Discover how to overcome entrenched dependent cultures.
– 5 mins read –
In this article:
The Performance Curve

Early in my career I joined a huge global organization in the oil and gas sector. Its culture was very much in the Dependent zone as illustrated by The Performance Curve.
When our MD Tiffany Gaskell polled the audience at the recent Corporate L&D Summit in Barcelona, she found that most of the delegates also identified their organizational culture as Dependent. I found this curious, not least because my personal experience was about a decade ago. It doesn’t seem much has changed.
The stickiness of Dependent cultures can be attributed to a number of factors. For me, the most prevalent, and arguably the most deeply ingrained in our society, is how we are educated. The excellent Ken Robinson Ted Talk ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ points out that a theme of the school system is that it conditions children to be compliant and to avoid taking risks.
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In schools, compliance is rewarded with smiles and stars, non-compliance is punished with frowns and detention, innovation is not encouraged because it’s not in the curriculum. This is the reality for us (in the UK at least), from the ages of 4 to 16 – the most impressionable time of our lives. The respect for rule and order is important for a functioning society but it’s also creating a world where businesses are built on the same paradigms.
The upshot is that people in Dependent cultures are often waiting to be told what to do, managers see their role as command and control, and corporate politics abounds. Of course, it’s a complex issue but our experience is that mindsets such as these, stifle engagement, innovation and ultimately dampen an organization’s potential.
If you’re reading this you are on our website, so you’re probably aware that coaching might have a part to play in tackling this trickiest of challenges. Shifting an organization along The Performance Curve requires a systemic change, leaders that are able to lead a transformation and walk-the-talk. It’s also not just about a single enlightened leader asking good questions, empowering and developing their team, it needs to happen all at once, in one big push.
My point is really, a simple one. If you’re looking to change your organization’s culture, don’t go in softly. Think broader than a single Level 1 coaching programme for your executive team, consider how the feeling and the environment will change to foster the mindsets and behaviours of Interdependence.
If you would like to talk about how your organization could move up the curve, please get in touch.

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Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.
- Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
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- Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
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Discover why a coaching style of leadership is important to a millennial workforce
– 3 mins read –
The latest research into the millennial workforce* shows business has some way to go to achieve its potential for positive social impact. More than three quarters of millennials believe business should be a force for good on issues such as economic and social progress, conflict, inequality and corruption but, according to the research, big business is only meeting these expectations for 59 per cent of under-35 year olds.
The survey also shows that, after a year of global instability, millennials are less likely to want to leave the security of their jobs than previously, providing a huge opportunity for employers to engage. With many millennials now emerging leaders, holding senior management positions and managing people and teams, they have the opportunity to effect change in the workplace with huge potential gains for business if this potential can be successfully realized.
A coaching style of leadership strengthens purpose and performance
The search for meaning and purpose at work is not restricted to the millennial generation. With older workers also motivated by a sense of higher purpose, organizations are discovering how a coaching style of leadership nurtures high-performing, collaborative teams focused on a shared vision that will enable the organization to achieve its purpose.
In Coaching for Performance, Sir John Whitmore and his team at Performance Consultants explain how a coaching style of leadership creates the conditions for high performance. The 25th Anniversary Edition of Sir John’s bestselling book presents The Performance Curve (see figure below), a model that maps the culture of an organization and relates this to the conditions for low, medium or high performance. The Performance Curve enhances understanding of how a coaching culture is a high-performance culture, enabling a collaborative workforce with shared values to flourish.

COACHING TRAINING FOR LEADERS CREATED BY SIR JOHN WHITMORE
The latest findings from the International Coach Federation (ICF) and Human Capital Institute (HCI), Building a Coaching Culture with Millennial Leaders, shows how emerging leaders benefit from partnering with a coach and receiving training on how to use coaching skills with their peers and teams, while leaders at all ages want to develop a coaching style of leadership.
