Coaching in the wild: Identifying factors that lead to success.

Abstract

Although executive coaching has been shown to be effective, few research initiatives have attempted to understand the importance of the emergent relationship between a coach and coachee. This article explores the factors that influence coaching outcomes from both the coach and coachee’s perspective and presents the results of the mediating effect that working alliance and information sharing have on coachee goal attainment and coachee insight outcomes. The authors explored these factors in both an academic coachee sample as well as an executive field sample. Results showed that coachee motivation was significantly positively related with coachee goal attainment and coachee insight in an academic sample but not in a field sample. Moreover, working alliance and information sharing partially mediated the relationship between a coach’s psychological mindedness and coachee insight in an academic, but not field, sample. Another notable result was that the difficulty of the coaching goal did not impact how successful the coaching engagement was in terms of goal attainment. Implications of these findings for both research and practice are discussed.

Coaching as a Developmental Intervention in Organisations: A Systematic Review of Its Effectiveness and the Mechanisms Underlying It

“…Bowles et al [ 61 ] found that coachee buy-in was positively linked with growth in leadership competencies but had no impact on participant performance. However, a more recent study, Sonesh et al [ 55 ], found in a group of executive coachees that client motivation was not correlated with the coachee outcome variables of insight and goal attainment. Remarkably, the authors had run the same study with a group of undergraduate students and executive MBA coaches and found a considerably different result.…”

Challenges for the Theory and Practice of Business Coaching

“…For employers benefits for the organisation include; increased productivity (Olivero, Denise Bane, & Kopelman, 1997), acting as a support mechanism for other training programs (Wales, 2003), and improvements to communication (Graham, Wedman, & Garvin-Kester, 1993) and effectiveness of organisations or teams (Hagen & Garvrilova Aguilar, 2012). There are also suggested outcomes that benefit both the coachee and the employer and these include; improvements in interpersonal dynamics/teamwork (Hagen & Garvrilova Aguilar, 2012), higher levels of motivation (Sonesh et al, 2015), increased job satisfaction/job retention/company loyalty (Ellinger, Ellinger, & Keller, 2003;Olivero et al, 1997), increased skill levels (Wales, 2003), able to deal with stressful situations more effectively and improved leadership and management.…”

“…These limitations included a heavy reliance on self-reported outcomes and a lack of control groups suggesting that it is was not possible to clearly link coaching to outcomes (Theeboom et al, 2014), stronger effects for coachee perceptions of the quality of the coach-coachee relationship than for other sorts of goals or outcomes and stronger effects for student samples than for executive and other non-academic samples (Sonesh et al, 2015) and lower effect sizes for multi-source feedback measures (R. Jones et al, 2015). Taken as a whole these reviews suggest that under certain very specific conditions some positive relationships can be detected between coaching and individual benefits.…”

“… More innovation and creativity (Norlander, Bergman, & Archer, 2002;Styhre, 2008);  Higher levels of initiative (Blackman, 2010;Sonesh et al, 2015); and  More flexibility and adaptability (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenback, 1999).…”

“…For the coachee benefits are said to include: improving/establishing a work/life balance (Gegner, 1997), improving psychological and social competencies, improving/advancing career development (Wales, 2003), improving self-awareness and assertiveness (Bozer, Sarros, & Santora, 2014;Gatling, Castelli, & Matthew, 2013;Wales, 2003), increasing confidence (Wales, 2003), developing relationships/networks/interpersonal skills (Wales, 2003), adapting to change more effectively, helping to set and achieve goals (Smither, London, Flautt, Vargas, & Kucine, 2003), role clarity (Kim, Egan, Kim, & Kim, 2013;Sonesh et al, 2015) and changing behaviours (AM Grant, 2005a;Wasylyshyn, 2003) . For employers benefits for the organisation include; increased productivity (Olivero, Denise Bane, & Kopelman, 1997), acting as a support mechanism for other training programs (Wales, 2003), and improvements to communication (Graham, Wedman, & Garvin-Kester, 1993) and effectiveness of organisations or teams (Hagen & Garvrilova Aguilar, 2012).…”