Desde el docente: cuestiones de norma

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 coachdismiss-ing 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 organizaorganiza-tion 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%), developimprov-ing 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:  3–4). 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 Issues

It has been argued that ‘executive coaching’s 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: 2–3) 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 coach’s 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 et al. (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 executive’s 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: 99–100) 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.

A further 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 Dagley’s (2006) survey of HR professionals the top two reported benefits were: development of the talent pool and organizational capability and talent retention and morale.

A different 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 Improvement

Kampa-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 executive’s 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 organization’s 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 client’s behav-ioural repertoire’, (b) ‘Increase the client’s capacity to manage an organization’, (c) ‘Improve client’s psychological and social competencies’, (d) ‘Increase the client’s ability to manage self and others in conditions of environmental and organizational turbulence, crisis, and conflict’, (e) ‘Improve the client’s ability to manage his or her career and to advance professionally’, (f) ‘Improve the client’s 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-improvement

Giglio et al. (1998) were among the first authors to highlight the role of coach-ing in developcoach-ing resilience, suggestcoach-ing 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 et al., 1998). Although initially coach-ing was seen as a means to help dysfunctional executives, Giglio et al. (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 et al. (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: 74–5), 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 et al. (2009) of executives and managers who received EC also found that the coaching programme was effective in enhancing participants’ self-confidence and resilience. Grant et al. (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 one’s goal over time’. By overcomstay-ing such barriers an indi-vidual’s resilience and self-confidence are expected to improve.

Working in Cross-cultural Environment

Culture has recently emerged in the EC literature as an aspect that needs to be actively considered in the EC process. Drawing on Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, Armstrong (2007) suggests that EC is not simply about peak performance, behavioural changes and improved results—but 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 one’s 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 one’s 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 posiperspec-tively or negatively influence a coach’s 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 Executive’s Emotional Intelligence

One of the key objectives of the EC intervention is to improve the executive’s 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 regulaemo-tion of emoemo-tion in emoemo-tion in self and others, and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one’s life’. Mayer et al. (2000: 92–3) 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 person’s fundamental ethical stances in life stem from underlying emotional capabilities (Goleman, 1996:  xii). According to Goleman (1998: 20–4) 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, 2001, 2006; Grant, 2007; Passmore, 2007b; McKee et  al., 2008). Through competencies relating to EI indi-viduals are able to improve their performance, since EI is ‘the ability to recognize and understand emotions and the skill to use this awareness to manage self and the relationships with others’ (Blattner and Bacigalupo, 2007: 210). Goleman (1998: 25) proposes that organizations can change an emotionally deficient individual by following with determination a set of steps. The first entails the use of 360-degree assessment of the indi-vidual’s emotional capacity. Provided that an individual has a negative behaviour, Goleman (1998: 25–6) proposes several coaching steps which can help: address the problem in private, speak with sensitivity avoiding to make the individual defensive and present convincing evidence of the problem (e.g., feedback from others, specific incidence and their outcome).

Then it is advised to present a positive scenario in which the individual’s actions can change for the better and finally, provide the individual with a programme for doing so.

McKee et al. (2008) also proposes a step-by-step process to help executives develop their emotional intelligence. Specifically, McKee et al. (2008) propose how to understand what it takes to be a resonant leader; how to build one’s capacity of mindfulness of what happens to themselves and their environ-ment and understand to what direction one is heading; how to develop the

‘ideal self’; to understand one’s ‘real self’ and what needs to be changed to reach one’s goals; craft a plan for ‘intentional change’ so as to focus one’s time and energy in the direction that will allow them to realize their dreams;

understand what is required to create resonance in a group (i.e., creating shared vision and engaging people to collective action); and finally, under-stand how this effort contributes to becoming a resonant leader with a ‘mean-ingful future’ (see McKee et al., 2008 ibid.: xii–xiv).

Passmore (2007b) used EI as part of his proposed integrated model of EC.

Drawing on several evidence-based approaches Passmore proposes ‘integra-tive coaching’, which involves working at multiple levels with coaches (behav-ioural, cognitive, and unconscious) and combines them into ‘streams’ across

which the coach works ‘seamlessly’ (ibid.: 68). The building of a coaching part-nership and the use of EI are central to Passmore’s integrative coaching model (for a detailed description of the model, see Passmore, 2007b: 69–70). Last but not least, interestingly a recent study showed that the application of EI theory is also enhancing the coaches’ skills (not just the coachee’s) (see Grant, 2007).

Measuring EI. Overall, in the literature there have been several efforts to develop EI assessment tools. Some have been able to provide objective meas-urement of EI (as opposed to self-report). Indicatively, Mayer et  al. (2003) proposed one such assessement tool, which they called the Mayer–Salovey–

Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and have tested and found to be of ‘reasonable’ reliability. MSCEIT was developed with the intention to measure four branches, or skill groups, of EI: (a) perceiving emotion accu-rately, (b) using emotion to facilitate thought, (c) understanding emotion, and (d) managing emotion (Mayer et al., 2003: 97). The use of such EI measure-ments could also have an important role to play in EC studies. EI assessment

Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and have tested and found to be of ‘reasonable’ reliability. MSCEIT was developed with the intention to measure four branches, or skill groups, of EI: (a) perceiving emotion accu-rately, (b) using emotion to facilitate thought, (c) understanding emotion, and (d) managing emotion (Mayer et al., 2003: 97). The use of such EI measure-ments could also have an important role to play in EC studies. EI assessment