COACHING MINDSET The leader believes that the coachee is capable, resourceful, and full of potential. Believing in the dormant capability of a person will build their self-belief and self-motivation and enable them to flourish. And with that mindset, you can coach them to make their own powerful choices and find enjoyment in their performance and their success.
Extract from the Glossary of Coaching Terms, Coaching for Performance, Fifth Edition
According to the ICF and HCI’s report, the most effective leaders are those with the quality of emotional intelligence who use a collaborative coaching style of management. The research finds that organizations are looking to expand the scope of leaders using coaching skills, and highlights the business case for building a strong coaching culture:
- Respondents whose organizations had strong coaching cultures reported that 61 per cent of their employees are highly engaged, compared to 53 per cent from organizations without strong coaching cultures.
- Forty-six per cent of respondents in organizations with strong coaching cultures reported above-average 2016 revenue growth in relation to industry peers, versus 39 per cent of respondents from all other organizations.
A coaching style of leadership is about partnership, collaboration and believing in potential. It is leading for others rather than for oneself. With more organizations providing individual coaching (1:1 coaching) for the millennial generation and training them to develop their own coaching style, business really does have the potential to be a force for positive change and the opportunity to build a high-performing workforce motivated by a strong sense of higher purpose and the knowledge that the work they do matters.
*Deloitte Millennial Survey 2017, based on the views of almost 8,000 millennials (college or university graduates in full-time employment and born after 1982) in 30 countries in September 2016.
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For more information on 1:1 leadership coaching, coaching skills training for managers and leaders and our Coaching for Performance: Leadership Programme, please contact James Neville.

‘The Leader as Coach’, Harvard Business Review, November–December 2019
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Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.
- Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
- Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
- Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
- Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
- Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching
David Brown is CEO of Performance Consultants International, the company he co-founded with Sir John Whitmore, the father of coaching in the workplace. David has been instrumental in shaping the global performance, leadership and coaching industry for over 20 years. He was awarded the rarely bestowed Igniting Social Progress Award by the ICF Foundation in recognition of the global impact of his vision for raising performance in the workplace, and his belief in the power of individuals and organizations to create a better future.
What your grandmother could teach your organization
I invite you to think of a person you loved being with when you were young. Not a parent but perhaps a teacher, grandparent, friend of the family or other adult who positively influenced you. If I ask you to remember how you felt when you were with that person, the chances are that you’ll recall feeling listened to, that you had their full attention. You would say that although you were young this older person believed in you and treated you as an equal, and if they challenged you it was with trust and respect. To quote Maya Angelou:
We’ve run this exercise all over the world and we’ve found people everywhere have broadly the same response. And the result is they felt their potential to be limitless.
This is what high emotional intelligence feels like. It’s the ability to relate to others from a paradigm of trust rather than fear. How does this compare to the leaders in your organization? If you are one of those leaders, how do you measure up?
COACHING TRAINING FOR LEADERS CREATED BY SIR JOHN WHITMORE
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou
Leaders set the tone
In organizations, the leaders set the tone for everybody else. Studies by the Hay Group have shown they are the greatest influence on an organization’s culture and bottom-line performance, which they can affect by as much as 30%! Meanwhile, according to The Conference Board CEO Challenge:
“the cultural DNA of an organization is critical to success, from operational efficiency to better customer service, to greater talent attraction and retention, to higher levels of business performance and breakthroughs in innovation.”
So it seems crazy how very few organizations take a proactive approach to creating and measuring their culture.
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The Performance Curve
The Performance Curve focuses on the collective prevailing mindset of the culture and how this creates the conditions for performance. It provides a useful tool for organizations or individuals to gain an immediate idea of where they are operating, either from the perspective of “this is the culture of my organization” or “this is the culture I create”. Of course, different parts of an organization can operate on different parts of the curve! You can use this awareness, to see what needs to change in order to improve performance.
