The International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching
Volume IIX Issue 1 May 2011 Reviewed Section
© European Mentoring & Coaching Council – May 2011 ISSN 1815-804X Page 99 of 153
Executive Coaching As a Leadership Development Accelerator
Jose Manuel de Haro García
Abstract
Executive coaching works. This is confirmed by the positive results obtained from the analysis of the
majority of the interventions carried out (in the small but growing body of empirical research). However, in
order for coaching to become a more powerful tool, an instrument to enhance leadership learning
processes, there is a basic need: to consider the coaching factors that lead to effectiveness from both the
executive and the coach perspective.
Taking this into account, that is, the need to use a reference operating method involving the executive
coaching, we are presenting a framework which intends to make up both the best practices related to
business-focused interventions and the best practices carried out in processes of a more psychological
nature. The proposed approach is based on the consideration that coaching’s main goal must be the
contribution to the acquisition of expert performance. In this process, based on both the behavioural and
business management approach, the coach must analize the antecedents – what happens before the
behavior- and the consequences – what happens after that behaviour. This is essential for a real
contribution to accelerate the change process and the leadership improvement.
Key words: executive coaching, leadership, behavior, expert performance.
1. Executive coaching and leadership development
Urgency in the workplace has had a dramatic impact on the speed of business change. Companies in any
field need to accomplish more in less time than they used to. The response time available to fend off
competitors is approaching zero. The new economy leaders need to learn in different ways, deciding what
to learn, when and how. The best way for managers to add extra value to their companies is to reduce the
time it takes employees to learn and apply the skills and information needed to compete in the new
mercurial marketplace. Leadership development needs to be accelerated. The traditional learning
methods are no longer appropriate.
Training programs are commonly designed using multiple training techniques and multiple outcome
measures (Conger & Benjamin, 1999). Among them, on-the-job training (93%) and external seminars
(90%) have usually led the rankings of most frequently utilized methods (Saari, Johnson, Mclaughlin &
Zimmerle, 1998). A wide variety of formal training programs are occurring in organizations: formal training
continues to be the primary type of managerial leadership development intervention, while job assignment
remains a close second (Collins, 2001). In recent times, development through job experiences, such as
on-the-job-training, job-performance evaluations and feedback programs, participation in special projects
or task forces, coaching or mentoring, job rotation, succession planning, and career planning have
emerged as a powerful source of learning for managers (McCauley & Brutus, 1998). Other activities like
action learning and 360-degree feedback are increasingly key elements of leadership development
initiatives.
Among these techniques, coaching has been the fastest growing leader development method (McCauley,
2008); its use as a developmental intervention for managers has increased dramatically in the last two
decades (Felman & Lankau, 2005; Joo, 2005).
The essential elements in a process of executive coaching (the existence of two parts, the coach and the
executive, the one-on-one helping relationship, and the use of methods to achieve the best results), are
included in most of the executive coaching definitions (Kilburg, 1996; Feldman and Lankau, 2005;
Kombarakaram et al, 2008). These definitions differ in several aspects: the length of the process, the
concrete aspect upon which it is meant to focus (leadership, work effectiveness, intrapersonal or
interpersonal issues, competencies, or specific problems), the type of techniques the intervention is based
on, the measuring criteria to assess its effectiveness, and finally the use of a business perspective (Joo,
2005) or a problem-solving perspective (Grant, 2001).
The objectives of coaching are focused on improving individual performance, and personal satisfaction,
enhance a career or work through organizational issues such as culture change or enhancing
organizational effectiveness (Kilburg, 1996; Katz & Miller, 1996, Hall, et al., 1999). Although the practice of
coaching has become widespread recently, there is little published empirical research on the topic of
executive coaching effectiveness (Kilburg, 1996), relatively little has been published on the efficacy of
executive coaching (Kampa-Kokesh & Anderson, 2001). There is a limited number of published empirical
studios that support the evidence that executive coaching produce positive outcomes (Feldman & Lankau,
2005; Dagley, 2006; Finn et al., 2007; McKie, 2007; Passmore & Gibbes, 2007; Kombarakaram, et al.,
2008, McCauley, 2008).
However, there have been some rigorous and strict designs which have led to a very positive outcome,
when it comes to leaders’ focalization and goal achievement (Hernez-Broom, 2002; Smither et al., 2003),
and also in self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations (Evers, Brouwers, and Tomic 20006). Taking
leadership development as the main criterion, Komabarakaran et al., 2008, showed through an empirical
study that executive coaching is an effective method, and also that change occurred in 5 areas: people
management, relationships with managers, goal setting and priorization, engagement and productivity and
dialogue and communication.
