The Ola top management in consultation with its HR is working towards creating a coaching culture in the organization. This initially came out of a need to make the performance management system more effective by advancing from a rating communication format to moving the needle towards meaningful and constructive feedback. As the systems and processes become refined they will push employees to ask powerful questions, promote self-directed learning, and encourage them to take on larger roles.

According to Girish Venkataraman, Director – Corporate HR, Ola, ‘Coaching is the process of increasing awareness in managers to increase awareness in their team members. Coaching is also a significant productivity enhancer in the mid- and long-term perspective.’

He feels that coaching is different from mentoring. In the mentoring process one seeks inputs from experts and learns from their skills and behavioral competencies. In the coaching process, the coach does not have to be an expert in any field; as long as (s)he can actively listen, ask the right questions and engage the coachees to think and arrive at solutions for themselves.

Girish says that coaching is not a new concept in India. It was the pedagogy used by Gurus and Zen masters to enable their disciples to learn. Typically, they would give disciples a task. Upon its completion, there would be a de-briefing wherein the Gurus would ask powerful questions and followed it up by stories, thereby harnessing the power of inquiry. This pedagogy has been lost over the years and we are now rediscovering it as experiential learning and coaching.”

Reasons Why Coaching is gaining prominence

The lifecycle of an employee in an organization is categorized into three phases – individual, manager and leader. Traditionally, the expectations from these roles were doing, delegating and directing respectively. Today, we are moving towards collaborating, co-creating and coaching respectively.

Individual learning is believed to be at its best when it is self-directed. Coaching promotes self-directed learning, while the coach simply asks questions and actively listens.

Neuroscience indicates that insights generate energy beyond the insight alone and propels people into action. So, coaching helps generate output.

Coaching is no longer about underperformers receiving remedial help. A quote from Fast Company encapsulates the essence of coaching – “Coaching isn’t therapy. It is product development, with ‘you’ as the product.”

Challenges Ola faced in establishing a coaching culture

• • With a growing millennial workforce, first-time managers are younger than ever before. The average age at Ola is 26 and young managers are intelligent, cerebral people who do not have the experience of handling huge teams.
• • Coaching is typically effective when it is long- or mid-term in nature. There are high-pressure work schedules and a need to hustle, in new age organizations. Hustling requires one to be in continuous activity. Is a hustling culture conducive to coaching culture then? How do we integrate coaching into such a culture?
• • Coaching is developmental in nature, and new age organizations emphasize on problem solving for today. How do employees really focus on long-term oriented goals in such an environment?
• • New age organizations have a lot of flux – employees, managers, roles and even problems keep changing days and weeks. Attrition rates are at 20 - 30%. How can such organizations build a long-term and sustainable coaching culture?

There are 2 aspects to coaching – as a tool and as a mindset. Coaching as a tool takes a lot more resource investment and interventions. It not scalable so could be specifically used for high potential employees in a one on one interaction. It cannot be driven by an algorithm after a certain point.

On the other hand coaching as a mindset or a way of life is easier to implement as any manager with the right attitude become a coach. For the coaching journey to be a success the organization needs a leader who is committed to creating a coaching culture and the coachees need to value the huge benefits that coaching bring to their work life.

Ola’s approach to creating a coaching culture

Ola has been an organization that aspires to nurture entrepreneurs - it has created 150 entrepreneurs in its 7 years of existence. Coaching is extremely conducive an entrepreneurial culture as it empowers employees to think for themselves and find their own solutions, and this ties in very well with Ola values.

Ola encouraged first time managers to practice the basic tenets of coaching by  letting their team members find their own solutions. In this way they were able to overcome the problem of a hustling culture. The managers were asked to get involved only in the implementation stage.

The company leveraged technology to make the coaching experience more efficient. For instance, in the last 12-15 months SuccessFactor has transformed their performance management system. It bis app based and accessible for the field force. It is amenable to customization and due to its flexibility has enhanced the employee experience. The earlier practice was to just communicate the annual rating to the employee. But now managers are able to give continuous, real time feedback, which is important to millennials. A customized language tool that sits on SAP enables HR to keep track of the quality of the feedback from managers, tagging them as green (30% of managers), amber and red (70%). HR identifies managers who are not able to give good feedback (amber and red). They closely partner with such managers and over a period of 3 – 4 months help them move towards green. There are many other benefits to using technology but it is early to pinpoint them.

The First Principles Framework (made popular by Elon Musk) is part of Ola’s DNA. Everyone from the CEO downwards is encouraged to ask lots of questions about the fundamental assumptions that are carried. This, according to Girish, has created a conducive environment for building a coaching culture as it prompts innovative thinking.

And finally, positive motivation has been key for the sustenance of a coaching culture in Ola.

Ecosystem enablers for Coaching Culture

Girish went on to explain how important it was to nurture an ecosystem for building a coaching culture.

• • Create a network of internal and external experts. By using Social media tools and other technology to identify and create a pool of relevant coaches.
• • Connect the coachee to the right coach. Certain modules of SuccessFactors were useful in matching the coach to the right coachee and in scheduling the interactions.
• • Create an environment conducive to continuous learning. At Ola, credits can be earned by employees who follow their own learning journeys, which can be redeemed for certain rewards.
• • Create a continuous coaching environment. At Ola, higher credits are given to coaches to redeem against different points for continuously sharing their knowledge with others. Other innovative ways can be explored to encourage and motivate coaches and coachees.

Making your Coaching Initiative Sustainable

Girish also gave pointers on how to make the coaching initiative sustainable.

• • Coaching and coaching tools need to be customized to the organizational context and personalized to each coachee. Technology can be leveraged for achieving this customization and personalization at scale.
• • A successful and sustainable coaching culture requires a conducive environment and established systems, processes and structures so that it may outlive the people that establish it in the organization.
• • While HR should initially establish the coaching culture, business leaders and management must drive the process to make it sustainable.
• • Coaching must be organic and not force-fed to employees. Each employee must understand his/ her importance and become internal learners and explorers.
• • Mentoring and coaching can happen in parallel if you understand the organizational culture and needs adequately, and well defined outcomes result from mentoring and coaching.

Building a business case for coaching.

To establish a coaching culture, HR needs to build a strong business case for it, which means identifying ROI and impact on business results.

Girish Venkataraman shared that when looked at as an engagement tool, coaching needs more investment as it requires more one-on-one conversations that lead to specific targeted interventions. If we look at coaching as a way of life, the investments and costs are lower. For instance, when managers spend more time coaching, they spend less time on managerial interventions for solving day-to-day problems, freeing up bandwidth. You can measure ROI through a clear productivity linkage and metrics such as the succession pipeline, attrition rates, engagement metrics and so on.

The Way Forward

Going forward Ola is looking for coaching to deliver real outcomes with people asking powerful questions, generating insights and taking on larger roles. Once such a culture is established technology steps in as a supporting arm using AI to break down concepts, and push managers into thinking further.

SAP’s perspective on building a coaching culture

When you want to drive a coaching culture in an organization, you need tools to enable it. SAP Success Factors is one such enabling tech tool that helps build a collaborative, conversational environment for a thriving coaching culture. The technology helps track progress and action items. With technology organizations can use data to understand strategic pain points and build coaching programs to mitigate them whether it is health and well-being or work-life or performance or development.

Coaching starts producing results only when you start acting on the findings and provide employees with platforms to link to their performance and development needs.