CoachCultureSAMPLE

8
Coach Culture
When employees answer no to that question, it’s as
if they’ve already given up. They feel unmotivated, unheard,
unimportant. They don’t believe the survey matters.
My job included creating the corrective action plan
for this survey, and that was the question I most wanted
to impact. If an employee feels like management is going
to listen to them, they feel valued at that company. I
might not have had control over corporate headquarters;
I couldn’t give anyone a raise, or more vacation time, or
better benefits. But you know what?
That’s not what motivates people.
MOTIVATION
One of my best friends and I called one of my previous
workplaces “The Borg.” We joked with each other about
whether we’d be “assimilated.” (If you’re unfamiliar with
this Star Trek reference, all you probably need to know is
that The Borg are an alien race and that their first human
encounter with the Star Trek crew begins with “You will
be assimilated, resistance is futile”). Obviously, we didn’t
feel very connected to that greater company culture—but
we had each other. We knew there was at least one other
person who felt the same as us, and we could keep
coming to work. We unintentionally created our own
mini-coaching culture, which kept us motivated when the
company didn’t. Many of the same attributes that create
a formal, intentional coaching culture—trust, listening,
support, strategizing, and accountability—were present
in that friendship. Imagine how much more motivated
we would have been if that culture was company-wide?
In the book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What
Motivates Us, author Dan Pink cites a study which found