“Historically, coaching was limited to just bringing in an external executive coach and working with our senior leaders, and thankfully, it’s expanded well beyond that,” said Jackie Bassett, the director of people strategy for the UChicago Medicine health system.

Now, companies are including employees at all levels of the organization in the coaching experience. Some are bringing in third-party coaching services, some are training people managers to coach their teams, some are even facilitating group sessions or peer-to-peer coaching. Others are doing all of the above.

The potential is great. Coaching in the workplace can improve resilience, increase engagement, encourage collaboration among workers, and boost performance. It’s both a talent attractor and a talent retainer, and 86% of employers that invest in employee coaching say they recoup their investment.

In May, Bassett joined four other leaders in corporate learning and development and people operations for a discussion titled “Balancing Technology and the Human Factors in Coaching,” part of From Day One’s May virtual conference on coaching and recognition. The panel conversation, which I moderated, addressed what employers can expect from corporate coaching programs and how to set those expectations, how tech can scale a program, and the importance of “coaching culture.”

Employee coaching isn’t necessarily for workforce upskilling or training the next line managers, though it can include this. The five panelists identified all kinds of worthy goals for corporate coaching programs, including generating a sense of belonging for employees, encouraging employee rapport, general workforce skill development, creating opportunity for people from marginalized communities, individual employee growth (personally and professionally), and succession planning.

The reasons may be myriad, but panelists agreed that leaders must set clear expectations for the outcome of a given coaching program, especially once it reaches the one being coached. Emily Pearce, the director of global customer care at employee recognition and engagement platform Achievers, recommended not being overly prescriptive when picking outcomes. “We’re not saying, ‘This is the outcome, this is what you’re going to get,’” she said. Instead, they outline the “basic rules of engagement and shared values.”

Pearce continued: “For example, if respect is a shared value, how does that show up in your partnership? Is that being on time to meetings? Is that doing the pre-work you say that you’re going to do? It’s more about setting expectations by starting that dialogue and also creating that safe space.”

At fintech company FIS Global, Sharahn Monk, the global director of learning delivery and performance solutions, said that in the company’s one-on-one coaching setup, the person being coached, that person’s manager, and the external coach, if there is one involved, should all agree on three things the person being coached says they want to work on. Keep it focused.

Employers might even consider involving employees in distilling goals for the entire program. “I think there’s definitely a case to be made for organizations to ask your employees what they want,” Pearce said.

At Attuned, an employee-engagement platform that offers insights on intrinsic motivation, identifying goals and starting the coaching process actually begins in the interview process, where candidates take the company’s intrinsic motivation assessment, said the company’s director of people operations, Kristine Ayuzawa.

“It’s a really great opportunity to begin that conversation by saying, ‘Maybe you and I are coming at something from a very different perspective, but where are the places where we potentially meet in the middle? How might this benefit us? What are some of the blind spots or challenges that we might want to overcome?’” Ayuzawa said.

Where Coaching Shouldn’t Go

The group flagged the limits of coaching, too. Coaching is not a way to fix performance issues. In fact, a report from McKinsey & Company warns that reserving coaching for performance problems will backfire, essentially making it a disciplinary measure.

“Coaching is not meant to be a way for leaders to abdicate their responsibility in developing their employees and managing performance issues,” said Bassett. “But on the other hand, we will encourage leaders, as they’re working through a development plan with their employees, that perhaps coaching could be one component of that development plan.”

It’s also not a quick fix for culture problems, Gerard Camacho pointed out. Camacho is the AVP of learning and career development at North Carolina–based health system Atrium Health. “Coaching is not going to save everyone, going to promote them, going to engage them, going to make sure that they have a sense of belonging within the organization,” he said. “It has to be attached to something more. It’s a tool. Coaching is a tool to get to a certain outcome.”

Similarly, Monk made a point of noting that training people within your organization to be coaches should not be transactional. “[You can’t] just send them off to coaching school, and they’ll come out on the other side doing and being everything that we need them to be.”

How to Establish a Coaching Culture

For all of the panelists, a “coaching culture” is what they’re going for, one that blends structured, preplanned coaching sessions with coaching opportunities that naturally present themselves between manager and employee, or even employee and employee. A 2020 Gallup story based on its research urged employers to move from “bossing” to “coaching” their employees, a distinction that reflects both employees’ increased interest in being coached and how important it is to business success.

