coaching lider

Developing Leaders by Executive Coaching

1Developing Leaders by Executive CoachingPractice and Evidence

Andromachi Athanasopoulou

Sue Dopson

3Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,United KingdomOxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship,and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark ofOxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Andromachi Athanasopoulou and Sue Dopson 2015The moral rights of the authors have been assertedFirst Edition published in 2015Impression:1All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without theprior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permittedby law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographicsrights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of theabove should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at theaddress aboveYou must not circulate this work in any other formand you must impose this same condition on any acquirerPublished in the United States of America by Oxford University Press198 Madison Avenue, NewYork, NY 10016, United States of AmericaBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication DataData availableLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2014950913ISBN 9780199681952Printed and bound byCPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YYLinks to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith andfor information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materialscontained in any third party website referenced in this work.

To my wonderful, caring parents, Costas and Sofia, and my dear brother, Leonidas:thank you for always being the wind beneath my wings.

Andromachi Athanasopoulou

To Julian, for your support and love over the last thirty years.Sue Dopson

n PREFACE

In the years since 1993 that I have studied, researched, taught, and prac-tised coaching psychology, there have been significant shifts in the executive coaching landscape. From a novel commercial offering, viewed with some suspicion by many (Hall et al., 1999), executive coaching has become an essential and respected part of contemporary organizational life. Indeed, the leadership development genre has itself become a significant industryand one which continues to develop and grow.

It is clear that this is now a well-established global industry, focused on delivering executive coaching and workplace coaching to a broad range of organizational clients worldwide. Indeed, the growth of those engaged in the coaching and leadership development industry is well documented. For example, the largest professional association in the coaching industry, the International Coach Federation (ICF), was founded in 1995 and now has over 20,000 members in 100 different countries. The ICF estimates the total annual revenue from coaching to be in the region of $2 billion (ICF, 2013).

Precise data on the coaching industry is hard to obtain, but in 2009 it was estimated that there were approximately 40,000 professional coaches globallyup from approximately 30,000 in 2006 (Frank Bresser Consulting, 2009). In the US, over 90 per cent of US-based Global 100 companies use executive coaches (Bono et al., 2009), with similar figures for the use of coaching in the workplace reported from the UK (Jarvis etal., 2005). In 2006 in Australia, 64 per cent of business leaders and 72 per cent of senior manag-ers reported using coaches (Leadership Management Australia, 2006), and the figures are probably even higher in 2013. Interestingly, for some organi-zations the pressures and tensions inherent in the Global Financial Crisis served only to highlight the need to provide good coaching to key staff in order to help them deal with the challenges inherent in a post-financial crisis environment (Farndale etal., 2010).

The growth in the applied practice of executive and workplace coaching has been parallelled by a significant increase in the number of academic institu-tions and universities worldwide that now offer postgraduate qualifications in aspects of coaching. To this authors knowledge, in 2000 there were perhaps only two or three universities offering Masters degrees in coaching worldwide (key examples being the University of Sydney, Australia and Oxford Brookes University, UK). At the time of writing there are over thirty such courses on offer worldwide, and executive coaching can now be studied to doctoral level at an increasing number of respected universities globally, with many world-class universities now offering non-degree courses in executive coaching.

viii PREFACE

In addition, there has been a significant growth in the amount of peer-reviewed coaching-related research:a search of the database PsycINFO using the keywords executive coaching and limiting the search to peer-reviewed publications found 32 citations published in the five years between 1995 and 2000, but 184 citations published in the five years between 2007 and 2012. This is indicative of the increase in the number of academic institutions worldwide who are now seriously interested in the research and practice of executive coaching. Such attention from respected academic institutions bodes well for the ongoing development of evidence-based approaches to executive coaching, in terms of bringing a rigorous evaluative eye to the practice and impact of executive coaching, as well as providing solid tertiary-level education for those interested in executive coaching. In short, and in stark contrast to early warnings about the supposed widespread dangers of executive coaching (e.g., Berglas, 2002), executive coaching has moved well beyond being a management fad (Tobias, 1996), and now has an important and apparently permanent role to play in leadership development.

It is this contemporary context that makes this book such an important and exciting addition to the evidence-based literature on executive coaching. The afore-mentioned growth of the leadership development and executive coach-ing industry is to be welcomed if such executive coaching interventions do indeed improve the quality of leadership and enhance the performance and productivity of organizations, whilst also ensuring the well-being of those employed in such contexts. While the contemporary executive coaching research suggests that this is the case, the extant knowledge-base on coaching is still somewhat nascent. More work is needed here.

Both industry and academia have important and complementary roles to play here in developing new knowledge and insights about executive coach-ingin evaluating the effectiveness of coaching, perfecting the practice of executive coaching, as well as exploring the mechanics of purposeful positive change within the context of executive coaching.

The discipline of executive coaching has much to offer to the organiza-tional change and development literature. There is a wealth of knowledge related to organizational development, but it would appear that most of this body of knowledge sits at the organizational or systemic levelsthere is rela-tively less literature within this body of knowledge that explicitly examines the mechanics of individual change within the organizational context, how such individual change can be fostered through coaching and how such indi-vidual change meshes with organization or systemic perspectives. The disci-pline of executive coaching has much to offer here in terms of theory building and the extension of existing theoretical frameworks.

On a practical level, I believe that the emerging discipline of executive coaching has much to offer in terms of leadership development. This book represents the contemporary edge of knowledge about executive coaching,

PREFACE ix

combining solid theoretical frameworks with extensive practitioner exper-tise, whilst drawing on the emerging empirical knowledge-base related to the subject. Both coaching practitioners and their clients are demanding increas-ingly sophisticated approaches to leadership developmentapproaches which explicitly combine these three key facets. In my view this approach is vital if we are to make manifest the potential of executive coaching in devel-oping our existing and future leadersand well-rounded, capable leaders are sorely needed as we begin to navigate the emerging and complex challenges of the twentieth-first century.

Anthony M.GrantAssociate ProfessorDirector:Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, the University of Sydney

n CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES xiii

LIST OF TABLES xv

ABBREVIATIONS xvii

Introduction 1

1 What Is Coaching and Executive Coaching? 7

1.1 Historical Overview 7

1.2 Defining Executive Coaching 12

1.3 What Is not Executive Coaching 15

1.4 Coaching Applications 17

1.5 The Context of an EC Intervention: An Introduction 22

1.6 Executive Coaches: Background, Key Characteristics, and Traits 30

1.7 Reflection and Learning 35

1.8 Key Learning 36

2 Competing/Complementary Theoretical Approaches 37

2.1 Cognitive, Behavioural, and Cognitive-Behavioural Approaches 38

2.2 Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Approach 44

2.3 Transactional Analysis Approach 47

2.4 Existential Approach 48

2.5 Humanistic/Person-centered Approach 50

2.6 Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) 51

2.7 Gestalt Psychotherapy 52

2.8 Solution-focused Approach to Coaching 53

2.9 Key Learning 53

3 Implementing Executive Coaching 55

3.1 Internal versus External Coach: Similarities and Differences 55

3.2 Tasks/Process 57

3.3 Duration 62

3.4 Coaching Frameworks and Tools 63

3.5 Key Learning 80

xii CONTENTS

4. Executive Coaching Impact:Evidence, Standards, and Success Criteria 81

4.1 In Search of Evidence on Executive Coaching Outcomes: An Introduction 81

4.2 Personality and Ability Assessment Inventories Used in EC 84

4.3 A Systematic Review of EC Outcome Studies 85

4.4 Comparison of the Effectiveness of EC to Other Leadership Development Interventions 108

4.5 Key Learning 109

5 Current Debates, Future Trends 111

5.1 Current Debates 111

5.2 Coaching Standards and the Field 112

5.3 The Rise of the EC Profession and the Challenges for the Coaching Industry 113

5.4 EC Synergies from the Use of Multiple EC Techniques and Approaches 115


6 Leadership Theories and Their Links to EC 117

6.1 Defining Leadership 117

6.2 Leadership Theories 118

6.3 Reflections on Leadership Theories 140


7 Reflections on the Role of EC in Leadership Development and Management Education 143

7.1 Introduction to Leadership Development 143

7.2 Leadership Development and the Role of Context 144

7.3 Leadership Development, EC, and Mindfulness 145

7.4 EC and Management Education: Combining Forces for Better Leadership Practice 148


8 Conclusions and the Future of EC Research 151

8.1 Towards More Effective EC Practice and Research 151

8.2 Possible Future Research Agendas 151

8.3 Summing Up 161

APPENDIX I: THE STAGES OF THE EXECUTIVE COACHING PROCESS 163

APPENDIX II: A REVIEW OF THE EXISTING EC OUTCOME STUDIES 167

REFERENCES 211

INDEX 239

n LIST OF FIGURES

7.1 EC and Management Education Combining Forces for Better Leadership Practice 149

8.1 A Contextual Mapping of the EC Intervention 154

n LIST OF TABLES

1.1 A Timeline:The Emergence of the Coaching IndustryFactors and Key Events 11

1.2 The Many Definitions of Executive Coaching Provided in the Literature 13

4.1 Condensed Summary of Executive Coaching Outcome Studies (up to December 2012) 87

4.2 Characteristics of Executive Coaching Outcome Studies (as of December 2012) 94

4.3 A List of Intangible Outcomes of EC Interventions 1038.1 Sample of EC Effectiveness Models from the Literature 152

n ABBREVIATIONS

AFT action frame theoryCBC cognitive-behavioural coachingCBT cognitive-behavioural therapyCEST cognitive-experiential self theoryEC executive coachingEI emotional intelligenceEMCC European Mentoring and Coaching CouncilEMDR eye movement desensitization reprocessingESM experience sampling methodFoR Frame of ReferenceHR human resourcesICF International Coach FederationIES Institute for Employment StudiesIO industrialorganizationalLD leadership developmentLSI learning style inventoryMSCEIT MayerSaloveyCaruso emotional intelligence testNLP neurolinguistic programmingROI return on investmentREBT rational emotive behaviour therapyRET rational-emotive therapySAMT sensory awareness mindfulness trainingSDT self-determination theoryTA transactional analysisTPP Three principles psychology

Introduction

How many professional practices can claim that during their young history as a professionspanning just a quarter of a centurythey have not only managed to grow from strength to strength and become a global multibil-lion dollar market but have also changed day-by-day the lives of millions of business professionals who have received such services? According to a 2009 Global Coaching Survey (cited by Segers etal., 2011:204), executive coaching (EC) has so far reached the maturity phase of its product life cycle as an industry in only two of the 162 countries surveyed, and in 83 countries it is still in the introduction or growth phase. What ten years ago was seen as an emergency measure to address toxic behaviour in leader-ship has now become a privileged service provided to the high-potentials to help them further develop their capabilities and successfully ascend the organizational hierarchy (see the Harvard Business Review survey of 140 leading coaches; Coutu and Kauffman, 2009: 92). Executive coach-ing has also permeated the traditional management education boundaries with an increasing number of business schools globally incorporating EC practices into their postgraduate and executive education programmes. A recent survey of executives and business school deans (Datar et al., 2010)identified a clear need for business schools to do more on leadership development, including the incorporation of individual coaching into their curricula.

At the same time, the EC field remains a developing field (Ennis etal., 2008a: 19) striving to keep up with these rapid developments. This is reflected in the status of the empirical research on EC outcomes, which is one of the youngest streams of empirical research within the broader leadership development field. In fact EC empirical work is so young that in their review of the literature up to 2000 Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001:206)identified only seven empirical studies that explore the efficacy of executive coaching (Foster and Lendl, 1996; Olivero etal., 1997; Judge and Cowell, 1997; Gegner, 1997; Hall etal., 1999; Laske,1999a; and Garman et al., 2000). Essentially, most of the empirical research on EC has been produced since then, but how much of that provides rigorous, scientific evidence of the outcomes of EC practice? This is the question we examine in this book.

2 DEVELOPING LEADERS By ExECUTIVE COAChING

Our findings are partly surprising and partly anticipated. There are several weaknesses in the existing research and great opportunities, too. To our knowledge, our book is the first systematic review of all published peer-reviewed articles on EC outcome studies undertaken in order to assess the quality of the EC research and discuss its impact on coaching practice and management education. We have designed the book in such a way that our readers, whatever their background and stake in EC practice, can reflect on the potential that EC can offer to transform organizational practice.

Before closing this introduction with a discussion of why we feel a system-atic review of the EC field is important now, more than ever before, we want to give our sincere thanks to several people without whose support this work would not have been possible.

First, this research was undertaken under the auspices of the Executive Education division of the Sad Business School of the University of Oxford. As we explain in the introduction of Chapter 1, the term coach in the sense of instructor/trainer, as we now know it, was first born within the University of Oxford in the 1800s to reflect the work of Oxford tutors. For those unaware of the Oxford tutorial system, it is in essence a coaching sys-tem that is set up to help students succeed in their academic endeavours by the asking of questions and to help develop reflective thinking and analysis. This coaching logic has also been nurtured within the Sad Business Schools Executive Education Programmes and has led to the development of the University of Oxford Sad Business School Coaching Community, a group that is leading the application of EC practices across a breadth of execu-tive education programmes offered by the Sad Business School. The selected group of experienced coaches (tried in local and international contexts) who form the University of Oxford Sad Business School Coaching Community have assisted us by reflecting and sharing their practice as we worked on the book. At the same time, this has been a two-way process: as our research for this book progressed, we found that our work gradually informed the University of Oxford Sad Business School Coaching Community approach to coaching practice.

We are also particularly grateful to the following University of Oxford Sad Business School Coaching Community members and Associate Fellows at the Sad Business School who generously provided particularly helpful feedback and encouragement on an early draft of our book:Jon Stokes (Director of the organizational consulting firm Stokes & Jolly), Anthony Grant (Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney), and Ian Saunders (Executive Fellow at Henley Business School and

INTRODUCTION 3

a visiting tutor at Cranfield University). We owe special thanks to Anthony Grant also for writing the preface.

Last but not least, none of this would have been achieved without the gen-erous support and vision of the Associate Dean of Executive Education, Dr Andrew White and the Dean of the Sad Business School, Professor Peter Tufano, to maintain the Schools position as an internationally leading insti-tution dedicated to the development of the new generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Why a Book on Executive Coaching Is Important Now?

The world is becoming increasingly complex and the current economic crisis appears to be just one additional factor; growing global competition, energy constraints, climate change and political instability are turning complexity into the norm (Heifetz etal., 2009a:62). In such an environment character-ized by a (permanent) crisis (Heifetz etal., 2009a:62), it is essential to have leaders who are able to cope with uncertainty and successfully lead others. It requires adaptive leadership (Heifetz etal., 2009a, 2009b) and executive coaching is the type of leadership development practice that can help individ-uals manage complexity more effectively (Abbott and Rosinski, 2007:68; Ives, 2008:102; Natale and Diamante, 2005:363). The proposed book fills a signifi-cant gap in the existing executive coaching literature and we hope that it will serve as an essential reference to anyone (academic or practitioner) with an interest in coaching (executive coaching in particular) and more broadly as a reference for leadership development. Unlike the numerous how-to books on coaching, our book is different because it offers a thorough study not only of the history of the field and the various coaching theories and tools but also of the fields empirical work.

Specifically:

a. We provide a conceptual background of the executive coaching field and its practice (its history and applications); this can be helpful both for practitioners and for academics in this area.

b. We review the quality of the empirical studies of the executive coaching field, particularly with regards to the executive coaching outcomes; this can be an important source of reference particularly for academics doing empirical work in this field.


c. We provide an appreciation of the current debates and possible future trends of the executive coaching field; again, this is helpful both for aca-demics and practitioners purposes.

d. We link our findings on executive coaching with the broader field of leadership development (both in terms of research and practice) and we relatedly discuss the implications our findings have for man-agement education; this can be of interest for both academics and practitioners.

Overall, the book contributes to both the coaching literature and the lead-ership development literature. Since executive coaching draws on the fields of management and psychology, we expect that our book will be a help-ful resource for those readers with a background in either or both of these disciplines.

Our purpose is to offer an objective, but also a reflective study of the execu-tive coaching practice and research rather than provide a critique of each school of thought or approach. We intentionally wrote this book without professional jargon, using language that can be understood by those that do not have a background in coaching-related disciplines.

In Chapter 1 we start by providing a historical overview of the ori-gins of executive coaching, from the birth of the term coach to the most recent developments in the field, which saw executive coaching becoming an important part of leadership development activities. We then provide a discussion of the various definitions of executive coaching, including what is not executive coaching. As part of that discussion, we present and brief ly describe what other coaching applications we identified in the literature. We then discuss what executive coaching consists of, includ-ing how the initiation of executive coaching happens, who are the typi-cal executive coaching candidates, and what are the purposes, objectives, and overall effects and potential benefits from an executive coaching intervention.

