Critical Moments in Executive Coaching

Understanding the Coaching Process through Research and Evidence-Based Theory

Erik de Haan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351180740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Critical Moments in Executive Coaching examines the change process supported by workplace and executive coaching, making use of empirical evidence from the study of a range of real coaching conversations and coaching relationships. It is both a complete handbook that for the first time gives access to a global qualitative research base in the field of executive coaching, and a look behind the scenes into the practice of both inexperienced and experienced coaches, their clients and their commissioners.

Erik de Haan allows the reader access to the wealth of Ashridge empirical research in this field to date, alongside prominent research groups around the world. This book provides practitioners with a range of suggestions for their contracts, backed up by qualitative and narrative research. It looks at what research is already telling us about the value of coaching conversations and the impact of critical 'moments of change' in coaching, from the perspectives of coaches, clients, stakeholders and sponsors. The detailed research findings outlined in the book are supplemented throughout by case studies and snapshots of coaching moments as well as practical advice and insights for those working in the field. The book also brings forward innovative new models and concepts for coaches which have emerged from research.

Critical Moments in Executive Coaching offers an evidence and research-based approach that will be of great interest to coaches in practice and in training, students of both undergraduate and graduate coaching programmes and those who supervise and commission coaching.

Chapter 1

Coaching is doing research

A. Anecdote

Just before a coaching session begins, I often feel like I am about to sit a test, or an exam. I am hyper-focussed and keep looking at the clock. I want to be precisely on time, not too early, no more than 30 seconds late, and I want to be completely “ready”. Often there are only a few minutes between one session and the next, yet I usually manage to sink into a strange kind of trance. I grab another coffee, visit the toilet, glance at my notes from the last time (or if it’s a telephone session, set them ready beside the phone), all while keeping an eye on the clock and “clearing the decks” internally. Through all of these automatic actions, completed quickly and efficiently, I end up fully in the moment and become extremely aware of myself, as I am now, and of the coachee I am about to meet in a few seconds’ time. Sometimes I make a silly mistake, such as opening my emails just before a session. That’s so easy to do these days because we always carry them with us. But it can put me completely off balance: suddenly another relationship crops up and takes over my mind, and inevitably my thoughts shift to that person and to drafting an answer to the message I’ve just read. I need to be tough and determined to pull myself out of this and use the remaining seconds to settle back into my trance. Sometimes I am obstructed by forces beyond my control, such as when a colleague buttonholes me in the corridor, or traffic grinds to a standstill on the way to a session, making it hard for me to get there on time. Then I break out in a cold sweat, dismayed that I am letting someone down. And in a sense that’s true, I am letting them down because my distraction or delay diverts my attention from those initial moments of our session that I myself believe are so important.

Something in me confirms time and again how significant those first few seconds of an encounter are, so I try to be completely open to this beginning of the work. First impressions in any coaching session are not to be taken lightly; they often hint at what the coachee really wants to bring in and what she or he wants to get out of the session. And I can often pick up on how the coachee relates to me as the coach, and to the coaching sessions. At that very beginning, both my coachee and I are more laid bare, more naked, as we have not clothed or distracted ourselves with the happenings in the session. In a sense, I’ve been musing about this first impression for some time even before the session begins. Ultimately, in those initial moments of an encounter, I often come across as passive, or as neutral, quiet, relaxed, distant – whatever you want to call my regression into my ‘trance’. Whereas I feel anything but relaxed. ‘Oh right, it’s up to me, isn’t it?’ my coachees often say, and then work out for themselves the best way to start the session.

B. Essences

The intimate relationship between coaching and research

Executive coaching, workplace coaching, career coaching and individual coaching – different names for a form of work-related learning through dialogues. During these conversations, the focus is on the objectives of the “coachee”. These objectives often concern problems to which it is not easy to find an answer, such as:

• How to improve certain working relationships or teams
• Achieving ambitious objectives
• Reorienting my actions as a leader

An example: coaching at a Milan fashion house. Last week I received an email from a colleague in Switzerland saying that the company is looking for a coach. We are already on the preferred supplier list and the fact that I speak some Italian has played a role in the selection. My colleague says that ‘when I get it’, I should definitely visit the head office as it’s a beautiful, famous building in the city centre. A number of coach profiles (brief descriptions of the coaches’ qualifications and backgrounds) have been sent to Italy and used to select two coaches for a video interview with a board member and the HR director. This interview is to be followed by a chemistry call with the coachee, the new Purchasing Director.

