How to Support Culture Change: Coaching at Scale FAQ
Culture doesn’t change because of town halls or one-off trainings.
It doesn’t even change when the values statements are updated, or when the CEO announces a bold new direction.
Culture changes when leaders change.
And leaders change when they’re supported consistently, skillfully, and at scale. That’s where coaching comes in.
In today’s article, we’re answering the most common questions executives and HR leaders ask about culture change and coaching at scale—why culture change so often fails, what actually works, and how to utilize proven strategies to create transformation that sticks.
Why Does Culture Change Fail?
Some estimates suggest that upwards of 70% of change management efforts fail. Why?
Because culture doesn’t shift through aspiration or good intention alone—it shifts through deep mindset, skillset, and behavior shifts.
Most organizations aren’t wrong about what needs to shift, they’re simply underestimating what it takes to actually shift it. Organizations with the best of intentions launch initiatives, name new values and processes, publish them on posters and website announcements, and even host trainings to roll them out.
But these strategies fail to take into account human behavior and psychology. Knowledge alone isn’t enough to change behavior. Humans face psychological barriers like stress, fear of change, and resistance to new information in addition to practical hurdles like breaking old habits and establishing new ones. Even leaders with the best of intentions and deep desire to implement change, when tested, often fall back into old ways of being and doing.
What Actually Works to Create Culture Change?
Structured, ongoing, personalized support to change behavior at the individual level, and a critical mass of implementers that bring the rest of the organizational culture along with them.
This is where coaching, and specifically coaching at scale comes in.
Coaching is the behavior-change engine. It helps leaders to embody the culture change, and provides what most initiatives miss:
Ongoing, personalized support that meets leaders exactly where they are;
Confidential spaces to process challenges without judgment;
Brave spaces to try new approaches, stumble safely, and learn forward;
Behavioral reinforcement with regular, consistent nudges that help new habits stick;
Accountability that transforms, with clear commitments and follow-up that won’t add burden to supervisors;
Practice, practice, practice that turns theory into reliable, instinctive action.
Coaching supports leaders in turning good ideas and aspirational ways of being into lived, daily, practical reality.
Coaching at scale creates enough momentum for a critical mass of change. Here’s how we reach the tipping point and become the lever for the organization as a whole:
Create a visible wave: A few aligned leaders can feel like outliers. A visible wave of leaders rowing together creates a broader sense of safety and legitimacy for the rest.
Make culture contagious: When enough leaders model new behaviors consistently, those behaviors spread faster than any mandate.
Transforms the norm: What once felt “different” quickly becomes “just how we do things here.”
Compound momentum: The more leaders rowing in the new direction, the easier it is for others to catch the current.
Coaching at scale leverages individual transformation into collective transformation with momentum.
What Is Coaching at Scale?
Coaching at scale means building multi-layered change management infrastructure and scaffolding for transformation across the organization.
At the Center for Conscious Leadership, we use four complementary modalities that provide varying levels of support based on need:
1:1 Coaching: Deep personal work to help leaders ground themselves, expand their nervous system capacity, and model resilience under pressure. This space support leads in shifting from reactive leadership to conscious leadership, and show up with presence, clarity, and courage.
Team Coaching: Aligns intact teams around priorities while strengthening communication, psychological safety and trust. This creates the conditions for sustained performance and shared cultures of accountability that don’t collapse under pressure.
Group Coaching: Brings leaders at similar levels together to build shared language, get cost-effective coaching for leaders with similar challenges, and reinforce new, conscious leadership behaviors in real time, supporting connection and skill application in a supportive context.
Communities of Practice: Facilitated peer learning groups where leaders engage in action research and embed new learning into their work. Leaders share challenges, apply skills, trade lessons from implementation, and reinforce behaviors until they become part of the system. Communities of Practice transform culture change strategy into actionable behavior.
These approaches don’t simply inspire change, they anchor it and provide the support to deliver it.
How Does Coaching Drive Culture Change?
