Case study
Building internal coaching capability as a lever for cultural change
The context
In the midst of a broader transformation agenda, one of the UK’s largest financial institutions identified the need to strengthen its internal leadership culture.
The organisation was already grappling with significant shifts: new leadership at the top, a push towards digitisation and growth, and the challenge of evolving a deeply embedded culture without breaking what had made it resilient.
Alongside these system-wide changes, there was a more intimate opportunity emerging: to build coaching not just as a skill, but as a shared leadership posture, one that could support growth, deepen relational trust, and help unlock potential across the business.
The work aimed to move away from relying on external expertise, and instead build lasting capability from within.
The task
The organisation’s HR leadership team was the focal point for this work. As cultural carriers and change enablers, they were well positioned to lead by example. But they needed the tools, language, and shared experience to do it well.
The intent was to establish an internal coaching faculty senior leaders who could coach others inside the business, model a different kind of leadership conversation, and help embed a more reflective and human-centred culture.
What we did
Over an 18-month journey, we worked closely with this group through a layered, adaptive process.
Rather than parachuting in a standard qualification, we co-designed every element of the program. This included tailoring a 360 process to reflect the organisation’s leadership framework, building bespoke materials grounded in the organisation’s existing lexicon, and flexing the experience around the group’s evolving needs.
The programme followed a deliberate arc, from being coached, to learning to coach, to practising coaching internally. Each phase was designed to build not just competence, but depth of insight and emotional fluency.
Phase 1: Be Coached
We began by placing participants in the client seat. This wasn’t just to “model” good coaching. It was to give leaders a direct, felt sense of what skilled coaching makes possible: the shift in posture, the courage to reflect, the discomfort of scrutiny, the space to think aloud.
The 1:1 work was supported by a custom-designed 360 process, developed in close alignment with the organisation’s leadership frameworks and language. This helped surface development themes that were both personally resonant and strategically relevant.
Phase 2: Learn to Coach
Only after the experience of being coached did we move into skill-building. This allowed participants to ground their learning not just in theory, but also in personal insight.
Rather than offer a generic syllabus, we built the curriculum around the organisation’s specific needs, including material on relational contracting, coaching within a system, holding complexity, and navigating power dynamics. The goal was not to credentialise, but to embed capability that felt useful and practical in the organisation’s real world.
Phase 3: Practise Coaching
In the final stage, participants began coaching their colleagues across the business, supported by supervision and group reflection from ig.
More than just a box-ticking exercise, this was a critical test of integration: could leaders hold space for others while managing their own habits and hierarchies? Could they remain present, curious, and non-directive when the organisational norm was to advise, instruct, or fix?
Supervision surfaced not just technical questions, but questions of identity, safety, and leadership edge – all of which fed back into the participants’ own growth and into the system as a whole.
The outcomes
What changed was not just capability, but connection.
Leaders who had once operated in parallel began to show up for each other differently: listening with more care, challenging with more purpose, and holding space for learning and difference. They began to coach not just with tools, but with presence.
In a system where performance and pace were historically prioritised, the idea that how people feel – seen, stretched, included – might be central to performance marked a quiet but important shift.
Coaching, in this context, became both a skillset and a signal. A signal that this organisation is serious about relational leadership – about reflection, trust, and growth.
What’s next?
The internal coaching faculty is now moving towards a self-sustaining model.
While we’ll continue to offer group supervision and reflective space, delivery will be owned by the organisation – integrating coaching into talent programmes and embedding it within the broader leadership support system.
What our client had to say
“I’ve really enjoyed coaching my assigned coachee and developing my skills as a professional coach. My supervisor was incredibly supportive – insightful, direct, and constructively challenging in a way that really helped me reflect on how I lead, develop, and frame my thinking.
Supported by the team effectiveness sessions, I’ve noticed a shift in the dynamics of the P&P leadership team over the past two years – a positive direction with more to build on.”
Talent Director