The leader who is emotionally intelligent will create a high-performance culture through their way of being. A high-performance culture is often described as a “collective mentality” where there is a strong community spirit and collaboration around a shared sense of purpose. This interdependent culture, where people are able to grow and fulfil their potential, is the most highly evolved as seen on The Performance Curve.
If you’re very lucky you may have experienced this culture, but the chances are greater that you are more familiar with the other prevailing mindsets identified by The Performance Curve: impulsive; dependent; independent; inter-dependent. Each of these stages follows the process of individual psychological development which sees a reactive, short-term “Whatever happens, happens” way of being (impulsive) progress through dependence and “following the rules”, typified by behaviours such as judgement and blame, to independence which can be high-performing but carries the risks that it is too individualist. The ultimate stage is interdependence, a collective mentality supported by the leader I have described.
There are challenges to changing culture, even if there is a clear view of the benefits of a more mature and evolved state. It can push people out of their comfort zone, especially as giving people trust and ownership can feel like losing power for leaders, however they soon find they get this back in multiple from a team that is empowered and responsible and operating in a more agile way that is responsive to customers.
Coaching is bigger than coaching
A coaching style of leadership is the enabler for a high-performance culture because it shifts the organizational mindset to interdependence.
As Stephen Covey said in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:
Something your grandmother or that wise older person knew all along.
“Whether you are the president of the company or the janitor, the moment you step from independence into interdependence in any capacity, you step into a leadership role.”
Stephen Covey

“Chapter 2: Creating High-performance Cultures”, Coaching for Performance, Sir John Whitmore and Performance Consultants
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Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.
- Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
- Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
- Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
- Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
- Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching
Discover how to face up to the cultural challenge, and how organizations are risking their future.
– 5 mins read –
Observing the speed with which an organization of Kodak’s history and calibre is overtaken by disruptive innovation, and reading research by Innosight that estimates “three-quarters of today’s S&P 500 will be replaced by 2027″ (reported by @HBR), it’s no wonder big organizations are scrambling for answers to these new threats.
I was reflecting on this after speaking at the Corporate L&D Summit hosted by Luxatia International – a great opportunity to connect with fellow senior professionals to share ideas and concerns.
I was reflecting on this after speaking at the Corporate L&D Summit hosted by Luxatia International – a great opportunity to connect with fellow senior professionals to share ideas and concerns.
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I talked about The Performance Curve which we use to measure company culture and bottom-line performance. It maps culture states from Impulsive to Interdependent, showing how the quality of interactions between leaders and their direct reports releases untapped potential, in the right-hand quadrant. Our experience working with leaders using a coaching style of management, as pioneered by Sir John Whitmore, has shown how this can be achieved.

When I took the opportunity to poll the audience to gauge where delegates felt their organizations were on The Performance Curve, the vast majority of people in the room felt that their companies had a Dependent Culture. This tends to be characterized by a “command and control” paradigm. Dependent Cultures are typically the second phase of organizational maturity where the introduction of processes and systems to curtail inconsistency and mitigate risk, simultaneously stifle innovation and autonomy with employees expected to “follow the rules.”
While there is a rational justification for a Dependent Culture, the risks of limiting employee performance and organizational progress are obvious.
Change needs to come from the top down however, conventional leadership mindsets are the key challenge for today’s organizations – a view echoed in the conversations that took place at last week’s Summit.
Enabling leaders to empower their teams can only happen by shifting mindsets, which is where we see the power of Coaching for Performance. The motivation has to be intrinsic and systemic; meaning everyone, from the CEO to the new hire, recognizes the power of coaching practices in unleashing potential for both people and organizations.
It’s frequently neglected but an essential part of all transformations whether these are Agile, Digital or Innovation. The alternative for organizations is a slow decline and eventual irrelevance in a market where change is accelerating and disruption is constant.
If you’re looking to improve your business culture and performance, or would like a copy of my presentation, get in touch – [email protected].
