Coaching can work brilliantly. It can help you improve your employee retention levels, succession planning and organisational creativity. In a supportive culture, managers, coaches and coachees all trust each other and work together. Sadly, even the best-managed coaching programme, with the best coaches, will fail if the real world where the coaching takes place doesn’t match the fine words from HR. Spending money on coaching without first ensuring that the groundwork has been done is a fast track to failure. Make sure your training and development budget delivers what you need by first creating a culture that supports coaching.