Developing A Coaching Culture Within A FTSE 100 Beverages Company

A FTSE 100 beverages company that manufactures, supplies and distributes some of the best-known brands in its field engaged YSC Consulting to support the development of their leaders.

The ambition was to continue on their success of being the fastest growing region for the whole organization. This required doubling the revenue, tripling the profit and growing market share significantly within five years.

To achieve this business performance ambition, it was vital to accelerate the growth of leaders across all levels. Moreover, there was a need to shift the business culture of creating directional and controlling ‘doers’ to building empowering ‘leaders.’

Therefore, YSC partnered with this client to create two sustainable culture change and coaching programs that could be applied across all levels of the organization, and validated with external accreditation.

Two programs were created and delivered:

Leader coach program: This was targeted towards 60 senior leaders to become extraordinary coaches.

• 2-Day immersion workshop: Content on what coaching is and isn’t, core coaching skills, contracting, asking powerful questions, key coaching models, etc.
• 90-minute knowledge dunks: Coaching for Purpose, Real Relationships, Team Coaching, Difficult Conversations, etc.
• 2 x 3 hour group sessions: Action learning, sharing live experiences, role playing exercises, etc.
• 6 x 1 hour 1:1 coaching supervision: Each senior leader was paired with a YSC coach. This provided a safe space to discuss challenges they were facing with their coachees. Sessions also included a review of pre-recorded coaching sessions and opportunity to gain expert feedback.

Peer coach program: This was targeted for 150 junior leaders to become better coachees, and coach to their peers.

• 1-day coaching initiation workshop: Introduction to coaching, how to be a good coachee, receiving and acting on feedback.

All individuals successfully completed their respective programs. In addition, senior leaders taking part in the ‘Leader Coach Program’ became accredited coaches and recognized by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Feedback was positive:

• Senior leaders rated the quality of the facilitators as 9.51 out of 10, and rated the training session overall as 9.46 out of 10.
• There was also a significant increase in coaching for performance knowledge, models, personal self-awareness, and confidence in coaching skills.