In Chapter 2 we present an overview of the eight main theoretical approaches to coaching and their variations as they appear in literature. These are: cognitive, behavioural and cognitive-behavioural approaches (which also includes smaller theoretical streams such as rational emotive behaviour therapy, multimodal approach and mindfulness coaching); psy-chodynamic/psychoanalytic approach; transactional analysis approach; existential approach; humanistic/person-centered approach; neurolin-guistic programming (NLP); Gestalt psychotherapy; and solution-focused approach to coaching. In each of them we typically start with an overview of the conceptual/theoretical background and origin of the approach, we then discuss its application to coaching and particularly executive coaching

INTRODUCTION 5

and (where such information exists) we also discuss what evidence there is of its impact.

Having established the various theoretical backdrops of executive coach-ing practices, in Chapter3 we go on to discuss the more practical aspects of executive coaching. This chapter includes a presentation of the tasks and processes typically included in an executive coaching intervention and the duration and frequency of the executive coaching sessions. We then present an extensive overview of the various coaching frameworks and tools that can be used by executive coaches. Typically, as the empirical evidence also suggests (i.e., evidence from different types of researchboth qualitative and quantitativeundertaken with a view to explore the outcome of EC practice), coaches tend to use a combination of frameworks. The frame-works we are presenting in this book are:the GROW model; social systems interventions/the systems perspective and the family therapy perspective; experiential learning/action learning/adult learning; adult development; competency modelling; positive psychology coaching/strengths coaching and action frame theory.

We consider Chapter4 as the cornerstone of this book in terms of its con-tribution to the executive coaching literature. It offers valuable information to academics and practitioners about the existing evidence on executive coach-ing outcomes. Having presented the theories and practices associated with coaching, in this chapter we search the evidence that exists as to whether and how executive coaching worksand what does not work. We accompany our analysis with a table that summarizes the peer-reviewed empirical studies on executive coaching outcomes which we identified based on systematic litera-ture review.

In Chapter5 we discuss the current debates and controversies regarding executive coaching practice. We include a discussion on the standardisa-tion of coaching practices and provide an overview of what we see as the key trends in the field. Having presented what executive coaching includes and what evidence exists with regards to its impact, in Chapter6 we link execu-tive coaching with the broader leadership field. We present a brief overview of each of the main leadership theories found in the organizational literature and then discuss how the current developments in leadership theorizing call for executive coaching.

In Chapter7 we discuss the role of executive coaching as a promising leadership development approach to lead in complexity. We provide an overview of the leadership development field and its role in promoting leader effectiveness and organizational effectiveness. We suggest that one of the key benefits from executive coaching as a leadership development practice is that it allows developing self-awareness and organizational mindfulness.


In our final chapter (Chapter 8) we discuss the possible future research agendas as these emerge from the work in this book. We stress the impor-tance of more active consideration of the context within which EC interven-tions take place and conclude by discussing the implications that EC has on the future of leadership development and management education.

What Is Coaching and Executive Coaching?

Executive coaching is much more like sailing, capturing the wind and maneuvering the uncharted coast, than charting the course and serving as the expert captain with a steady hand on the wheel and full steam ahead.

Stern, 2009:271

1.1 Historical Overview

According to a myth the term coach dates back to the 1550s (see Gray, 2006:476). Stern (2004:154)cites Hendrickson (1987) who once suggested that the word coaching originates from a Hungarian village called Kocs and, specifically, a covered wheeled wagon or carriage (koczi), which was first developed in that area to carry passengers through the difficult terrain, protecting them during their trip. This is possibly just a myth and noth-ing more, but even myths are part of the identity of a phenomenonhence, worth mentioning. Under such symbolism, Stern (2004:154)describes execu-tive coaching (EC) as one more evolution of the term where a coach helps to carry an executive from one point to another. The term coach in the sense of instructor/trainer was first used in 1830 at the University of Oxford as slang for a tutor who carries a student through an exam (Online Etymology Dictionary, 2014). The term coach in the athletic sense was created laterin 1861. This chapter provides an overview of the historical development of coaching and particularly EC field. For those readers interested in learning more about historical developments in the field, other resources offer more in depth information (see Palmer and Whybrow, 2007; Garvey etal., 2009).

1.1.1 THE BIRTH OF EC:LOCATING ITS FIRST DEVELOPMENTS

It appears that Gorby (1937) was the first to use the term coach within a business environmentin sales, particularly (see Berg and Karlsen, 2007:4; see also Grants 2011 annotated bibliography on workplace, executive and

1


life coaching from 1937 to 2011). It is believed that coaching first appeared within the context of management in the work of Lewis (1947) and Mold (1951). Another early reference to the term in the management literature is in a 1955 article by R.C. Parkes, president of the Philadelphia-based National Drying Machinery Company, in which he explains the seven guides used in his company to develop executives (coaching is the fourth guidepost in his list) (see Parkes, 1955; see also Eggers and Clark, 2000:67, who locate the first appearance of the term within the context of management in a chapter by Myles Mace, titled On-the-Job Coaching, in the 1958 publication Developing Executive Skills, ed. H. E. Merrill and E. Marting, American Management Association, in which Mace described coaching as an employee job develop-ment tool aiming at increasing productivity). Mace (1950) had also previously published a book at Harvard University entitled The Growth and Development of Executives.

By the 1970s sports coaching techniques appeared in management lit-erature, including Tim Gallweys 1974 bestseller The Inner Game of Tennis. Gallweys work revolutionized the EC field by suggesting that expertise as a manager is often a handicap to being an effective coach, because instead of facilitating coachees to learn from their experiences and reach their own conclusions, management expertise tends to encourage the coach to tell the trainee how to do it (Stokes and Jolly, 2009:2278; see also Gallwey, 2000).

By the 1980s, coaching was seen as a developmental activity that was not necessarily linked to sports. EC became part of the corporate language in the 1980s (Tobias, 1996:87). Specifically, Natale and Diamante (2005:362)and Hyatt (2003) locate the beginning of EC in the 1980s when a financial planner in Seattle (called Thomas Leonard) first offered life-planning consultations to his clients and, in 1992, started Coach University, a training programme for professionals. Leonard played a definitive role in the emergence and devel-opment of the coaching industry. He also founded the International Coach Federation (Hyatt, 2003), an industry group that remains a leader in the pro-motion and regulation of professional coaching standards globally and the provision of coach accreditation. Judge and Cowell (1997:71)give a different version of the story, referring to OHefferman (1986) who maintained that the first person to coin the term executive coaching was a practitioner in Palo Alto, California, named Dick Borough, who used this term in 1985 to describe his leadership development activities.

By 1988 EC started to become mainstream and caught the attention of Forbes magazine. In an article by Dyan Machan (1988), titled Sigmund Freud Meets Henry Ford, EC was described as a hybrid of management consult-ing and psychotherapy (Judge and Cowell, 1997: 71). Marshall Goldsmith, Warren Bennis, Jim Kouzes, and Tim Gallwey were some of the key early pro-ponents of EC (see Stokes and Jolly, 2009:227). Also, several training initia-tives on personal development contributed to the emergence of the executive

WhAT IS COAChING AND ExECUTIVE COAChING? 9

coaching field such as the Erhard Seminars Training (est), a training pro-gramme on personal transformation and responsibility developed by Werner Hans Erhard and first delivered in 1971 and the consequent establishment in 1991 of Landmark Education (now Landmark Worldwide, a San Francisco, California, headquartered personal training and development company).

In the 1990s coaching emerged as a part of employee empowerment, with the coach seen as a thought partner, asking the right questions instead of providing answers (see Eggers and Clark, 2000:67). The next phase in this conceptual development saw EC as a relationship developed between the coach and the participant through which people are motivated to advance and exceed previous achievements (ibid.:67).

1.1.2 EMERGENCE OF EC:WHY?

Until the 1980s, EC was informally conducted, if at all, by internal to the organization HR professionals (Stokes and Jolly 2009: 226) with coaching focusing on legal, accounting or marketing issues. Furthermore, up to the mid-1980s even the term executive coaching was rarely used and practition-ers did not have any formal training. There are different reasons put forward to explain the emergence of the EC field. It has been suggested that EC emerged through an effort of psychologists to find new work (and hence, a new source of income) in response to changes in the healthcare industry, which affected particularly the mental health field (see Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001:207). Other reasons include the use of coaching by high-performance individuals (e.g., athletes) to improve their performance; the rapidly chang-ing global economy that has created the need for continued development; the fact that executives lack opportunities for growth; the realization by the business world that poor executive leadership can lead to financial ruin; and the acknowledgement that interpersonal skills allow for the effective manage-ment of oneself and others in a organization (Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001:209).

