Offbeat Fest 2026 | Lessons in Coaching Cultures 

Last week, our co-founder Ally Jones hosted three roundtables at Offbeat Fest on how to scale coaching behaviours. We asked people to describe coaching in their organisation in a single word. The responses: "misunderstood", "inconsistent", "undervalued", "underused", "experimental", "not on people's radars."

There were more positive descriptions too: "empowering", "accountable", "supportive."

But here's the one that stood out the most to us. When we asked people to rate how embedded coaching actually is in their organisation, on a scale of 1-10, the average score was 5.

That gap represents a significant missed opportunity. Organisations that get coaching right see it show up in performance, retention and culture. As L&D leaders, we must do better here.

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Coaching as an initiative vs coaching as a behaviour

Across every roundtable, the same theme emerged: coaching is being treated as an L&D initiative, rather than something that shows up in how people lead or behave when collaborating.

That gap between "coaching as an initiative" and "coaching as a daily behaviour" is where most organisations are stuck.

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Unequal distribution of of coaching investment

Most organisations are actively investing in coaching for senior leaders and some high-potentials. Some had access to on-demand coaching platforms, with wildly varying results. But most relied on managers to offer their teams coaching, and admitted those managers rarely have the skills, time or inclination to do it.

Developing your managers' coaching capability is, without a doubt, the most effective way to scale coaching behaviours across an organisation.

That means building coaching into conversations that already exist:

• One-to-ones
• Development conversations
• Feedback conversations
• Supporting decision making

You don't need to create additional coaching conversations, as we know people are time-poor. The opportunity is to embed coaching behaviours into the flow of work. It's why we build coaching capability into all of our leadership programmes, including for first time managers. 

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Scaling Coaching Cultures

The second most common frustration we heard wasn't about getting budget for training. It was about how to make learning stick beyond the initial intervention.

What was interesting is how much coaching behaviour already exists across organisations, just under different names:

• Sales teams call it "discovery"
• Engineering teams call it "scoping"
• Customer Success teams call it "problem solving"

The behaviours are the same: curiosity, listening, asking clarifying questions, playing back understanding, challenging assumptions.

The opportunity isn't to introduce something new. It's to develop those existing behaviours so they show up consistently in how people lead. There was a general consensus that removing the word “coaching” and focusing on the behaviours instead, would actually help with better buy-in with both leaders and sponsors. 

Here's how:

Step 01: Whether you're partnering externally or designing in-house, make sure the content is customised to the business area. Relevance is what drives buy-in.

Step 02: Set clear expectations for leaders. Reward the "how", not just the "what": how they run one-to-ones, how they coach their team through decisions and ambiguity, how they support career development, how they build self-awareness in themselves and others.

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Case-study: OVO Way of Coaching

Over the last two years we partnered with the team at OVO to develop their coaching culture.

OVO recognised that building a great place to work starts with leaders who act as everyday coaches. As part of that ambition, they rolled out the OVO Way of Coaching programme across their leadership community, creating 500 internal coaches.

Having already built a strong internal learning culture, OVO's next step was to embed coaching more deeply into how their leaders lead. They wanted Advanced Coaching Skills development that would further codify coaching into leadership practice.

They came to us because they needed a partner with deep expertise in leadership and behavioural change, a strong brand that reflected their progressive culture, and the agility to co-create something that felt uniquely OVO. Read the full case study here. 

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Ready to scale coaching in your organisation?

If your leaders are sitting at a 5 out of 10, there's a clear opportunity to do something about it. We work with HR and L&D teams to build coaching capability that shows up beyond the training room.

Get in touch and let's talk about what that could look like for your organisation.

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