Coaching turns abstract values and big-picture strategy into individually lived behaviors:
“Be bold” becomes nervous system regulation work and speaking up in that next high-stakes meeting;
“Foster collaboration” becomes identifying roadblocks and redesigning processes so more voices are heard; and
“Lead with empathy” becomes finally giving the feedback conversation they’ve been avoiding for months or years.
Coaching slows down to speed up, and provides space to:
Clear internal, invisible resilience;
Feel tensions, name them, and move through them;
Allow the nervous system to move at this individual leaders’ speed of trust; and
Empower leaders with the confidence and courage to move forward with clarity.
Coaching scales trust and psychological safety. Leaders who experience coaching firsthand model vulnerability and presence for their teams, creating psychological safety across the org.
What Are the Benefits of Coaching at Scale for Organizations?
Coaching at scale is one of the most effective, measurable ways to accelerate change across your organization. Coaching at scale can lead to business- and mission-critical improvements:
56% improvement in company culture, leading to increased alignment of employees with organizational mission and values (HCI);
21% higher employee engagement, leading to 17% higher productivity and 41% lower absenteeism (Gallup);
33% higher revenue growth in organizations with strong coaching cultures (ICF);
Increased collaboration and overall effectiveness towards goals (McKinsey);
Increased ability to inspire and effectively lead teams (HBR).
And our clients have seen the same results and more, including:
Reduced burnout;
Improved retention;
Faster leadership alignment;
Shared language across functions and levels.
At The Center for Conscious Leadership, we’ve matched thousands of leaders with coaches using our proprietary process.
When coaching is done well, people feel it immediately, and, in turn, bring their insights to their teams.
What’s the Best Way to Implement Coaching at Scale?
With conscious leadership, it’s about intentional design. Here’s what works:
Start with why—Define the ultimate objectives of your culture change. Make them measurable, realistic, and directly tied to what matters most for your organization.
Choose the right implementation partner—Who you hire to lead the work matters. Your team deserves a partner who embodies conscious leadership themselves, and reinforces your vision.
Determine participants—Identify who your early adopters, high-potential and high-leverage change agents are who will shape the tide of change. These are your culture carriers.
Start with senior leaders—If execs aren’t modeling it, no one else will. Culture change must cascade layer by layer, starting at the top,
Anchor coaching to impact—Tie objectives directly to strategic priorities like retention, innovation, resilience, or sustainable impact.
Measure what matters—Track not just participation, but behavioral changes, like decision-making, team dynamics, and courage. Measure mindsets shifts alongside productivity. At the Center for Conscious Leadership, we use something the CLEAR AAR.
Who Needs Coaching During Culture Change?
Short answer? Everyone.
But let’s get specific. Leverage is greatest with:
Senior Executives → Culture is modeled from the top. Senior executives set the stage for everyone else.
Mid-level leaders → Often the biggest bottleneck in culture change, mid-level leaders can be crucial examples for employees and show what it looks like to “walk the walk.”
HR + People leaders → These leaders hold the invisible weight of transformation and the trust of their people in times of change.
Teams in flux → Any group shaking things up can benefit from coaching at scale through transformation. This includes times of restructuring, new projects, and good old-fashioned uncertainty.
You. → Yes, you! If you’ve read this far and you’re still curious, it might be a sign you need this kind of support in your life. Once you’re supported, you can provide the support you envision for your teams.
Culture Change Requires Scaled Support
Culture change fails when it’s aspirational; it succeeds when it’s embodied.
Real change happens when leaders embody it—consistently, visibly, in action, and at scale.
Conscious Leadership Coaching is the bridge. It’s what turns knowing into doing, and doing into being. It transforms values statements into behavior, and aspiration into embodiment.
That’s why we created The Center for Conscious Leadership; to partner with organizations ready to move beyond surface-level fixes and equip their leaders to lead consciously, sustainably, and with impact.
If you’re leading a cultural transformation, the next step is clear. Support your leaders, and let coaching do what memos never could.
Want to see what this looks like in action?
Let’s talk.
Book a discovery call today to explore how coaching at scale can anchor the change you’re working so hard to create.
