Influence without power
How Raymond, as People Officer, created a safe coaching culture at Respellion.
I am People Officer at Respellion, and strictly speaking I manage no one. We work according to Holacracy: no managers, no job titles, authority distributed across roles rather than people. And yet, every day, I feel a responsibility that resembles leadership. It just works differently than I was used to. My job is not to decide for others, but to create an environment in which people dare to do it themselves.
A coaching culture cannot be imposed. You can’t order people to hold each other accountable, to be vulnerable, or to ask for feedback. That kind of behaviour only emerges when the environment makes it safe enough — and when someone leads by example. I try to be that someone. Not by showing how it should be done, but by showing that it’s allowed: thinking out loud, admitting mistakes, and asking for feedback myself before I give it.
That starts with me, and it’s more uncomfortable than it sounds. My biggest pitfall is wanting to steer too quickly; when a team gets stuck, I want to solve the problem for them. It takes discipline not to, because every time I step in too early, I deprive the team of a moment to learn. I need pushback and peer supervision to spot that reflex in myself. A coach who claims to have it all figured out is usually the coach who sees the least. By acknowledging that out loud, I give others the right to not yet be able to do everything either.
Forcing it doesn’t work, as I noticed when we wanted to explore what AI could mean for our work. At first, little happened. I couldn’t force people to experiment; I could only keep showing that it was allowed and keep making room for it. Only when the motivation came from within did things shift — people started trying things themselves, sharing, and questioning one another. And that last part is exactly what it’s about for me. People only truly hold each other accountable when they want to themselves, not when I ask them to.
“A coaching culture is not a state you set up, but a practice you lead by example, day after day.”
This is how I try to live our values rather than just post them on a wall. Courage is not avoiding the uncomfortable conversation. Self-discipline is holding myself back when intervening is tempting. Trust is believing the team can do it, even when things go wrong — and celebrating mistakes instead of punishing them, because that’s where the learning lies.
I don’t always succeed at this, and that’s the point. A coaching culture is not a state you set up, but a practice you lead by example, day after day. My role is not to make the culture, but to create the environment in which the team lets it grow on its own.