong way round.
00:24:25 Andy Goram
To look at things. But how often in your line of work do you get asked, this sort of question?
“So what's the ROI I'm going to get on coaching, then?”
00:24:35 Jo Wright
Do you know what, Andy? I am going to give you a really honest answer on that. When we first started 4 and a half years ago, that question was in probably every conversation.
00:24:46 Andy Goram
Right.
00:24:47 Jo Wright
Not now. It's piped down.
00:24:51 Andy Goram
Is that because you're established, right? So you've got a history and some case studies, right? Or is it because the mindset thing, in general, has changed? So I come back to that opening, right? Engagement where it is. Pandemic having done what it's done, exposing us more to digital stuff, more humanity, more time for reflection. All these things. Is this just a perfect storm for you, or is it something else?
00:25:18 Jo Wright
It is. I think it is that. I think I think... I don't know whether it's because we're established now and we have case studies, and we have testimonials, and we have facts and figures. People are asking us less. I think it's engagement and the words that we're sending out, the messages. It's becoming a no brainer. And actually, how do you measure sometimes? How do you measure some of this? But then, you know, equally, we can support with case studies and testimonials, but we say to... we, you know... I say it twice this year at conferences, both of our conferences,
“A culture of trust builds high performance, not the other way around.”
Now for us, a coaching culture is all about trust. It's all about honesty. It's all about feedback. And it all builds performance. Whereas if you just go for the numbers you may lead to burnout. You may lead to stress. You may... you will not...you may lose your best staff. You may lose your talent. It's about building the right cultural foundations, and engagement is absolutely at the heart of that. To then build the performance, and I was on a live show the other day with a fabulous guy, and he's actually in an organisation and he told me that their culture had added six million, he quoted to their bottom line. They're a huge organisation and he said, “And it hasn't been we've all just focussed on the numbers. We focus on our culture”, he said, “and we absolutely have got our own ROI and we have to continue focusing on the culture.”
So I think it's actually lots of... I don't think it's about us. I think it's about the messages. I think it's about the world has woken up to, we have to do this now, we have to do this now. This will drive our performance.
00:27:04 Andy Goram
Yeah, look, you are preaching to the choir on this one, Jo.
00:27:07 Jo Wright
I know.
00:27:09 Andy Goram
I mean, this is where we have a massive affinity, I think in where we come from on this. I think it's inevitable that things have to move in this direction. Even if you were good at it before the need to re-engage and reassess, and take stock of where your people are, and what they really need to perform going forwards, is applicable to everybody. Absolutely applicable to everybody right now.
00:27:34 Jo Wright
Absolutely I shared at our conference recently. I did the first introduction, introductory talk, and I took the vision of the future and what the world of work is going to look like and actually our obligation to our children. Actually, this isn't just about here today and tomorrow, our employees. This is about the future. This is about this is about creating a future that you want your kids to be proud of. That we've had a part to play in. And Accenture did a fabulous study of 9000 people in March 2021, and they found three, and we know this already, three key factors that are going to make a difference for the world of work. One is hybrid working. So stop everybody just being forced into the office or just been working from home, let's do both. Two – Digital Fluency, so we need to be able to not only use digital tools, we need to be fluent in that, because we need technology to enable that said, hybrid working and the way of the world now. And three was leading with humanity.
And do you know what? We were doing... we were doing that before the likes of this study. And I think coaching culture, we recognised it before it kind of happened. The pandemic has kind of accelerated it.
00:28:45 Andy Goram
Yeah, look, it never ceases to amaze me, and thrill me, and upset me at the same time, when I'm... I don't know, when I'm doing leadership development stuff, right? And you dig into the Lencioni triangle and you start at the very bottom, and you'd start talking about trust ahead of results. OK, and bearing in mind, I’m normally in front of operators, you can hear the pennies crashing onto the floor, right? Of, “Oh! Right. So this trust thing happens, and then you're not afraid of conflict, and blah blah blah, up the triangle. And yet, you think about the age range of the people that I'm in front of, doing this stuff. You have people in there saying, “Why did no one explain this to me 15-20 years ago. I feel like I've wasted 15-20 years of my working career, doing the wrong things and having no effect, right? I mean, that's sad. How sad is that?