Another set of reasons for these changes is highlighted by Stokes and Jolly (2009:2267), who identified four macro changes that impacted on the demand for professionally trained executive coaches (with expertise in human psychology and workplace relationships):(a)less stress on formal hierarchy and more emphasis on the right to express individual views; (b)changes in HR departments, which became larger and placed more emphasis on devel-opment activities for staff with a view to retaining the best staff; (c)the rise of the self-help book and self-development programme industries in response to the breakdown of traditional hierarchical institutions in the West, which prompted individuals to seek success by better managing themselves person-ally, professionally, and performance-wise; and (d)the rise of a more explicit


merit-based approach for executive promotion, which increased the pressure on executives to perform.

Brock (2008:413, 17)also discussed the emergence of coaching as a field and suggested that some of the root professions of coaching (sociology, edu-cation, adult education, human resource management, communications, management consulting, organization development and training) were in parallel struggling to become recognized (see ibid.:7). Brock further argued that coaching emerged in response to shifts in social, cultural, and economic conditions. Despite starting as a human development movement, it was largely due to developments in the economy that the coaching movement was boosted, with more people having more leisure time and disposable income and a social climate that encouraged spending on self-development. Parallel to the rise of the self-help industry, the fields of organization development, management consulting and psychology evolved in response to these shifts (Brock, 2008:1718).

A recent Harvard Business Review survey (Coutu etal., 2009)of 140 lead-ing coaches exploring the practice of EC also confirmed a link between the development of EC and changes in the broader organizational environment. The survey showed that over time there has been a change in the reasons companies hire executive coaches. Coaches reported that, although ten years ago most companies hired a coach to help in the case of toxic behaviour in leadership practice, today most executive coaches are hired to develop high-potential performers capabilities (see Coutu and Kauffman, 2009:92). Despite these changes and the apparent need to formalize EC practice, Coutu and Kauffman (2009:92)conclude that, although coaching as a business tool continues to gain legitimacy, the fundamentals of the industry are still in flux.

The timeline of birth and development of coaching as a profession is pre-sented in Table 1.1.

1.1.3 THE CONTRIBUTION OF SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY INEXECUTIVE COACHING

Instrumental in the coaching fields history has been the influence of sports psychology. As we have seen, Tim Gallweys 1974 bestseller The Inner Game of Tennis first introduced sports coaching techniques to the management literature. According to Bluckert (2006:104), organizational and consulting psychology and sports psychology were in the past the main sources to which coaching looked for its theory, with the introduction of concepts from psy-chotherapy and counselling coming more recently. Indeed, empirical studies of EC have also used models from sports coaching (see Jowett etal., 2012)or

Table1.1 A Timeline: The Emergence of the Coaching IndustryFactors and Key Events

1550s The word coach is born: the word koczi is first used in Hungary to refer to a covered wheeled wagon or carriage.

1830s First use of the term coach in the sense of instructor/trainer within the University of Oxford.

1930s1970s Coaching introduced in the business environment.1937 Gorby (1937) publishes the first article in which the term coach is used in a

business context (in sales).

1947, 19511958

The work of Lewis (1947), Mace (1950), Mold (1951), Parkes (1955), and Mace (1958) are the first publications where coaching is used within the context of management.

1971 Werner Hans Erhard starts the delivery of his est personal development courses.

1974 Tim Gallweys 1974 bestseller The Inner Game of Tennis is published and sports coaching techniques are introduced to management literature.

1980s Executive coaching introduced in the corporate language, but only informally conducted.

1980s(exact datenot specified)

Thomas Leonard offers life-planning consultations to his clientsit is now considered an early format of coaching.

1985 Dick Borough (in Palo Alto, California), uses the term executive coaching to describe his leadership development activities.

1988 Forbes publishes an article by Dyan Machan, titled Sigmund Freud Meets Henry Ford, describing EC as a hybrid of management consulting and psychotherapy.

1990s The formalization of Coaching:Development of coaching courses and the introduction of the coach in organizations as an agent of motivation and personal development for leaders.

Key changes throughout the late 1980s and 1990s

Changesinthehealthcareindustry(andparticularlythementalhealthfield)ledpsychologists to pursue new areas of work and new sources of income.

Changesintheglobaleconomyledtopressuresforimprovedperformance,butalso led to higher income and more leisure time with individuals encouraged to devote time to self-development.

Emphasisontheroleofleadershipinachievingfinancialsuccess. Useofcoachingbyotherhigh-performers(e.g.,insports)alertstheinterestof

the business world to the benefits that coaching can offer. Theriseofanorganizationalculturethatprovidesmoreemphasisontheright

to express individual views. ChangesinHRdepartments:theygraduallybecomelargerandtheiremphasisis

on development activities aimed at staff retention. Riseoftheself-helpbookandself-developmentprogrammeindustries. Increasedpressureonexecutivestoperformduetoriseofmoreexplicit

merit-based approach for executive promotion.

1991 A large international personal training and development company, Landmark Education (now known as Landmark Wordwide), is founded, acquiring programmes and intellectual material that had been earlier developed by Werner Hans Erhard.

1992 Thomas Leonard establishes the Coach University.

1995 The International Coaching Federation is founded with a view to to advance the art, science, and practice of professional coaching (ICF website).

2000snow The professionalization of the coaching industry.Late 1990s early 2000s

Executivecoachingintroducedinorganizationswithaviewtohelphigh-potentialleaders who display toxic behaviour.

Early 2000snow Achangeofreason:executivecoachingemployedtohelpmaximizetheeffectiveness of high-performers (not associated with problematic behaviour).


have looked into the similarities between high-achievers coached in business and in sports (see Jones and Spooner, 2006). Yet it has also been suggested that the influence of sports psychology in executive coaching practice can undermine coaching outcomes. For instance, Berglas (2002: 889) argued that those executive coaches who draw on coaching techniques from sports coaching may sell themselves as purveyors of simple answers and quick results, which can be a great selling point to CEOs, but can also have dis-astrous consequences in the long term for the company. Whether this is the case or not will depend on the coaching and organizational context. However, sports psychology has been and continues to serve as one of the main influ-ences in executive coaching practice.

1.2 Defining Executive Coaching

Coaching, it is argued in this book, emerges as one of the most important approaches to senior managers and executives professional development (Gray, 2006: 475). According to Orenstein (2002), the EC literature can be sorted into two categories:one that focuses on the description of specific EC methodologies by practitioners in the field and the other that focuses on the definition and designation of the practice.

Overall, it appears that defining EC and its practices is not an easy task. When the coaching movement was still in its infancy, Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001: 208) saw EC as a poorly defined practice, with very lim-ited research, and observed that the difficulty of defining EC may stem from the many different individuals and disciplines involved in providing execu-tive coaching services (Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001:224). Several years later the same observations is made, and it appears that not only has the fuzziness characterizing the industry not decreased but in fact it seems to have increased over time. Ennis etal. (2008a:5)noted that there is still no widely agreed definition or set of professional standards for EC and it remains a developing field (Ennis etal., 2008a:19). Coutu and Kauffman (2009:92)also observed a lack of consensus in the field based on the results of an HBR survey of 140 leading coaches and on the view of five experts that were asked to comment on these results. All felt that the bar needs to be raised in various areas for the industry to mature, but there was no consensus on how that could be done (ibid.:92).

A classic executive coaching definition has been provided by Kilburg (1996:142), who described EC as a helping relationship formed between a cli-ent who has managerial authority and responsibility in an organization and a consultant who uses a wide variety of behavioural techniques and methods to help the client achieve a mutually identified set of goals to improve his or


her professional performance and personal satisfaction and, consequently, to improve the effectiveness of the clients organization within a formally defined coaching agreement (Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001:208)considered Kilburgs 1996 definition as representative of what has been discussed in the field). A sample of some representative definitions indicating how scholars approach EC is presented in Table 1.2.

(continued)

Table1.2 The Many Definitions of Executive Coaching Provided in the Literature

Author Provided Definition/Definitions

Witherspoon and White (1996) ECisaconfidential,highlypersonallearningprocess(p. 127).

Ithelpsexecutiveslearn,grow,andchange(p.125).

Tobias (1996) Thecoachingdefinitioncanhaveseverallevels:initsnarrowest sense coaching is seen as help to someone whohasirritatedothersintheorganization,onabroader sense it would refer to someone who has conflictual relationships with others or trouble in adjustingtoorganizationalorpersonalchangesandcrises, at an even broader sense, the problem might be not the individual but a circumstance to which the individual may need to manage and at a further extent, coaching is used without any specific problem identified, but rather with the view to enhance an executives style, futureoptions,andorganizationalimpact(pp.878).