The first interview gets straight to the point. The coachee’s leadership style is described using a metaphor from his favourite sport: rugby. ‘Luca goes all out for his targets. He keeps pushing and pushing, and doesn’t care if people get knocked over or end up trampled and bloodied. What matters is the try that he does usually score’. Two moments from this interview stay with me. First, I misunderstand the word “borderline” and interpret it as referring to a fit of anger. My heart sinks when the Chief Operating Officer (COO) makes clear that I have completely misunderstood. Second, a little later, my despondency gives way to euphoria when I say: ‘That’s all very clear and as I understand it you’ve discussed it with Luca as well. If it’s so clear, why does he need a coach in addition to his line manager?’ A long silence follows, and then the COO says, ‘that is a good question and I have no answer to it’. After another silence, he says: ‘it would be good for Luca if we could hold up a mirror to him a bit more and if he could discuss specific, recent examples’.

Based on the chemistry session or click interview, the coachee chooses a coach and a first coaching session is held, often accompanied by several interviews with those closest to the coachee. After the first session, the coach draws up a provisional contract in which she attempts to summarise the coachee’s objectives. In my case, this contract usually consists of two or three paragraphs identifying areas in which the coachee wants to develop. After summarising, I usually write encouragingly that these are areas that lend themselves well to shared exploration in coaching: right away, this is the first occurrence of the concept of exploration, that is, “research”, in connection with coaching. In my contract, I also try to mirror the coachee’s own words as far as possible. Sometimes I intentionally add a summary in my own words, or even a cautious hypothesis, to see how my own initial understanding goes down with the coachee.

Coachees’ responses to this first contract, sent to them personally in confidence, differ widely. Often there is no response, and it is up to me to raise it again in the second session, whereupon the coachee usually says ‘fine’ or ‘I really recognised myself in it’. Other coachees reach for the red pen or the track changes option on their computer and set to work. Sometimes there are additions, possibly coming from managers. I regard this first written contract as very helpful because it gives direction. With a contract, you enter into a much more targeted relationship, one that will take responsibility for what you achieve. Often the first written contract quickly becomes outdated due to advancing insight or things that happen at the coachee’s work. Sometimes, it’s because the objectives are achieved much sooner than initially envisaged. Nevertheless, it is helpful to compare even an outdated contract with the final results later on, because this often shows that there is much to celebrate and that the “case” looks different after a few months have elapsed.

Coaching contracts are less SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time bound) than most other professional contracts in organisations, although to some extent they are similar to employment contracts (Sills, 2012). We can also compare coaching contracts with research plans. The first objectives can then be seen as a few “hypotheses” to be tested by further research. Like academic research, coaching is both about achieving existing objectives and about founding out something new that is even more relevant or ambitious for the coachee.

Another similarity between coaching and research lies in the underlying ethical principles. Coaching, writing about coaching and conducting research with participants or test subjects are governed by very similar ethical standards and principles. Here is an overview of these moral foundations which support integrity in coaching and also in research:

1. Independence – guarding the client’s autonomy. It is important for coaches and researchers alike to be able to pursue their work wholly independently of influence from financial backers, sponsors or funding providers. And a crucial degree of independence must be maintained with regard to clients themselves and their issues, and those of other stakeholders such as their line managers. This is why it is so important that coaches (or researchers) do not enter into any partnerships or relationships with their clients (or research participants) other than a pure coaching (or research) relationship.
2. Informed consent – from the outset, the client must have a reliable idea of what she is getting involved in and what will be asked of her. This is why a written contract containing defined agreements is important, as well as a first informal meeting to discuss potential cooperation. If traceable information is to be cited in other forums, consent must be sought in advance and the client must feel truly free to say no.
3. Confidentiality – all information obtained in connection with the work must be treated with absolute confidentiality. This is why all of the case studies in this book have been anonymised and rendered untraceable. There may be an option of publishing or conducting research jointly, in which case traceable attributions can be made, provided that the client has given her explicit consent and is free to say no.
4. Respect and diversity – coaching should allow for multiple voices and perspectives, and treat at-risk groups or vulnerable parties with respect and care. This applies equally to research. Good coaching and research strengthen diversity and show respect for even the softest dissenting voices and tiniest notes of discord, if only because a single counterexample can revive an entire research programme or even an entire professional field. Special attention should be paid to the fact that the coachee is an active and sometimes vulnerable participant in the coaching sessions. In participatory research, this applies likewise to the research subjects.
5. Integrity and trust – this covers various aspects such as compliance with legislation, such as personal data protection laws, as well as integrity in a broader sense in the areas of data handling, data analysis and the publishing process. Finally, it includes fairness towards clients and striving for a high quality of service, supported by regular supervision or (in the research field) independent peer review.