Other significant results about its effectiveness have been summarized by Bayon, Cubeiro, Romo & Sainz
(2006) in European organizations: a return on investment (ROI) equaling 6 times the cost of coaching in
performance and quality improvements; performance increased by 88%, using coaching plus training as
opposed to 22.4 % using only training; reducing the rotation index from 35 to 16%; or improving the
attraction of talent. Executive coaching as a follow-up to a training program was shown to increase
productivity by 88% in public sector managers (Olivero, Bane & Kopelman, 1997), which was a
significantly greater gain compared with training alone. There are even studies on the ROI (Philips, 2005),
which have demonstrated the effectiveness of coaching when it comes to creating value within an
organization (Nations Hotel Corporation).
Hill (2010) has identified forty-one published research studies which investigate executive coaching based
on empirical evidence and has analized them to determine the factors contributing to effectiveness of
executive coaching. Therefore, considering both the quantitative and the qualitative analysis, and the
customer’s and the coach’s perspective as well, it is stated that the most relevant factors regarding the
effectiveness of executive coaching are: coaching relationship (coaches´ ability to develop relationship),
coaching process (effective listening and skilful questions..), executive engagement, support from the
organization and preliminary assessment and feedback.
In the end, the review of empirical studies about coaching reveals great confusion regarding their results
(Boyaztis, 2006), which has not prevented coaching from becoming increasingly prevalent as a formula for
professional leadership, probably driven by the fact that it can be easily tailored according to the user’s
needs and thanks to its capacity to involve the user in the improvement process. The degree of the
business impact likely is related to the complexity of the executive´s role, and to the relationship between
the organizational environment and the individual performance (Levenson, 2009) Investment in welldesigned
and implemented programmes can contribute to leadership development (Komarakaram et al.,
2008).
2. How to improve the power of coaching as a contributor to leadership development
Whereas coaching is growing rapidly as a tool for human resource development in business, there is a
recognition of the need for a solid theoretical framework to inform about practice development (Eggers and
Clark, 2000) and a lack of such in empirical literature (Grant, 2001). Within executive coaching, the large
number of approaches used – cognitive, behavioural, psychodynamic, solution-focused – may show the
different backgrounds of the professionals, who do not watch only one model (Passmore and Gibbes,
2007). The executive coaching professionals, from their business-oriented point of view, focus mainly on
performance and skills improvement. They pay less attention to theoretical fundamental approaches, so
they keep their distance from psychological orientations and highlight the need of skills to face effectively
the management problems (Whitmore, 200).
The first kind of practices, focused on practical and specific business issues, can be described as
performance based coaching, and the second type can be defined as in-depth coaching (Thach, 2002).
The proposal made by McCormick and Burch (2008) is an evident example of the later, which suggest that
a personality-based approach to coaching can have an important contribution in assessing and facilitating
behavioral change.
In this work we propose a model that might bring these two positions closer. The starting point would be
assuming that coaching is a process which intends to improve leadership effectiveness by enhancing selfawareness
and the practice of new behavior (Kombarakaram et al. 2008). Behavioral practice is its central
component. Through coaching the executive is encouraged to develop new approaches and behaviors
practice them, re-evaluate their impact and try a revised approach for improved effectiveness (Hill, 2010).
Coaching intervention is conceptualized as a helping mechanism to identify strengths and weaknesses,
formulate improvement objectives and define and implement change plans in order to get a continuous
improvement in leadership competencies. The coach helps the subject to carry out his/her action plans
using communication strategies (mainly questions, listening and feedback). For executives or managers,
carrying out such plans allows them to fulfill the most important objectives of coaching which could be:
developing their potential, for instance, to be successful in a new mission or role, adapting to new needs of
the business or the environment, improving their contribution in terms of performance and objective
compliance, or identifying with the firm as far as its vision, mission, values, strategy or culture are
concerned.
This proposal is based on the three following principles:
1) Taking the acquisition of expertise (for instance, in the leadership area) as the goal of this change, by
means of deliberate practice, a tiring, intensive routine of training activities designed for the sole purpose
of improving the current action levels (Ericsson & Smith, 1991).
2) Considering what happens before a behavior (antecedents), and
3) Using what happens after that behavior (consequences).
Next, we are explaining what we mean when we are referring to these three principles.
2.1. Expert performance and coaching.
Challenging problems require diverse expertise. Most of the problems faced by large organizations are
complex enough to require diverse expertise. Innovation will increasingly depend on what psychologists
call ‘distribution cognition’ (for example work teams).
Leadership development includes designing and performing the actions, which allow us to pass from the
initial state to a situation where we can exercise talent (mastery). A process of active learning which
produces increase in a specific expertise domain is needed to reach a high level of achievement in the
exercise of leadership. But leader thinking is a complex phenomenon, and leadership cannot be
developed through a single, short-term intervention. It requires a progressive and sequential series of
interventions.
Becoming competent in a field requires a suitable intervention program and a considerable dose of work,
effort and motivation for achievement and excellence (Touron, 2001). In his change model, McClelland
(1985) suggests going through at least six stages when an attempt is made to change a set of behaviors.