Mostcoachingisongoing,butmayvaryfromacoupleof sessions to a lengthy series of meetings over a long period and therefore, coaching as a term can be broadly used to include any useful intervention by the consultant (p. 88).

Garman et al. (2000) Coachingisone-on-oneconsultation,providedbyoutsiders(individualswhodonothaveorganizationalties), regarding the consultees individual performance asitrelatestoaspecificorganizationalcontextorcontexts (p. 202).

Thisdefinitionhasthreekeyparts:firstly,seescoachingas a service delivered in a one-on-one format, which distinguishes itself from other types of classroom-based training in supervisory skills; secondly, coachees are not direct reports of their coaches; and thirdly, focuses on performance improvement within a specific organizationalcontext,whichisdifferentfromcareercounseling psychotherapy and other interventions with an objective the individuals improvement (p. 202).

Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001) ECisahighlyconfidentialpersonallearningprocessthat focuses not only on interpersonal issues, but also on intrapersonal ones (p. 208).

Peltier (2001) ECprovidesone-on-oneservicestotoplevelleadersinanorganization,ontheprinciplethatpositivechangescan be leveraged to filter down and enhance the entire organization(p.xv).


All these definitions highlight several aspects associated with EC and its practice. Several authors describe EC as a process (e.g., Witherspoon and White, 1996; Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001; ONeill, 2007; Ennis etal., 2008a); however, it is important to note that coaching is only a methodology for creating and sustaining purposeful positive change and the way that such a methodology is applied and the reasons for using it varies considerably.

Michelman (2004) Coachingisathree-waypartnershipbetweentheexecutive,thecoach,andtheorganization,inwhichallinvolved agree on specific goals and parameters (p. 4).

ONeill (2007) ECistheprocessofincreasingtheclientseffectivenessin meeting three responsibilities: (a) communicating theterritory(i.e.,theorganizationspurpose,vision,and goals) to key constituencies and outlining opportunities and challenges, (b) building commitment and relationships and facilitating interactions to achieve outstanding team performance, and (c) producing results and outcomes through the efforts of the executive and others (p. 6).

Ennis et al. (2008a) ECisatransitiontoolforleadershipdevelopmentaiming at the retention of top talented staff and for this reason it is now bundled with leadership development programmes and introduced as a key element in leadership transitions (p. 5).

Itisamultipartysetofrelationship-basedactivitiesinvolvingtheclient,hercoach,andherorganization.The goal is to enhance the capability of the executive andherabilitytohelptheorganizationachieveshort-and long-term goals (p. 9).

ECisanexperientialandindividualizedleaderdevelopment process that builds a leaders capability toachieveshort-andlong-termorganizationalgoals. It is conducted through one-on-one and/or group interactions, driven by data from multiple perspectives, and based on mutual trust and respect. Theorganization,anexecutive,andtheexecutivecoachwork in partnership to achieve maximum impact (p. 19).

Itfocusesonthedevelopmentoftheexecutivesability to influence, motivate, and lead others and the development of strategic thinking skills (p. 20).

ECisbasedonthecoachingpartnership,whichisa win-win approach in which all partners plan the process together, communicate openly, and work cooperatively toward the ultimate accomplishment of overarchingorganizationalobjectivesandtheexecutivecoachcanbeexternaltotheorganizationoranemployee (p. 21).

Stokes and Jolly (2009) ECistheworkwithseniorlevelexecutivesthatfocuseson the executive becoming more self-aware in order to carry out their leadership role more effectively (p. 225).

Author Provided Definition/Definitions

Table1.2 Continued


1.3 What Is not Executive Coaching

There are several activities that may resemble EC, but are not the same as EC. Theseare:

Mentoring: Coaching is not exactly the same as mentoring, although men-tors often use coaching tactics and techniques in their work. Comparing the two, mentoring at its best, involves a longer term relationship in which there is an emotional attachment between mentor and protege (Hunt and Weintraub, 2004:42), with the objective being the mentees career development; whereas in coaching the objective is skills develop-ment and performance enhancement (Passmore, 2007a:12). Mentoring is defined as typically a more informal relationship with a more expe-rienced colleague (Stokes and Jolly, 2009:226; also see Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2005; Gray, 2006:476). However, the boundary between the two is more blurred than is often suggested (Passmore, 2007a).

Psychotherapy: Numerous discussions have been made about the similari-ties and differences between coaching and therapy (see Bluckert, 2005a). It is beyond doubt that there are some strong similarities; however, typi-cally the intention is different, with coaching strongly grounded in work effectiveness and performance rather than wider life issues (Bluckert, 2005a:96). Although coaching and therapy share similarities in terms of certain skill-sets, the training of therapists entails work at a deeper level focusing on the past and addressing personal issues (particularly psycho-logical and emotional ones) that may be painful and remain unresolved for the individual, whereas experienced executive coaches will tend to have a higher level of competence in corporate issues (ibid.:93 and 96). As McKenna and Davis (2009: 257) note, among the important ways in which EC and psychotherapy differ is that executive coaches tend to meet less frequently with clients (i.e., every four to six weeks) than psy-chotherapists (i.e., every one to two weeks). In an empirical study that examined the views of thirty professionals who do either coaching or therapy (or both) regarding their perceptions on coaching and therapy, Hart et al. (2001: 233) asked interviewees to describe the differences between these two with regard to time. It was suggested that in coaching the timeframes are not as rigid as in therapy:coaching sessions may be broken up into half-hour time blocks, they may be weekly or monthly, they vary from the traditional one hour therapy and the coach needs to guide the process, not direct it, while the client (not the coach) should be the one establishing the agenda for the coaching. Furthermore, in contrast to psychotherapy, in coaching there is a strong trend towards using e-mail, text messaging, and video conference calls (McKenna and Davis, 2009:258). It is often argued that although many executive


coaches come from a psychotherapeutic background, the use of psy-chotherapeutic techniques may not be always appropriate for coaching within a business setting, since psychotherapy entails longer-term pro-cesses whereas commissioning organizations prefer shorter-term rela-tionships (Gray, 2006:490). This is confirmed also by Hart etal.s (2001) empirical study where coaching was described by professionals as more goal directed, action based, and outwardly defined than therapy (Hart etal., 2001:231).

EC is no longer seen as just remedial work for poor performers: In its initial developmental phase as a professional movement, EC was mostly used by companies to help executives who had the potential to be successful but were displaying problematic behaviour that impacted on their per-formance and for which EC served as an ultimate rescue effort. However, now this is hardly ever the case in EC practice. Remedial work for poor performers is not the current focus of coaching practiceinstead, coach-ing is now focused on mid and senior executives with high potential and responsibilities (Stokes and Jolly, 2009:225).

Is not only about the individual executive: Unlike career counselling and life coaching, which focus on the individual clients needs and goals, EC (which shares similar techniques with career counselling and life coaching) focuses on the needs of both the executive and the sponsoring organization (Ennis etal., 2008a:19). Unlike career coaching, EC is based on the partnership of the executive, the coach, and the organization; fur-thermore, the individual goals of EC must always link back and be sub-ordinated to strategic organizational objectives (Ennis etal., 2008a:23).

Is not personal, career, or life coaching: Stern (2004:157)suggests that exec-utive coaching has some similarities with other types of coaching but is differentiated from them in its dual focus of working one-on-one with the executive to develop positive leadership behaviours and positive busi-ness results. Some types of coaching, such as personal or life coaching, require a different set of skills from those of an executive coach. Personal or life coaching focuses on the individuals personal goals, thinking, feeling and how to change the persons life, whereas EC focuses on the individuals short- and long-term career objectives (ibid.:157).

While this section indicates that EC does not fully belong to these categories, it is not irrelevant to them either. In fact, the domains of mentoring, psy-chotherapy, and life coaching do overlap with EC. Often, during a coaching session, family/home issues are brought up in the discussion since these may be hindering the development of the coachees full potential. Executives often need to talk about these aspects of their life in order to gain some mental clar-ity and, in doing so they are then able to refocus on their workplace issues.


The boundaries in EC practice are not clear and distinct. This is what makes EC such a challenging enterprise.

