Coaching is increasingly becoming popular as a development tool. For organizations that want to engage employees, increase satisfaction and improve morale levels of employees, build collaboration and teamwork, creating a coaching culture is the solution. A coaching culture can prove to be a magic wand to solve all individual and organization-specific performance woes that continue to haunt organizations. This article traces the strategies that are essential to foster a coaching culture within organizations.

The last two decades of the 20^th century witnessed an emergence of new tribe of leaders known for their `go-for-gold' aggressiveness and gut-wrenching boldness in both business and public spaces. These leaders carry grandiose visions (naysayers may dub it as audacious), are obsessively tech-savvy and swear by the idioms of globalization of commerce. Mind you, these leaders are not flash in the pan variety. They are result-oriented and believe in the canons of accountability for results. Throughout these two decades, multitude of these leaders underwent grueling training sessions to metamorphose into coaches. Institutes that promised to teach first-rate coaching or offer certified coaching programs mushroomed. Publishers literally signed many of these corporate leaders turned management gurus on the dotted lines for writing books on coaching for unheard amounts. This was not all. Conferences and seminars on `Coaching' became a de rigueur. So suddenly, coaching acquired a patina of strong oomph that held strong appeal for many corporate czarinas and whiz-kids. Coaching has always been considered a vital tool that aids in the formation of a vibrant leadership. Coaching traces its genesis to psychotherapy and was generally embraced by companies to fix the performance or behavioral issues of its talented leaders. Over the period of time, coaching found many takers and was used to address different problems in different contexts. The usefulness of coaching ranged from fixing specific problems to sprucing up performance skills to tapping the fullest potential of the leader. More companies hitched themselves to the coaching bandwagon hoping to add more value to their bottom line. But many critics baulk at the idea of coaching, and justifiably so, adding value to the organizations or improving individual effectiveness for the simple reason that the benefits of coaching cannot be measured in dollar terms.

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