This 9-part series focuses on organisations who are placing coaching at the heart of their culture, transforming the way they lead, manage, and develop their people. In each episode, we speak to a leader with extensive experience of embedding coaching into their organisation.
We will explore their experiences, the successes they achieved, and the challenges they faced and the lessons they learned along the way to building a thriving coaching culture. Through these conversations, our guests share practical insights and real-world stories to inspire you to make coaching a natural part of everyday organisational life.
Whether you’re a leader, manager, consultant, trainer or coach, this series demonstrates how a coaching approach can enhance performance, productivity, wellbeing and resilience, building a culture of continuous learning, development and growth.
Episode 1
Empowering Performance: Building a Coaching Culture from the Ground Up with Anna Skeats
In this Episode
In this first episode, you can hear how Anna Skeats built a successful coaching culture first in The Mason Foundation and now at Rainy Day Trust.
Anna explains "When I started my role as the first CEO at The Mason Foundation, I didn't set out to create a "coaching culture." I just knew one thing... I didn't have all the answers...And that turned out to be my greatest strength as a leader."
Host, Rosie Nice, speaks with Anna Skeats, CEO of the Rainy Day Trust and former CEO of The Mason Foundation. From her early career supporting vulnerable communities to building a national charity from scratch, Anna’s leadership has always centred on empowerment over direction.
Anna challenges the myth that coaching cultures tolerate underperformance, sharing how coaching approaches actually create high-performing, effective and motivated teams by encouraging the skills and strengths already within individuals and teams. Drawing on her experience at the Mason Foundation, she explores how trust, psychological safety, and clear expectations work together to drive inclusion, accountability, and impact.
Throughout the conversation, Anna reflects on the realities of embedding a coaching culture in practice, the importance of listening and responding to real needs, and the incredible results she’s experienced. Her insights offer practical guidance for leaders seeking to create sustainable organisations without losing focus on performance, accountability, or impact.
You Will Learn
- How coaching cultures enhance performance and empower teams
- How psychological safety and trust unlocks capability
- Leadership starts with listening – Responding to real needs, rather than assumptions
Episode 2
Transforming Sales with Coaching: Insights from L’Oréal with Jo Richards.
In this Episode
We explore what it really takes to embed a coaching culture inside a high-performance sales environment. Host Rosie Nice is joined by Jo Richards, Head of Education at L’Oréal Dermatological Beauty, who shares her first-hand experience of shifting sales leadership from a traditional, directive management style to a sustainable coaching-led approach. Together, they unpack the realities of introducing coaching within fast-paced, target-driven teams—without compromising commercial results.
Jo discussed the cultural and practical challenges faced when embedding coaching at scale, from gaining senior stakeholder buy-in to supporting middle managers as they develop new coaching capabilities. She explains how a clear vision and the MAGIC coaching model helped them weave coaching conversations into everyday sales practice, performance management, and team leadership. The conversation highlights how engaging every level of the organisation is critical to building trust, accountability, and long-term career development.
This episode is packed with practical insights for leaders, coaches, and organisations looking to build a strong coaching culture that drives both people development and business performance. Jo shares actionable advice on training managers, sustaining momentum through ongoing learning, and balancing coaching with ambitious sales targets—demonstrating how coaching can enhance team dynamics, strengthen relationships, and support consistent high performance over time.
You Will Learn
- How to successfully transition from directive management to a coaching-based leadership approach in high-performance sales teams
- The business and people benefits of introducing a coaching culture in the workplace
- Practical ways to integrate coaching into everyday leadership and performance conversations
Episode 3
From Blame Culture to Coaching Culture: Kuoni Tumlare’s Journey with Felix Gaehwiler
Host Rosie Nice, speaks with Felix Karl Gaehwiler, an adaptable and pragmatic leader driving Business Transformation for DMC Europe at Kuoni Tumlare. Felix shares a candid look at life inside a blame-driven sales culture—where responsibility was always pushed outward, energy was low, and while people were functioning, they weren’t thriving. The team was stuck, unhappy, and disconnected.
Change began when a new Head of Sales, Tim, introduced a coaching-led approach. Rather than giving solutions, Tim first listened—to frustrations, complaints, and concerns—and then asked different questions that challenged individuals and teams to take ownership: “What ideas do you have to solve that?” Felix recalls how challenging this felt at first and how it took him on his own journey, confronting his resistance until he could see the approach working and eventually train as a coach himself.
The conversation explores how coaching shifted accountability, relationships, and performance over time, while also highlighting the ongoing effort required to sustain a coaching mindset amid leadership changes, cross-cultural teams, and hybrid working. This episode is a grounded, human exploration of what coaching really looks like inside organisations—messy, challenging, and ultimately transformative.
You Will Learn
- Blame cultures can appear functional while masking stagnation, disengagement, and low accountability.
- Listening and curiosity are a key part of building a coaching culture
- The powerful shifts that occur over time when a coaching culture is built into organizations