The Code for a Coaching Protocol

In early 2022, Phillips 66— a Fortune 100 energy manufacturing and logistics company with approximately 14,000 employees—had two kinds of coaching: a coaching skills course for managers and an expensive external executive coaching program for select leaders at the top. Today, the talent development team has weaved coaching elements into half of the leadership development programs and embedded coaching into processes such as performance management check-ins. And we're not done—we are continually examining how we can build coaching into more places to make coaching a component of the company DNA. The catalyst for a redesign of our leadership development strategy was a new CEO who challenged the TD team to reimagine leadership programming. Coaching, however, wasn't the first change that came to our minds. Although coaching was siloed and we recognized that we were underutilizing a powerful tool, it wasn't our first priority because we had to stand up new leadership programs. The upside to that "mistake" is that it has enabled coaching to grow organically at our organization.