Finally, I highly recommend Luxatia International’s Corporate L&D Summit. The quality of content and conversations was exceptional and the event provided a refreshing mix of interactive presentations, exercises and case studies.
The author Tiffany Gaskell is Performance Consultants’ Global Director of Coaching and Leadership.

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Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored programme that meets your specific needs.
- Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
- Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
- Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
- Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
- Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching

Tiffany Gaskell describes the most powerful way of investing in learning and development to create transformational leaders and maximize productivity in a fast-moving world.
– 8 mins read –
Most people think of “coaching” as 1:1 executive coaching which focuses on helping key leaders to achieve high performance, but what if a coaching culture could enable everyone to perform at their peak?
The latest research shows over 80% of organizations use coaching and believe in its benefits.1 However, there is still a broad lack of understanding of what coaching is and how to use coaching to maximize results – another recent study found that only 30% of people surveyed actually understood what coaching was.2 Even those organizations already embarked on creating a coaching culture acknowledge the opportunities for development are huge, with growing awareness of the different types of coaching and most effective applications.3
Among the growing awareness and interest in coaching, organizations are missing a trick. It is well-known that the greatest influencers of an organization’s culture are its leaders: studies show that leadership behaviour impacts bottom-line performance by up to 30 per cent.4 External executive coaching is rightly seen as one of the most effective forms of leadership development,5 with many organizations choosing to invest in it, however helping leaders to develop a coaching leadership style is overlooked.
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TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER PATHWAY
“It is a weight off my shoulders, my team is more self-sufficient.”
“People come up with solutions that are wildly different. And they have full ownership and are acting with commitment.”
“They figure out through the process what they want to do and then have the excitement and energy for next steps.”
In-house Coaching for Performance participants
Join one of our webinars to find out how to become a transformational leader
What is transformational leadership?
A “transformational leader” is a leader who can engage and inspire by using transformational soft skills that create high performance in themselves, their teams and their whole organization. Transformational leaders are the leaders of tomorrow and will enable their teams and whole organizations to rise to the complexity and multiple challenges of today’s business world.
If, instead of coaching an individual leader to improve their own performance, coaching skills are leveraged to create a transformational leadership style and taught to leaders, the organization will achieve a maximum return on their investment in coaching.
According to the recent survey by the Leadership Institute at the London Business School, today’s leaders find themselves fire-fighting and unable to spend time on strategy and planning. In such an environment, leaders need to be supported to break the pattern and, instead of solving problems for others, develop others to solve their own problems. Leaders who are able to do this will find themselves freed from fire-fighting to attend to those overarching strategic opportunities where they can make a difference.
“If leaders manage by the principles of coaching, they get the job done to a higher standard and develop their people simultaneously. It sounds too good to be true to have 250 days a year of getting the job done and 250 days a year of employee development per person, but that is precisely what a coaching leader does get.”
Sir John Whitmore, Co-Founder, Performance Consultants
Transformational leaders achieve a triple win
A leader leveraging coaching skills to create a high performance culture creates 250 development days per year for employees:
It is clear that transformational leaders achieve a triple win. The leader develops themself and gains the skills to develop their teams; groups of leaders from the same organization undergo the same leadership development, focused on finding their personal connection to leadership. This creates a shared language which they take with them into the workplace. They in turn develop others. This is what we mean by transformational leaders.
The return on investment is significant, with transformational leaders reporting an average 800% ROI. For one cohort of 17 leaders, this represented US$1,245,000 which came from improvements in bottom-line profitability and cost reductions. One participant reported that by delegating more and trusting in his team, the culture of the team had strengthened. This in turn impacted productivity which he estimated to have improved by at least 10% or US$350,000 per year.
Leaders with coaching skills create a high-performance culture
With organizations typically missing out on approximately 60% of the talent available to them,6 a coaching leadership style enables leaders and organizations to harness the full potential of their employees by inspiring and engaging them in a way that shifts the relationship and moves the culture to one of high performance. To help leaders and organizations reflect on the culture being created in their organization, we developed The Performance Curve model which we published in Coaching for Performance, Fifth Edition. The four stages of The Performance Curve are described by our CEO David Brown in his thoughts on Creating the Conditions for High Performance.