C. Summary of qualitative research in coaching

Qualitative research in coaching starts with the coaching session itself. During all coaching sessions, the coach and the coachee investigate what the coachee puts forward and wants to accomplish. Together they explore what this session is about, what else might be relevant and how to achieve the objectives. Moreover, one could argue that this exploration (i.e. qualitative research) is all they do together; the implementation of findings thereafter is entirely left to the coachee. So, one can argue that executive coaching is essentially a form of (collaborative) qualitative research, which takes place in a privileged, confidential environment. The outside world will have no knowledge of it, nor does this research explicitly inform other coaching sessions, for example, by other coaches or coachees.

A next step for coaching-researchers is to conduct research into their own coaching, for example, during the preparation of case studies on the basis of reflective notes. Qualitative research stays as close as possible to the events in the sessions themselves. This form of research does not work in the same way as the contrasting quantitative method which uses a myriad of ‘data points’ (usually numbers, more broadly: discrete, quantifiable information reported retrospectively) to make statistically reliable statements. Qualitative research starts from ‘rich data’: emotions in the moment, stories, notes and recordings, and it tries to achieve a cohesive understanding of that underlying richness.

In this chapter, I give an overview of the qualitative research conducted to date in the field of executive coaching and what that research has shown.

Quantitative research, in essence, takes sequences of numbers originating from coaching assignments (such as rated coaching outcomes according to various parties involved) and generalises to produce statistically reliable statements applicable to all coaching assignments. For example, the usual ‘discovery’ in quantitative papers is that the coaching sessions showed an average client-perceived effectiveness of 7.6 on a 10-point scale and that the spread of these outcomes was less than 1.8, in which case we can be reasonably certain that the sessions were fairly effective in the view of most clients. Any statement that quantitative researchers can make – and such statements are thin on the ground due to the statistical requirements that need to be met – immediately raises follow-up questions that cannot be answered. Once quantitative research has established a significant degree of effectiveness, questions arise such as

• ‘Exactly how is that effectiveness achieved?’
• ‘What makes some coaching sessions more effective than others?’
• ‘How does this effectiveness manifest itself in the coachee’s organisation?’
• ‘How can you tell within the organisation that coaching has been effective?’ or
• ‘What does this result mean for my own specific coaching assignment?’.

All of these logical follow-up questions require very extensive follow-up research. No matter how easy it is to ask such questions, the quantitative researcher is usually unable to answer them.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, starts with extensive descriptions (or recordings) of the events themselves and thus with a detailed picture of what happens within coaching. This material can supply an answer to follow-up questions, albeit a personal and provisional answer, with no confidence interval or generalisability. The difference from quantitative research is substantial: quantitative research has to reduce an entire coaching assignment to a single number (or a row of numbers), while qualitative research takes time to listen very carefully to a whole story flowing from, say, a single moment in a session. Qualitative research provides a detailed, nuanced, coherent answer, but with no idea of whether it can be generalised. Nevertheless, based on this detailed account and descriptive information, qualitative research can ultimately lead back to quantitative research, provided that sufficient corresponding “data points” can be generated. However, a condition is that we need to gather a large number of such data. In addition, qualitative research produces new suggestions for questions to be investigated by means of quantitative research, and can even yield new theoretical variables and verifiable coaching models, as we will see later in this book.

Coaching is still an emerging profession, so there are very few systematic overviews of qualitative research (one exception being Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018, which included both quantitative and qualitative research articles). Below I aim to present a thorough overview of all qualitative research conducted to date in the field of executive and workplace coaching, including brief summaries of what this research has shown.

A vast amount of qualitative research has already taken place within coaching, for example:

Case studies based on client or coach experiences (see, e.g., Levenson, 2009).

Process research conducted by studying reports or direct recordings of sessions (see, e.g., Gessnitzer & Kauffeld, 2015; Ianiro, Schermuly, & Kauffeld, 2012).

Process research via interviews and surveys (see, e.g., Wasylyshyn, 2003).

Action research (see Reason & Bradbury, 2001) as a deeper exploration of coaching practice and of new actions within the coaching relationship (see De Haan et al., 2013, for a book brimming with research articles on coaching based on action research methodology).

Field research, often a form of participatory research in practice, for example, research via evaluation forms, Q-sort techniques and one-to-one or panel interviews (see, e.g., Perkins, 2009).

Descriptive research into coaching interventions and coaching situations, as reflected in numerous manuals and practical studies on coaching (see, e.g., Liljenstrand and Nebeker, 2008).

Table 1.1 An overview of qualitative research methods; the main distinctions are between simultaneous (phenomenological) and retrospective, and between researcher involved in the material (self-research) and remote researcher (independent research)

Qualitative research methodologies	Phenomenological	Retrospective
Self-research	1. Action research	2. Case-study ...