1.4 Coaching Applications

Although in the present book we focus on EC provided by providers external to the organization, there seems to be a rise in recent years of coaching pro-vided internally. Frisch (2005) attributes this rise to the fact that when HR departments started appointing dedicated staff to manage external coaches and measure the effectiveness of coaching provided within the organiza-tion, such staff gradually ended up assuming the role of coaching delivery to cover a wide range of HR activities from management development to suc-cession planning and from multi-rater performance appraisal to organiza-tional development. As a result, the internal coach as an organizational role was created. However, internal EC has not garnered the cachet of external coaching (Frisch, 2005:23).

Several authors have attempted to organize the different types of coach-ing into categories (e.g., see Morgan et al.s 2005 classification of coaching into five categories, with either a business issues focus or a behavioural issues focus or Berman and Bradts 2006 four-category model of EC with each cat-egory being the product of a different combination of short-term/targeted or long-term/exploratory and business focus or personal focus).1

We have identified the following types of coaching as part of our literature review:

1. Academic coaching2. Career coaching*3. Coaching to provide feedback debriefing and development planning*4. Conflict coaching*5. Developmental coaching (also known as development coaching)* (Hunt

and Weintraub 2004)6. Executive coaching7. Financial coaching8. Group coaching* (which is different from team coaching)9. Health coaching

10. High-potential coaching*11. Knowledge coaching*

1 These are:(a)coaching leaders/behavioural coaching, (b)career/life coaching, (c)coaching for leadership development, (d)coaching for organizational change, and (e)strategy coaching.


12. Leadership coaching*13. Legacy coaching*14. Managerial coaching* (i.e., manager as coach)15. Newly assigned leader /new leader coaching*16. Performance coaching*17. Personal or life coaching*18. Presentation/Communication skills coaching/video coaching*19. Project Management coaching*20. Relationship coaching*21. Results coaching*22. Skill coaching (or feedback coaching)*23. Spiritual coaching24. Sports coaching25. Succession coaching*26. Targeted behavioural coaching*27. Team coaching*28. Transactional coaching*29. Transformational coaching*30. Virtual coaching31. Workplace coaching*

The types of coaching marked with an * are those used by organizations as ways to develop their staff. They have several similarities with EC, but are not the same.

According to Stokes and Jolly (2009:232), executive coaching is different from other forms of coaching inthat:

a. The primary client is the organization, rather than the individual,b. The aim is to align the individuals abilities with the organizations

ambitions and work towards achieving the organizations objectives,c. The aim of the coaching is informed by and often agreed with the

individuals line manager, who also receives feedback on the coaching process,

d. Matters relating to personal issues that do not have implications for the organization are not the primary focus of EC,

e. The coachs fees are paid by the organization, not the individual.

The other types of coaching which are applied within an organizationand we found in the systematic revieware briefly presentedhere:

1. Career coaching is coaching designed to help individuals make enlight-ened career choices, helping them to identify what they want from their career, decide and take the required actions to accomplish it (Ennis etal., 2008a:223), focusing both on short- and long-term career objec-tives (Stern, 2004:157).


2. Coaching to provide feedback debriefing and development planning refers to the process by which a coach helps employees to interpret their assess-ment or 360 feedback processes in the context of a persons personal and professional history. This coaching is employed within the organization to help employees in their career decisions and professional develop-ment plans (Ennis etal., 2008a:245; Stern, 2004:158).

3. Conflict coaching is a practice first developed in January 1996 at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (see Brinkert, 2006:520)and is the process in which a coach and disputant communicate one-on-one for the purpose of developing the disputants conflict-related understanding, interaction strategies, and interaction skills (Brinkert, 2006: 517). The aim for the coachee is to make sense of conflict and develop plans for actively managing conflict as well as specific commu-nication behaviours that he/she can enact (Brinkert, 2006:517).

4. Developmental coaching (or development coaching) is coaching that is based on the idea that employees will learn more when pursuing goals that they have defined, rather than goals defined by others (Hunt and Weintraub, 2004:42)and it is often regarded as same as EC. It draws on the existential approach to coaching and involves the process of coaching a manager or his/her team members to get more interesting and challenging work tasks where the persons experience and knowledge is used to the fullest poten-tial (Berg and Karlsen, 2007:7). It often involves career and life coaching aiming at helping individuals gain life balance and also contributes to mak-ing a more flexible, project-oriented, and learning organization. (For an extensive review on developmental coaching see Bachkirova, 2011.)

5. Group coaching is about working with individuals within groups and its focus ranges from leadership development to career development and from stress management to team building. Group coaching is different from team coaching and combines the resources of groups with the ben-efits of individual coaching. Via group coaching, individuals learn from each other and from their interactions as a group (Ennis etal., 2008a:23).

6. High-potential coaching aims at helping high-potential individuals who are key to the future of the organization or a part of the organizations succession plan (Ennis etal., 2008a:24; Stern, 2004:158). Related to that is the practice of succession coaching (described in 15, below).

7. Leadership coaching can have a wide scope. One aspect is to develop authentic leadership in the sense of enabling managers to be more con-sciously aware and hence, create a personally distinctive and organi-sationally attuned leadership style (Lee, 2003:17). In general, EC can be used as a methodology for a wide range of leadership frameworks, including emotionally intelligent leadership, and transformational leadership. (For leadership coaching see also, Morgan et al., 2005; Goldsmith and Lyons, 2006.)


8. Legacy coaching aims at helping leaders who are about to retire or wind down from a key role to identify what legacy they would like to leave behind and how to do soit also includes counseling on transitioning out of the leadership role (Ennis etal., 2008a:25; Stern, 2004:158).

9. Newly assigned leader/new leader coaching is about helping newly assigned leaders to clarify what the main responsibilities and delivera-bles associated with their new role are and how to define and imple-ment their new business objectives along with key constituencies and their team (Ennis etal., 2008a:24; Stern, 2004:1578).

10. Performance coaching is about helping employees at all levels to under-stand better their job requirements, required competencies, and pos-sible gaps in performance as well as what are the opportunities for improved performance. Working with the employees, their bosses, and others within the organization the aim is to fill performance gaps and plan the coachees professional development (Ennis et al., 2008a:24:Stern, 2004:157).

11. Personal or life coaching is about gaining awareness of and clarifying personal goals and priorities and taking actions to change ones life (Ennis etal., 2008a:23), in order to achieve greater personal effective-ness and satisfaction (Stern, 2004:157).

12. Relationship coaching aims at helping two or more coachees to form, change, or improve their interactions within a work, personal, or other setting for greater productivity and satisfaction (Ennis etal., 2008a:24; Stern, 2004:158).

13. Presentation/Communication skills coaching (also referred to as video coachingsee Stern, 2004: 158) is about helping individuals to gain self-awareness about how they are perceived by others and why they are perceived so. This includes video-recording of the coachees and pro-vision of feedback on the basis of their recorded performance as well as coaching them on the use of verbal and non-verbal communication (i.e., use of the right language and body language to convey their mes-sages) (Ennis etal., 2008a:25).

14. Project Management coaching refers to a coaching process employed by organizations to address those problems that challenge projects and relate to leadership, uncertainty, stress, and motivation (see Berg and Karlsen, 2007). Berg and Karlsen (2007: 67) suggest that for a pro-ject manager and his/her team the following types of coaching might be relevant (in order of complexity, starting with the easiest and less time-consuming):Knowledge coaching, which is parallel to what would be described in EC as content coaching and provides project members knowledge and skills in specific areas. It is considered the easiest type of coaching since project team members know what areas to improve. Skills


coaching (or feedback coaching) builds on the behavioural approach to coaching and focuses on skill development and instead of aiming at raising the project managers or team managers level of knowledge, it aims at changing their leadership behaviour. Personal coaching, which is similar to life coaching, builds on the existential approach as well as the humanistic and cognitive approaches, aims at helping the project manager and his/her team members in terms of attitudes, feelings, self-confidence, self-efficacy, self-esteem, confidence in ones own capa-bility, tolerance of stress, need to assert oneself, and fear of failure (Berg and Karlsen, 2007:7). Results coaching focuses on helping the project manager and his/her team members to achieve different types of goals either personal or related to project milestones and results. Also, accord-ing to Berg and Karlsen (2007:7)development coaching is also relevant to project management coaching.

15. Succession coaching is about the assessment of potential candidates for senior management positions and preparing them for promotion to more senior roles. It is said to be particularly helpful in the case of fam-ily businesses so as to maintain the firms viabilityoften independent consultants are used for the assessment and coaching for promotion (Ennis etal., 2008a:25).

16. Targeted behavioural coaching is about helping individuals who are either very successful in their current job or assume new responsibility, but need to alter a particular behaviour or habits (such as intimidation, risk aversion, non-assertiveness) or learn new and more effective ways of working and interacting with others currently and in the future (Ennis etal., 2008a:25; Stern, 2004:158).