By leveraging coaching skills to create a high-performance culture that is led by transformational leaders, the investment in coaching benefits everybody, not only the few, and organization most of all.
Never has this new leadership been more relevant with leaders and organizations challenged to evolve by society, including employees who want to find fulfilment and purpose in their work. Equally, customers demand that companies act with integrity. Meeting these extended demands requires leaders today to be able to inspire and engage, with results that are truly transformational.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP COURSE | TRANSFORMATION AWARENESS FOR LEADERS AND COACHES
The author Tiffany Gaskell is Performance Consultants’ Global Director of Coaching and Leadership.
1 Leadership Institute, London Business School (2017) Leadership Survey 2017 – Navigating Uncertainty: Global leadership challenges, London Business School.
2 The International Coach Federation (ICF) 2017 Global Consumer Awareness Study showed consumers struggle to differentiate between coaching, consulting, mentoring, counselling etc. 66% indicated they were aware of professional business and/or life coaching, however when presented with definitions for five personal and organizational support professions only 30% understood what coaching is, many getting it confused with mentoring.
3 Mann, Clive (2016) 6th Ridler Report: Strategic trends in the use of coaching, Ridler & Co.
4 Hay Group and others.
5 Leadership Institute, London Business School (2017) Leadership Survey 2017 – Navigating Uncertainty: Global leadership challenges, London Business School.
6 Research by Performance Consultants International.
Transformation webinar: mindset training for transformational change
An introduction to the Iceberg Coaching Model and Level 2 of our Transformational Leader Pathway
Creating the conditions for high performance
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How can you develop transformational leadership in your organization?
Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
Select one of the options shown. Or get in touch and one of our world-class leadership development consultants will work with you to create a tailored transformation programme that meets your specific needs.
- Attend a Coaching Course – experience the benefits of coaching first hand. See our Global Training Calendar to find the right course for you
- Transformational Leader Pathway – learn how to be a leader–coach with a coaching leadership style that creates a culture of high performance for you, your team and entire organization
- Performance Coach Certification – become a coach or take your coaching skills to the next level so that you can practise transformational leadership coaching
- Individual Coaching (1:1) – take your leadership to the next level with a tailored, fast-track professional development coaching programme
- Team Development – unlock the next level of potential in your team with team coaching
Discover how culture eats strategy for breakfast.
– 5 mins read –
It is too often true that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, so how do we actually create a culture that will help our people deliver and strengthen company strategy?
According to a 2007 survey conducted by the management consulting firm Bain & Company, worldwide business leaders identified corporate culture to be critical for business success. The mobile technology company Ericsson, for example, has understood that for continued performance its culture needs to be adaptive and agile.
To help them on their way, our Global Director of Coaching & Leadership, Tiffany Gaskell, recently delivered a keynote at Ericsson’s Innovation Conference in Madrid. Marta San Martin, their Agile Driver and Coach, underscored the importance of culture by saying “continuous evolution and innovation is essential in our business in every aspect, including culture”.
“Has encouraged me to look more deeply at myself and to understand what I am capable of.”
Chris Wade, Head of Strategy, Acquisitions and Partnerships, Sage Pay, UK – participant at Coaching for Performance, Level 2, London, October 2014
in Madrid. Marta San Martin their Agile Driver and Coach, underscored the importance of culture by saying “continuous evolution and innovation is essential in our business in every aspect, including culture”.
Why not start off the new year by creating the culture you need to perform?
In this month’s newsletter, we share the secret to creating your own winning culture that you can put into practice right away.
