Sometimes my colleagues ask the most stimulating questions via discussion groups and this one (on the Coaching at Work group on LinkedIn) intrigued me: what is a ‘coaching culture’?

Amongst the many environments I have worked and played in, I think first and foremost of my experience as a member of a number of resource teams with ITS (http://www.itsnlp.com/). In this context, I was a volunteer working with other volunteers to support our trainers in delivering various trainings in neurolinguistic programming (or NLP). As volunteers we were all interested in furthering our learning as well as supporting the learning of others. You could call this a ‘coaching culture’.

What was the culture in this environment? This was an environment in which team members embraced each other fully, understanding that we are all learners. Anyone seeking support for their learning would be welcomed by other members of the team. Whenever there was friction or misunderstandings feedback was given openly and directly, and both parties understood that they might have something to learn from this exchange of feedback. And when team members had a ‘gripe’ with another member of the team it was typically well understood that this was a signal to the ‘griper’ that he or she might have something to learn. Team members tended to view each other – and programme participants – as resourceful, whole and able to learn (even if they hadn’t learnt yet!). There were high levels of trust and flexibility.

What about work in this environment? Whilst there was considerable flexibility and a willingness to cut each other some slack, we still worked to high standards across a whole range of tasks, from sorting the stationery cupboard to supporting participants. Over the life of a team (twenty days over five four-day modules) we got to know each others’ strengths and to work to them as well as to our own. Work was a joyful experience.

How might this translate into the workplace? Correspondents on the Coaching At Work group highlight that organisations aspiring to a ‘coaching culture’ at work might have many definitions of this phrase and as I write I wonder how many definitions would fall well short of the ‘ITS experience’. How many organisations would welcome the level of intimacy involved in working together in this way?

I also wonder which is chicken and which is egg. For, on the surface, it seems to me that the culture of the resource teams was only possible because team members were chosen with great care. At the same time, I think of Douglas McGregor’s famous ‘XY Theory’ which proposed that managers tend to adopt one of two fundamentally different approaches to managing their people. Is it possible that, over time, an organisation in which leaders believe in the importance of learning (who engage in their own learning and support the learning of others) will, over time, attract precisely those employees who wish to work in a ‘coaching culture’?