This week, I am putting the final touches to my quarterly newsletter. This goes out on behalf of my business, Learning for Life (Consulting). This month, the main article is aimed at senior leaders who want to develop a coaching culture across their organisation.

Amongst the challenges we face when we set out to create the culture of an organisation are the hidden presuppositions that inform that culture. How do we root them out and examine them when we don’t even know they are there? How do we exchange one set of presuppositions for another? And if we want to develop a coaching mindset, what presuppositions might we want to adopt?

A coaching culture is founded on presuppositions, values and beliefs that support the idea that people want to develop and have the capacity to do so. In a coaching culture, whether our conversation is with ourselves, with those we lead or with others with whom we interact, conversations are informed by a number of presuppositions. These include the following:

• We are creative, resourceful and whole;
• We can’t change the others, we can only change ourselves;
• There’s no failure, only feedback;
• Every behaviour has a positive intention.

As I write, I wonder how these presuppositions land with my readers and I make a note to write about each one in the course of the coming days.

I also wonder, what presuppositions would you add to this list?