Bassett said this is why managers at UChicago Medicine who are expected to coach receive coaching themselves. “As they get more familiar with the coaching approach, we see that they naturally start to apply it in their own leadership practice, that they start showing up with that coaching mindset.”

Coaching and being coached can seem like an unrealistic luxury for workers who struggle to find enough time to get their regular responsibilities done, like health care workers, for example. When employees are already stretched so thin, you have to make coaching easy by bringing it to them, and make it worth their time by giving them knowledge they can use right away.

Camacho said Atrium employees are given micro-coaching sessions, and he recommended other employers think of similarly flexible delivery vehicles. “The ability to create an incentive for people and for leaders to attend is to give them the tools that they need the most to make the time worthwhile. Perhaps the solution is to do micro-learning, or to take time during already existing huddles and things like that, that are there to provide those sessions and not make them do something extra.”

Monk encouraged employers to make every employee their own “chief learning officer” so they’re empowered to pursue the help and information they need, even if it comes from a peer. “It goes above and beyond just the formalized coaching,” said Monk. “How can we leverage each other to support each other?”

For those wondering how to make coaching happen at scale, Ayuzawa said the right technology can handle the administrative chores, which may seem like small potatoes, but can drain a lot of hours scheduling sessions, sending reminders, digging up session notes, and organizing surveys. “I also think it can be really useful in terms of helping to give some structure to the content of what's going to be discussed,” she said.

Further, having the consistent framework tech provides can give participants a shared vocabulary, and that can contribute to a culture of coaching.

The fruits of such a culture are promising, panelists said. “Participants have reported feeling more engaged, more valued by the organization and more connected to their coaches and to their peers,” Bassett said of UChicago’s programs. “We’ve seen that coaching is really great at creating that safe space for people to be more vulnerable to share their fears, their hopes, and and especially in a group coaching format, to really get support from their peers as well.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter based in Richmond, Va., who writes about workplace culture and policies, hiring, DEI, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others, and has been syndicated by MSN and The Motley Fool.