00:29:45 Jo Wright
I can give it a very personal example about that. My husband, and who you know, was a leader for many years and he went on a leadership development programme, and it changed his life. And it changed his life because he suddenly recognised it was about the transformational conversations and the building of the trust and the honesty about who are you really? No. Who are you? I know you've got two kids and this, that and the other, but actually, what makes you who you are? And those transformational... and I saw him physically change. I mean literally change. I saw him get quite emotional because of the conversations he was now unearthing and he went on to change his style of leadership, and his results went through the roof. With people he didn't think had been stuck in a certain way and the results went through the roof. And I saw it in front of my eyes. It was fabulous to see and obviously I experience that on a large scale now, and we do as part of our coaching work. We have something in workshops called transformational conversations. Because it's those conversations that build trust, that make the difference, that build performance.
So I agree. You are so right. People have been wasting too long focussing on the wrong thing. It's time... and I talk to people now about connecting the dots between performance management and everyday coaching conversations. Don't go and think about performance management as something else. It's everyday coaching conversations will manage your performance.
00:31:19 Andy Goram
Yeah, it's an outcome of those conversations, right?
00:31:20 Jo Wright
It's absolutely is. Absolutely is.
00:31:21 Andy Goram
Results for me are always about having an outcome. It's not ignoring results, right? It's not saying the results will just happen, the spadework comes underneath. But the results are the outcome of all that spadework, right? Like that's the way that I view it.
00:31:36 Andy Goram
So look... sorry Jo, carry on.
00:31:38 Jo Wright
Well, I was just saying I've done a podcast recently with a fabulous guy called Caspar Craven. Author of a book called “Be More Human.” I grabbed his book, I thought, I've got to speak to you. And he sent me a cup, on the back of it, I'm showing it to you now, Andy, and on the front it says, “Put people first and the results will follow.”
00:31:55 Andy Goram
It's not. I mean it's not a radical statement, is it? But it's just. It's just a truism. I really, truly believe that that's a truism. So look if part of your message, and excuse me for paraphrasing incorrectly, but if part of your message is about giving more people exposure to coaching, but also to increase the number of coaches, so anyone can be a coach in theory, what makes a good coach for you?
00:32:23 Jo Wright
Oh great, great question and I don't think everybody can be a coach. I think everybody can have a coaching conversation.
00:32:31 Andy Goram
Right.
00:32:31 Jo Wright
I think I think there's a difference there. I use a bit of analogy about coaching 'cause I don't expect everybody to be a professional accredited coach, but I do expect everybody to be able to have a good quality coaching conversation. And I say it's a bit like a chef. You know, we're not all professional chefs, but we can probably all cook to a level. It's kind of like that. You know, it's like we don't need everybody being a professional chef, we just need everybody there to have some level of... So what makes a good coach? Great, really great question. It depends what you're talking about. If you're talking about some of these externally accredited, that's one level of what should good look like there. If you're talking about a leader and a manager, what does good look like there? But I certainly think the ability to build rapport and connect and trust, and we've created our own coaching model and it's actually called, The Trust Coaching model, because we believe all of it is underpinned by trust. And it's the ability to build trust.
00:33:30 Andy Goram
We should stick that in the show notes, right? We should make sure that there's a graphical representation of that model in the show notes that people can get ahold of that and start to move forward. I think... I think this is the thing, we're getting to the point in the show where ridiculously already we have to try and summarise where we've got to. I don't really want to. I would like to continue. But people have jobs to do. And so, my summary part of the show is called Sticky Notes, Jo, right?
So, this is where I ask you to consolidate the four and a half years of coaching knowledge that you've got into three post-it notes, that people can then take away and start really affecting this stuff positively when they get back. So, if you were to offer three bits of advice for people thinking about this whole topic of coaching in business, what would your three sticky notes be?
00:34:27 Jo Wright
I'm going to do a shameless plug, but it will help. The first would be to join our community, our Coaching Culture Community, for free.
00:34:31 Andy Goram
Wow, you went there! I mean, that's brazen. That's absolutely brazen, but I applaud it. Absolutely.