17. Team coaching is about working with a leader and each member of a team so as to establish their team mission, vision, strategy, and rules of engagement with one another. The process may also include individual coaching to every team member so as to learn how to facilitate meet-ings and other interactions, become more effective as a team so as to have high performance and obtain set goals (Ennis etal., 2008a:26).

18. Transactional coaching focuses more on surface-level issues such as tactical actions, follow-up, and advice with clients learning technical skills and personal effectiveness techniques (it has a strategic focus) (Anderson and Anderson, 2005:19).

19. Transformational coaching enables coachees to create fundamental shifts in their capacity through transforming their way of thinking, feeling and behaving in relation to others (Hawkins and Smith, 2010:231). Its pur-pose is to guide coachees to reach their inner resources, gain insight and use it so as to create personal and organizational change (Anderson and Anderson, 2005:20). The continuous exchange of insight and action fuels one another to form the core of transformational coaching (ibid.).


According to Hawkins and Smith (2010:2312) transformational coach-ing consists of four elements:(a)shifting the meaning schemes of the coachee (i.e., his/her specific beliefs, attitudes, and emotional reactions), (b)working on multiple levels simultaneously (i.e., on the physical, psy-chological, emotional, and purposive elements and their combination at a given situation), (c)shift in the room in the sense of freeing the coachee from his/her stuck perspective during the session and hence, experi-ence an integrated transformation of perspective with the help of the CLEAR model (Contracting, Listening, Exploring, Action, Review), and (d)use of the four levels of engagement model to map the connection of coachees assumptions, values and beliefs (about the presenting issue) to the feelings that drive the behaviour so as to generate the particular responses that the coachee tries to modify.

1.5 The Context of an EC Intervention: An Introduction

1.5.1 EC INITIATION AND THE TYPICAL EC CANDIDATE

Who Initiates EC?According to Michelman (2004:3)the idea of engaging a coach can be initi-ated in two ways:either by HR and leadership development professionals or by executives themselves, with the latter way appearing to become more com-mon over time. However, findings from a recent Harvard Business Review survey provided a more diverse picture. Specifically:29.5% of the 140 coaches that were surveyed mentioned that HR typically initiates the coaching rela-tionship, 28.8% mentioned the coachee, 23% referred to the coachees man-ager and 18.7% mentioned others (see Coutu et al., 2009: 93). Normally, a coach is approached by a variety of organizational sponsors, from line man-agers to human resources specialists or executives themselves (McMahon, 2005:10)who then go on to agree the terms of the coaching intervention (the processes involved are described in more detail in Chapter3).

A Typical EC CandidateAccording to a 1996 survey conducted by Judge and Cowell (1997:73)a typi-cal EC recipient is a senior to mid-level manager and slightly more than half of the coachees are CEOs or reporting to CEOs. Among them, there are three types of executives who typically participate in coaching (Judge and


Cowell, 1997:734):(a)promising executive with adequate skills but with one or two areas preventing them from advancement (the derailed executives), (b) promising executives, with no specific deficiencies, desiring improved leadership skills, and (c)the professionals/entrepreuneurs.

1.5.2 EC INTERVENTION:PURPOSES, OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS

It has been suggested that coaches are like motivational speakers, except that they listen instead of talking (Hyatt, 2003). In a survey of 114 executives who participated in an EC intervention in a large MNE (Kombarakaran et al., 2008: 81), executives indicated that coaching adds value, dismiss-ing the idea that coaching is a fad (81%), and just common sense (88%). Therefore, organizations and individuals ask for EC interventions because they feel that EC can make a positive impact on the individual and eventu-ally on the organizational performance. However, identifying the specific reasons that lead an organization and an executive to ask for an EC inter-vention is not an easy task. Moreover, the reasons may vary from organiza-tion to organization and from one executive to another. For instance, in an empirical study respondents referred to the following reasons behind the decision to hire executive coaches (Lewis, 2002):developing leadership skills for high-potential individuals (86% of respondents said so), improv-ing the odds of success for newly promoted managers (64%), developing management and leadership skills to technical staff (59%), correcting behavioural problems at the management level (70%), and helping leaders to resolve interpersonal conflicts among employees (59%) (see Wise and Voss, 2002: 34). It appears that developing high-potential executives was and still remains the primary purpose of an EC intervention. In the recent HBR study coaches reported the following top three reasons for which they are invited to conduct EC interventions:to develop high potentials or facilitate transition (according to 48% of the coaches), to act as a sounding board (26%) and to address derailing behaviour (12%) (see Coutu and Kauffman, 2009:92).

From a review of the existing literature, a very wide range of reasons were identified as leading to the need for an EC intervention and several objectives are accordingly pursued. These are summarized below:

Balancing Personal and Organizational IssuesIt has been argued that executive coachings primary client is the organiza-tion (Stern, 2009:271). However, this is somewhat simplistic. In reality both the individual coachee and the organization are the clients of an executive


coach. EC seeks to bring positive changes at the individual level with a view to filter them down and enhance the organization as a whole (Peltier, 2001:xv). Therefore, EC is balancing individual and organizational objectives. Under this logic, Wise and Voss (2002:23) classify the reasons for selecting EC as associated to changes at three levels:the individual executive level (intraper-sonal), the interpersonal level, and the strategic or organizational level; and in each of these levels these changes may have either developmental focus or problem resolution focus.

What happens in practice appears to vary significantly depending on con-textual factors. It is possible that the coachs background may affect how he/she prioritizes who is the primary client. Those with a business-related back-ground (e.g., marketing or consulting) are more likely to consider the organi-zation as the primary client, whereas those with a background in the helping professions such as psychology or counselling, may tend to see the individual as the primary client. Also, the findings from the aforementioned HBR study provide another very interesting observation:although 97% of the coaches reported that they are not frequently hired by companies to address personal issues (only the remaining 3% said that they do), yet when asked if they have ever assisted executives with personal issues 76% of the coaches said that they have and only the remaining 24% did not.

With regard to the individual objectives and outcomes of the EC interven-tion, the EC literature includes several studies which explore what these are. Based on an empirical study of the critical moments that an EC client expe-riences, De Haan etal. (2010:619)observed that what clients primarily (hope to) find through EC is some kind of personal realization, such as new per-spectives on their issues, new self-understanding, or understanding of others. Similarly, according to a survey about the view of HR professionals regarding EC, Dagley (2006) found that the most widely supported individual benefits drawn from EC are a clearer understanding of ones own style, automatic responses, and the issues arising from these, followed by communication and engagement skills, ability to cope with stress, and a clearer understanding of both personal professional performance and of organizational issues and how to resolve or overcome them.

Several other studies also highlight the positive changes that are obtained through EC at an individual level, and all suggest that EC brings primar-ily improvement to the executives behavioural skills within the context of organizational practice. For instance, McGovern et al.s (2001: 4) empiri-cal study which involved interviews with 100 executives who have received EC showed that the content of EC typically focuses on the following areas: enhancing interpersonal skills 35%, enhancing management skills 18%, enhancing business agility and technical or functional credibility 15%, enhancing leadership skills 14%, and fostering personal growth 12%. Similarly, in another empirical study, Wasylyshyn (2003:99100) found that


the changes facilitated by EC in order of frequency were:personal behaviour change (56%), enhancing leader effectiveness (43%), and fostering stronger relationships (40%). According to Perkins (2009), one of the areas where an EC intervention can help is in improving executives leader behaviour in meetings, allowing them to conduct more effective business meetings. Afurther observation of the benefits of EC at the individual level is that it acts as a place for discussing feelings and thoughts that executives may have regarding what may be happening to the organization, which, they cannot share otherwise because of the potentially detrimental consequences to their role (Filipczak, 1998:32).

In terms of the organizational benefits drawn from EC, in Dagleys (2006) survey of HR professionals the top two reported benefits were:development of the talent pool and organizational capability and talent retention and morale. Adifferent set of organizational objectives were identified in the empirical study conducted by Parker-Wilkins (2006), which indicated that 60% of the study participants reported the following potential areas of impact expected from EC:increased productivity, increased diversity, retention of leadership talent, increased team member satisfaction, accelerated senior leader promo-tions, increased client satisfaction, improved teamwork, and increased qual-ity of consulting services. Similar areas of EC impact were also mentioned by Natale and Diamante (2005:363), who presented a long list of benefits that EC can bring (which, as they note, remain still grand statements and are not yet empirically backed up).

