Probing the Coach-Coachee Relationship
Executive coaching has become a hugely popular management development technique. The International Coaching Federation alone boasts 17,000 professional coaches from more than 95 countries. But research on what makes coaching a successful development process has not kept pace. Not even close.
Louis Baron and Lucie Morin (U of Quebec at Montreal) set out to fill that vacuum. Choosing to focus on the working relationship between coach and “coachee”, the researchers collected survey data from two samples: 73 managers in a large North American manufacturing company who received executive coaching for a period of eight months, and 24 coaches. The coaches were company executives participating in a coaching certification program.
Results indicate that the quality of the coach–coachee relationship is a prerequisite for coaching effectiveness and an important factor in the development of the client’s “self-efficacy.” (Self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals.) Particularly significant was the coaches’ ability to facilitate learning: establishing a development plan, tracking learning progress, using a structured approach, making connections, and identifying obstacles.
On the client or coachee side, the more a manager is motivated to apply newly developed skills in her work and the higher is her perception of supervisory support, the better the coaching relationship.
“Our results . . . underline the importance, when implementing internal executive coaching programs, of working with future coaches on ways to favor the development of a good working relationship,” the authors write. “Certification programs should sensitize coaches on the working relationship, by making them conscious of how they influence its development and the obstacles they may encounter.”
The Coach–Coachee Relationship in Executive Coaching: A Field Study, by Louis Baron and Lucie Morin; Human Resource Development Quarterly (vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 2009)
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