00:34:39 Jo Wright
The reason I say it, Andy, is that there's so much fabulous free resources in there too, so it's a shameless plug, but it's a shameless plug with a heart really, because it actually does give people loads of insight and helpful and it supports people in this community, to talk to each other and connect. So do you know what, I would say do that number one, because there's so much resources in there, particularly our coaching culture framework, which shows people how to go about building a coaching culture.
I'd then say, so once they’ve joined our community and they get all our fabulous resources.
00:35:10 Andy Goram
We'll put all the links in the show notes, Jo, don't you worry, it's all going to happen.
00:35:14 Jo Wright
I love brazen. Brazen, Jo. And I would say, identify where you are in your organisational strategy. So it depends what role you're in as to where your level of, I suppose, impact at that time, or whether you're the decision maker or not. But, you know, I will use the phrase that has been given to me, which I absolutely love, “Start small and go everywhere.” So really start to help people know what coaching is and start to have some level of coaching conversations through a capability build. I think that's important to help people raise awareness of what good coaching looks like.
And then I'd go with “Stick with it.” So, get it on the Board’s agenda. Make sure you're getting them focussing on making a difference through the power of coaching. So, stick with it. This is not going to change with the click of a finger. This is a slow but powerful burn. Stick with it because you will start to see the results. Build that culture of trust and the results will definitely come. So stick with it. There's three.
00:36:19 Andy Goram
I think that stick with that message is so right. Because it's another aspect of culture change that we're talking about here. To over coin a phrase, there is no silver bullet when it comes to culture. And I know that scares the hell out of loads of people or even starting culture projects. But the benefits outweigh the fear, right? And so, you have to be almost relentless in your pursuit to keep these things going. So I think “stick with it” is a brilliant, brilliant message, because it's not an overnight fix. It will take time.
00:36:54 Jo Wright
Do you know what? I often say, there is a silver bullet, because veryone else says there isn’t. What I always say is coaching conversations are the silver bullet, because actually, you do that, they are ...
00:37:03 Andy Goram
But they're not a one-off, are they mate?
00:37:03 Jo Wright
They are and not a one-off.
00:37:05 Andy Goram
They're not a one-off.
00:37:06 Jo Wright
No, no, no.
00:37:06 Andy Goram
It's not a one-off conversation, so I, yeah, I get the idea that there is a solution and it's coaching. 'cause I agree with that. But it's not a one-off event, is it?
00:37:16 Jo Wright
But not at all.
00:37:17 Andy Goram
It's a...
00:37:18 Jo Wright
It’s a build
00:37:19 Andy Goram
It's an absolute build. Well, I can't believe that I've already run out of time after battling so hard to get you on the show and it's finished. And we're out of time. Jo, what's next for coaching culture? What's on the horizon?
00:37:36 Jo Wright
Oh wow! Brace yourselves!
00:37:38 Andy Goram
Here we go! More links in the show notes!
00:37:43 Jo Wright
Do you know what we've just...Ah, what's next? We've got a huge plan. Global domination is in there somewhere, but you know what, there's so much coming down the line. We've just launched our new platform which includes a performance management tool, because of the everyday coaching conversations. We're really becoming that one-stop shop for coaching solutions. So, watch next. Just watch us grow and we're only getting more serious about this. So brace yourselves.
00:38:16 Andy Goram
Alright. Well look, this is not meant to sound as patronising as it's going to be. As somebody who's known you for a long time, I couldn't be happier and more proud of you, in terms of what you're doing. I love the message. I love the enthusiasm and yeah look, more power to you, Jo. Just brilliant.
And thank you so much for your time today. I know you're so busy. I really, really appreciate it.
00:38:36 Jo Wright
Thanks, Andy. I've loved every second of it.
00:38:40 Andy Goram
OK everyone, well that was Jo Wright. So, if you'd like to find out a little bit more about Jo or Coaching Culture and all those links to those fabulous resources, please check out the show notes.
00:38:54 Andy Goram
So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something, maybe, that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward.
If you have, please like, comment and subscribe. It really helps.
I'm Andy Goram and you've been listening to the sticky from the Inside podcast.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.