EC as a Remedy or as a Developmental Tool:Competencies and Performance ImprovementKampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001:208) identified two reasons executives choose to participate in EC (either by personal initiative or demanded by the organization):EC can be a remedial service to help executives with problem-atic behaviour but it now generally used primarily for developmental pur-poses. The views in the literature has varied in regard to which of the two is the most frequent reason. Although an executives career derailment is often noted as a reason that makes companies or individual executives decide on a coaching intervention (see Webb, 2006), a 2002 online survey (Starcevich, 2002) regarding the status of coaching revealed instead that the single most important reason for adopting EC was to promote development and growth rather than the correction of performance problems (Wise and Voss, 2002:3). Peterson (2009:94)observes that this is due to a change that has taken place over time:twenty years ago coaching focused on helping talented but dysfunc-tional executives who were likely to be fired if they did not change, whereas now EC is seen as a possible solution to ensure top performance by an organizations most talented individuals. Similarly, Charan (2009:93)notes that as coaching


has become more common, any stigma attached to receiving it at the individual level has disappeared and now, it is often considered a badge of honor.

With regard to more specific positive changes that are achieved through EC, Kilburg (1996: 140) lists in more detail the following typical goals of EC:(a)Increase the range, flexibility, and effectiveness of the clients behav-ioural repertoire, (b)Increase the clients capacity to manage an organization, (c)Improve clients psychological and social competencies, (d)Increase the clients ability to manage self and others in conditions of environmental and organizational turbulence, crisis, and conflict, (e)Improve the clients ability to manage his or her career and to advance professionally, (f)Improve the clients ability to manage the tensions between organizational, family, com-munity, industry, and personal needs and demands, and (g) Improve the effectiveness of the organization or team.

Resilience/Flexibility and Self-improvementGiglio etal. (1998) were among the first authors to highlight the role of coach-ing in developing resilience, suggesting that those organizations and indi-viduals that are resilient are able to endure in the long term and adjust to changes. The resilient executive is able to keep the system in equilibrium by managing and balancing contrasting external and internal demands and adjusting elements accordingly (Giglio etal., 1998). Although initially coach-ing was seen as a means to help dysfunctional executives, Giglio etal. (1998) urged that in order to maintain system equilibrium and resiliency within the organizational environment, all executives, not only the dysfunctional ones, should be coached periodically so as to keep themselves focused and direct their vision and plans accordingly. Interestingly, Gregory etal. (2008:52)note that coaching is often initiated in response to some critical event and devel-oping resilience helps executives to be more effective in confronting critical events that may arise in the future.

Resilience is confirmed as a key EC objective also in a coaching survey conducted by Judge and Cowell (1997:745), which showed that, as part of the EC process, the most common requests by clients to their coaches are (in order of preference):(1)help in modifying interaction style, (2) dealing effectively with change, (3)building trust in relationships (italics in original). More than ten years after that study, a randomized controlled study by Grant etal. (2009) of executives and managers who received EC also found that the coaching programme was effective in enhancing participants self-confidence and resilience. Grant etal. (2009:404)attributed this finding to the fact that as individuals work towards their goals, barriers and challenges need to be overcome such as negative self-talk, self-defeating behaviours or simply stay-ing focused on ones goal over time. By overcoming such barriers an indi-viduals resilience and self-confidence are expected to improve.


Working in Cross-cultural EnvironmentCulture has recently emerged in the EC literature as an aspect that needs to be actively considered in the EC process. Drawing on Carl Jungs notion of the collective unconscious, Armstrong (2007) suggests that EC is not simply about peak performance, behavioural changes and improved resultsbut it is also a cultural phenomenon, in that it may be expressing the collective psyche of organizations. EC is a humanising activity that within organizational life provides a much needed centre in a decentred world, an intimate and warm place among what is often cold and fragmented (Armstrong, 2007:37).

This appears to be particularly true if one considers that increasingly exec-utives need to work with and manage multicultural teams. Therefore, it has been suggested (Abbott et al., 2006; Handin and Steinwedel, 2006; Abbott and Rosinski, 2007; Lowman, 2007; Peterson, 2007)that EC can be particu-larly useful to leaders working with colleagues from other cultures or leading multicultural teams. Coaching can help in the area of perception and inter-pretation of different cultures and the required behavioural adaptation. This is because EC potentially allows executives to transform lifelong condition-ing and personal assumptions into new beliefs and behaviours essential for cross-cultural collaboration and leadership (Handin and Steinwedel, 2006). Recently, several coaching models have emerged with strong cultural consid-erations. For instance, Abbott and Rosinski (2007:59)proposed the emerging practice of global coaching, which has a strong cultural perspective and is conceptualized as a form of pragmatic humanism, which involves approaches that assist the coachee to create solutions that work in ones unique context, but are also consistent with broader responsibilities of citizenship.

Handin and Steinwedel (2006: 21) proposed a model of cross-cultural coaching that is centred around three core leadership behaviours key to successful cross-cultural working:curiosity (i.e., staying curious and skill-fully asking questions that will build greater understanding and co-create relationships), cultivation (i.e., caring for and staying with the effort in an intentional way over time), and collaboration (i.e., integrating the ideas and approaches of others; inquiring, disclosing, and advocating; weaving together an optimal outcome), supported by the two foundational skills of commu-nication and reflection. Although it is widely agreed that EC can significantly help executives working in multicultural contexts, there is a key prerequisite to this:what role ones cultural assumptions play in the process. For instance, Peterson (2007) examined EC in a cross-cultural context from the perspec-tive of the coach and noted that assumptions about culture can positively or negatively influence a coachs approach and consequently determine whether the EC intervention has been successful or not.

Overall, it appears from the literature review that the purpose of EC has changed over time:although EC was originally introduced as a way to help


dysfunctional executives, it gradually developed into an essential part of executives development. Consequently, the target group of EC was broad-ened to include any type of promising executives, not only those with prob-lematic behaviour and/or poor performance.

A Direct (or Indirect) Effect of an EC Intervention:Enhancing the Executives Emotional IntelligenceOne of the key objectives of the EC intervention is to improve the executives emotional intelligence (EI). The concept of emotional intelligence was first introduced by Salovey and Mayer (1990) and further developed by Goleman (1996, 1998, 2001, 2006)who turned EI into a popular term (see also Goleman et al., 2002). Salovey and Mayer (1990: 185) described EI as a set of skills hypothesized to contribute to the accurate appraisal and expression of emo-tion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in emotion in self and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in ones life. Mayer etal. (2000:923) suggested that EI has three meanings: (a) to designate a zeitgeist or cultural trend, (b)to designate a group of personality traits that are important for someone to succeed in life (e.g., persistence, drive for achievement and social skills) and (c) to designate a set of abilities that have to do with the processing of emotional information.

The application of EI within the workplace context appears to have most relevance to the latter two meanings. The value of EI and its relevance to EC are now briefly discussed.

What is the value of EI? The logic behind the application of EI theory in the workplace is that EI counts more than IQ or expertise for determining who excels at any job and for outstanding leadership it counts for almost everything and companies that leverage this advantage add measurably to their bottom line (Goleman, 2006:13). To prove this, Goleman (1998) refers to studies that provide empirical evidence of this argument. In one study, it was found that about two-thirds of the abilities that set apart star perform-ers from the rest are based on EI, whereas only one-third of the skills that matter are related to raw intelligence and technical expertise (see ibid.:20). In another study of senior executives from fifty-two global organizations, it was found that about 10% of the skills that distinguish these individuals are purely intellectual in nature (Goleman, 1998:20).

What are the key EI traits? EI skills can be taught, providing a better chance to use the intellectual potential one is born with. EI appears to relate to sentiment, character, and moral instincts with growing evidence suggesting that a persons fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capabilities (Goleman, 1996: xii). According to Goleman (1998: 204) there are five dimensions of EI, each describing a basic human ability, which serve as the foundation for specific capabilities


of leadership. These are: self-awareness, managing emotions, motivating others, showing empathy, and staying connected. In a subsequent work Goleman (2006:13)associated EI with a set of twelve specific job capabili-ties which are based on self-mastery (including initiative, trustworthiness, self-confidence, and achievement-drive) and contribute to top performance, as well as thirteen key relationship skills (including empathy and political awareness, leveraging diversity, team capabilities, and leadership) which allow to navigate the currents of an organization effortlessly while others founder.

How does it work? Some application of EI in EC. The application of the EI theory within the organizational environment has been discussed in sev-eral studies (e.g., see Goleman, 1998,

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