Where to Start: Making the Workplace Inclusive of Neurodiversity

It’s estimated that 15–20% of the global population is neurodivergent in some way, and growing awareness of diagnoses has people curious. They want to learn more about the term, what it means, and how they can support people who identify that way.Neurodivergence describes so many different experiences, but generally, people who are neurodivergent process information differently than most individuals. This includes people on the autism spectrum, people with learning disabilities, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome.Millette Granville is the VP of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at digital learning platform 2U. She’s seen the appetite in her company and has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm. “We have over 200 employees that are actively engaged in our abilities resource network. They were really, truly ready to get started building the community. I was not as prepared for the thirst for knowledge from our people, from leaders, as well as our employees about what exactly we need to do to make sure we are supporting our employees.During From Day One’s February virtual conference on getting to the next stage of diversity and belonging, Granville and her industry colleagues gathered for a panel discussion on neurodiversity in the workplace and how they’re changing their organizations to be more inclusive of neurodiverse needs.Neurodivergence can describe so many different diagnoses, experiences, and needs. It can also be invisible. “Neurodiversity is hidden in plain sight all around us,” said Hal Lanier, client engagement leader at accessible tech company TextHelp. So how does a workplace become inclusive if the needs can be hard to identify?An Inclusive Interview ProcessSome leaders begin with the hiring process. Monica Parodi, VP of talent acquisition at The New York Times, said she’s starting at the beginning, using tools to comb their job descriptions for noninclusive language. They’re also adding details about the hiring process to the company’s career pages so candidates can prepare in advance and avoid uncomfortable surprises.The panelists discussed the topic "How Companies Are Embracing Neurodiversity in Innovative Ways" at From Day One's virtual conferenceOnce candidates get to the interview stage, they’ll see other changes. “We know that the first 30 seconds [of an interview] are really uncomfortable for a lot of people who are neurodivergent. So we take that space and say, ‘we’re going to ask very structured questions to everyone, and we’re going to limit small talk,’” Parodi said. “We’re also making sure panelists understand neurodivergent behaviors and don’t penalize candidates if they don’t make eye contact, if they’re writing questions down, if they’re pausing, or if they’re asking you to repeat questions.”Building a reputation as an employer that is supportive of neurodivergent employees doesn’t happen by accident, she said. “There’s not one single place that you focus on; it’s weaved into every single part of your process in business and brand.”Designing Learning Opportunities with Neurodivergence in MindLearning and skill development programs often designed for the neurotypical employee are also getting a revision. Joshua Crafford is the VP of leadership learning and development at financial institution Synchrony. He said that his experience as a person with learning disabilities shapes his work. Crafford uses his personal point of view to design better learning experiences, often asking himself, “how would I have to learn the material?”For instance, Crafford talks to his audience to understand their learning styles, he teaches concepts, not just rote memorization. “It’s designed to be simplified. It’s built for all learners, divergent and neurotypical. We make sure that people can interact with the information through discussions and gain others’ perspectives.”At aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman, VP of talent management Jackie Reisner considers use cases when creating and evaluating skill development and training programs. Who’s going to be using it? Can you involve them in the design? Can you ask them what does and doesn’t work about the programs?Perhaps most importantly, does everyone have to complete the training in exactly the same way? Because neurodivergence represents non-traditional ways of processing information, it represents many different learning styles.“This is something that we have to be more open-minded about: there’s got to be more than one way to get to the goal,” said Reisner. When and how the training is delivered should be flexible and adaptable by the learner. The goal is that everyone learns, not that everyone completes the training in the same way.“I know from a compliance perspective, that feels challenging, because you want to just check ‘yes, everyone in my company took ethics training,’ Reisner said. “But if you can get more models, more ways people can get to that end state, then you’re going to see so much more success.”Don’t Assume, AskThe challenge for many who are neurodivergent is that they will prefer not to disclose their diagnosis at work–and others may not know they’re not neurotypical. That’s why many leaders are making these changes and accommodations available to all employees–not just those who openly identify as neurodivergent. No one should be forced to disclose neurodivergence if they don’t want to. “An individual should not be required to disclose to get assistive technology,” said Lanier of TextHelp. “There are a lot of organizations that make our product available for everyone.”The best practice is to simply ask employees what they need, panelists said, and be open to creativity. “Companies come up with all these accommodations, and it looks like a list to choose from. That can be great, but you have to remember to ask people what they need as well,” said Reisner. “At the end of the day, we have to ask, ‘how can we make your life easier? What are you seeing as challenges in the workplace, and what would be the ideal state to make this workplace a great place for you to work regardless of that neurodiversity status?’”At 2U, Granville leans on the neurodiversity resource networks for ideas and policy review, also considering parents and caregivers who are responsible for neurodivergent family members. “We rely on good communication and connection,” she said. “If leaders have questions, they can lean into our resource groups, myself, or our DEI team and also HR to make sure that we’re guiding people in the right direction, and doing what's best for them, not what we think they need.”To Lanier, it’s a matter of psychological safety, and high-performing teams feel free to be themselves. “Is it safe to take risks and be vulnerable and be fully known?” he said. A workplace that is psychologically safe is welcoming to all, neurodivergent or not.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, the Economist, the Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