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Create Your Own Winning Culture
We always knew strategy was important but how many companies proactively create their own winning culture? We can all influence and create the culture we need to perform. Follow these three simple steps to Create Your Own Winning Culture. You can do this in a company, a team or as an individual:
Step 1: The Secret
The secret is “awareness”. When we become aware of something, we have choice about it. So by simply becoming aware of what you want for your own winning culture and what the reality of your existing culture is, you will have a choice to do something about it.
We define culture as “the way things are done around here” – an unwritten system of shared approaches and of similar behaviours.
To learn more about your culture, do the following exercise:
The below graph sets out the four main types of culture. We all need different levels of support and challenge. Take a moment to think about your current working environment.

- Choose a spot on the graph that describes what your current culture is. Jot down the characteristics of your current culture.
- Now choose a spot on the graph that represents what you would like your culture to be that would best support your performance. Jot down how it would be different and any similarities with your current culture.
Step 2: Responsibility
To explore the different relationships we have with culture, we invite you to watch this video:
Now ask yourself what relationship you tend to have with culture – pick the ones that could describe you (you can pick as many as you like):
Are you like the frog put in boiling water who can immediately recognize if the culture isn’t a fit for you and so you jump out?
Are you like the frog in slowly heating water who allows the temperature to rise to uncomfortable levels?
Are you not like the frog in the video and able to know and ask for what you need, ie get out and turn the temperature to what you need to perform well?
Which did you choose?
A: Generally we are quite good at spotting A – it is something so alien or unsupportive of our performance that we jump out. Think of a company that you didn’t join. Or perhaps even a project that you tried to do but failed.
B: Most often, like the frog in B, we allow ourselves to become unconsciously absorbed by culture. The water might be a little too hot or cold for us to perform well, but we make do and get on with things. However, what we need to keep in mind is that, at the same time as being influenced by culture, we are also influencing culture and we can use our influence to create the culture we want.
C: This is the challenge of the 21st Century in organizations – proactively managing culture so that it empowers people. You can choose to do this yourself and create your own winning culture – once you are aware of what you need, you can ask for what you need and set the water temperature just right to perform well.
Step 3: Action
Now you know what you would like your culture to be:
- Make a list of at least three things that will help you get from where you are now, to where you want to be.
- Now pick one thing from your list and take steps to complete it.
- Notice what changes and repeat until you have completed your list.
Conclusion
Creating your own winning culture marks the next step in the evolution of the relationship between companies and individuals. It’s not about top-down, hierarchical structures anymore; now it is about individual empowerment and responsibility. At Performance Consultants we focus on building the management and leadership skills to create winning cultures. Through our coaching and leadership development programmes, we provide individuals and companies with the tools, skills and insights to create cultures that not only support strategy but deliver more.
To create a winning culture in your organization, join one of our public courses:
Is Sir John Whitmore one of History’s Greatest Business Pioneers?
Over the next few weeks The Financial Times is asking people to nominate their top business pioneers of all time.
We think that Sir John Whitmore’s pioneering work in bringing a coaching style of management to world-class organizations puts him in the running. His work was the foundation for the birth and explosion of the coaching industry that we have seen globally and which is now helping business to transform from the inside out. His book Coaching for Performance has sold over a million copies in 23 languages, while his coaching programmes with innovative tools and techniques are now being delivered in 40 countries around the world. He has been at the vanguard of the paradigm change in management thinking and practice from heroic to post-heroic leadership where the focus is on people finding purpose and fulfilment in their work.
The FT article notes: “Their [pioneering leaders] achievements are seldom theirs alone”; this is absolutely at the heart of the coaching style of management which Sir John Whitmore has championed. We would love you to join us in nominating Sir John Whitmore as one of the top business pioneers by emailing [email protected] or tweeting at #FTPioneers. And please let the FT know why you are nominating our pioneering leader.

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Sir John and his colleagues at Performance Consultants were the first to take coaching into the workplace and coined the term “performance coaching” in the early 1980s. We continue to lead the field in performance improvement through coaching leadership training.
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