How to Create and Sustain a Growth Mindset to Nurture Talent

When Dr. Mary Murphy was working on her PhD at Stanford, she was mentored by Carol S. Dweck, best-selling author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, a book that covers the potential of individuals. Now a social psychologist, Murphy has taken the mindset concept a step further and for over a decade has studied how the “fixed” or "growth” mindset affects not only individuals, but groups of people. Murphy discussed research from her book, Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations, and how it can help teams during a fireside chat at From Day One’s March Virtual Conference.Those with a fixed mindset, Murphy says, believe in being born with skills that can’t grow any further. While those with a growth mindset believe they can learn and grow into new abilities. When talking about teams, organizations, families—there is a similar mindset culture.In a fixed mindset culture, or a “culture of genius” as Murphy called it, the focus is on the star performers. The opposite is a “culture of growth” where there is a focus on continuous learning so anyone can grow and contribute. And it’s that culture of growth that organizations need.Idea SparkIn 2005 during her PhD program, Murphy clearly recalled when this group application of mindset sparked. She was at a grad student seminar supporting a friend, where a professor voiced his opinion about what the fatal flaw of this student’s work was. Another professor chimed in and disagreed, saying the fatal flaw was something else. In essence, it was a battle of which professor was right.“I saw what it was doing to my friend,” she said. “All of a sudden, he lost focus. He wasn’t able to answer questions.” Unfortunately, the experience was so painful that months later he hadn’t continued his work.Two weeks later, in a different seminar, she witnessed something else. Rather than critiquing the students about what was wrong, the professors offered ideas on how to grow the project. The effect was clear. “The students were able to respond totally differently,” Murphy said. “They were able to actually engage in the brainstorming, answer the questions, and they left motivated to dig in.”Reflecting on those two experiences or environments, she realized how much a group can impact an outcome. The harsh approach was not motivating at all. On the other hand, the mentality of growth and how we can all contribute really turned things around for the better.Dr. Mary Murphy discussed her new book Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations in a fireside chat moderated by From Day One co-founder Steve Koepp (photo by From Day One)Murphy presented the idea to her new mentor, asking what if mindset is more than just internal? What if it’s baked into culture and influences the cultivation of talent? She blinked a few times and said, “No one's ever thought of mindset this way. But we should do it together. And that began 15 years of work on reconceptualizing the mindset, as not just in our head, but also as this cultural feature.”Time to StudyNow with 75 studies in her back pocket, Murphy has seen firsthand just how deep mindset goes. Murphy and Dweck looked at the mindset of teachers and faculty members in K-12 and college and how they practice that in the classroom.“We look at how that impacts student experience. We’ve created apps that actually measure student experience in the moment looking at their sense of belonging, whether they think their teacher has a growth mindset, belief for them or not, their sense of self efficacy, their trust of the teacher.”What they found was that even if a student has a growth mindset, when set into a fixed mindset culture, they won’t have the opportunity to benefit from their growth mindset. The group trumps and stilts their progress. In the National Study of Learning Mindsets, a randomized control trial of more than 12,000 students around the country underwent a growth mindset program to see how it would impact their grades and if they’d be willing to take challenging courses. As expected, it had a positive effect. Their GPA was higher and more of them enrolled in the challenging courses than the control group. They also looked at where the program didn’t work.“The answer was two places,” Murphy said. “It was with teachers that had more fixed mindset beliefs or engaged in fixed mindset practices, then giving students that personal growth mindset. The effect was zero. It had no impact. It wasn't even a small impact – it had no impact.”The other place it didn’t work was when peers didn’t engage in challenge seeking, then students were less likely to want to work hard. But when there were teachers and peers who relished a challenge and supported each other, the growth mindset helped students flourish.Organizational CultureWorking with companies of all shapes and sizes, Murphy saw similar results. The mindset of a team at large has a huge impact on creativity, collaboration, and innovation. In one study in particular, they looked at the difference between a psychologically safe environment and a growth minded environment. They found that psychological safety is the baseline for any other growth to take place.“Psychological safety just means that you're willing to speak up when something’s gone wrong. But growth mindset culture really is being vigilant about how to improve what you’re doing, your interactions with others, the outcomes and the strategies that you’re trying. You’re proactively looking for improvement opportunities.”In fixed mindset cultures, they search for the narrow genius prototype to come up with all the answers. When in reality, a growth culture would open up the spectrum of recruiting, looking more at positive values. As Murphy says, a growth culture helps organizations naturally look for more diversity. “What’s most important is the extent to which people are willing to develop, grow and learn.”Changing Company CultureIn her book, Murphy goes over four common mindset triggers which can help individuals understand where people are on the fixed to growth spectrum. In turn, those who work with those individuals can help them shift. For example, one trigger is praise. If someone else gets praise, how does the person react? Are they happy for them, or are they jealous, thinking they are less than? One way to help foster a growth mindset is how praise is given. Rather than a “good job!” which doesn’t offer helpful feedback, Murphy suggested managers repeat what the person has done so well, so they can replicate that and others can encourage.When Satya Nadella first came to Microsoft as CEO, he described Microsoft as everyone thinking about their own silo. He read Dweck’s book and wanted to help Microsoft become the first growth minded culture and company. Kathleen Hogan, head of talent, asked how things needed to change so they could recruit and onboard people that would help shift the company’s culture. She implemented changes, but success didn’t come right away. Some bragged they had the biggest growth mindset in the room. “She had to really talk to people about what a growth mindset actually looks like. And to bake that in to some of the incentive systems and also some of the mentoring and sponsoring and support systems so that people could take on challenges could make mistakes, and actually get points for the learning and the growth from those mistakes and the communicating of those mistakes across the company, so that the whole company can learn at the same time more rapidly.” That’s when things picked up. Slowly but surely, the culture was changing. It became okay to make mistakes, but putting out ideas and taking risks and being open to failure became the norm. And that’s how they got cloud computing. Was the culture change worth it? No doubt about it.Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter.

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