From a behavioral perspective, specialists speak about going through at least five stops (Luthans &
Kreitner, 1985).
The adoption of a training approach in which effort and continuity are combined can guarantee the level of
dedication that will permit to reach mastery at a certain skill or a considerable improvement in highly
demanding tasks (Tannenbaum, 1993). The knowledge about the field of expert performance provided by
Professor A. Ericsson and his team, gives us the patterns to define how this type of training is going to be
implemented.
Studies in a variety of domains have provided us with some lessons learnt from expert research (Colvin,
2008). We emphasise the following three from which we can draw principles applicable to executive
coaching:
1. Leadership development must become a systematic process, not an event. Perhaps the most
meaningful principle is that successful leadership development depends more on consistent
implementation than on the use of innovative practices (Day & Halpin, 2001).
2. Expertise requires extensive practice. High levels of expertise demand years of practice.
Productive talent in any area, and this includes leadership, becomes evident in achievements that
take years or months to be reached. Someone has even quantified the amount of effort required.
It is approximately 10,000 hours. We need an intensive activity within a specific area where highly
positive results and exceptional performances can be obtained, a full 8-to-10-hour working day
for about 10 years (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Romer, 1993).
3. Expertise requires deliberate practice. The core assumption of deliberate practice is that expert
performance is acquired gradually and that the effective improvement of performance requires
the opportunity to find suitable training tasks that the performer can master sequentially-typically.
The design of training tasks along with the monitoring of the attained performance is done by a
teacher or a coach (Ericsson, 2006). The effects of mere experience (routine practice) differ to a
great extent from those of deliberate practice. This is specifically tailored to improve their
performance and requires a concentration that can be maintained only for a limited period of time.
2.2. Antecedents
The improvement process cannot overlook what happens before the act of learning. Improving
performance by acting on behaviors can be done with work on two aspects: 1. On what occurs before it
(antecedents); or 2. On what occurs after it (consequences). We are going to refer to antecedents in this
section, leaving consequences for the next one.
Inside the organization, an antecedent is any person, place, thing or situation which arises prior to a
behavior and drives us to execute that behavior. Antecedents may be of various types (Lopez Mena,
1989: indicators (‘prompting’), modeling, goal-setting and participation; they serve to transmit information
(about behavior and its consequences) and ‘work’ because they are associated with the consequences. In
the case of managerial leadership, we would like to highlight two of these antecedents: one with an
attributional character (subject’s dispositional states) and another of a more social nature (modeling).
The first one of them has a lot to do with beliefs about change. The subject’s mental condition and other
attributional variables are related to beliefs about change. A number of studies by Heslin, VandeWalle &
Latham (2006) have shown that many managers do not believe in personal change. Some managers
believe in natural talent and do not look for people with a potential to develop. However, good managers
do believe in their collaborators’ unlimited capacity to improve. Everything can be acquired with the right
training (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999). For W. Bennis (1989), most great leaders believe that a leader is
made, not born, and is made to a greater extent by themselves than through media that are external to
them. Gilbert (1978) claims that the average manager’s overcoming potential is 360%. Any person, of any
age and in any circumstances, is able to carry out self-transformation (which is not the same as becoming
a leader). A lot of corporative training will have little value without a strong belief in the development of
human beings. McCall (1998) believed that the real leaders of the future are those who have the ability to
learn from their experiences and remain open to continuous learning. Carol Dweck (2006) has faithfully
collected this idea in her research on ‘mindset’ when she draws a distinction between two groups of
individuals: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset ones. The former think that intelligence is static,
which leads to a tendency to avoid changes, to adopt a defensive attitude before obstacles, to see effort
as something useless, to ignore the useful feedback from others, to feel threatened by other people’s
success and as a result of all this, to be unable to develop their whole potential. Instead, the latter believe
that intelligence can be developed, which leads to a permanent wish to learn and a tendency to desire
changes, to persist in overcoming hindrances, to see effort as the way to mastery, to learn from criticism
and find inspiring lessons in other people’s success. The most important lesson in this respect is that the
‘growth mindset’ can be taught to managers. Dra. Dweck has created workshops called “brainology” which
have as their aim to develop the ‘growth mindset.’
Cognitive and personal competencies modulate the speed of change within this tiring learning process.
Among them, self-regulation processes largely contribute to producing permanence in behaviors leading
to managers’ goals. Self-evaluation and monitoring; goal setting and strategic planning; strategy
implementation and monitoring, and strategic outcome monitoring constitute the ‘steps’ of self-regulated
learning (Zimmerman, 1996). Self-control and the ability to face the obstacles appearing on the way
equally form part of the behaviors which facilitate the improvement process. In this sense, specific
practices about how to take self-talks into account (Makin & Cox, 2004); overcoming procrastination
(Zeigarnik, 2007), using training in self-instructions or double thinking (Oettingen & Mayers, 2002) can also
be helpful to reinforce self-regulated behavior and focalize training toward the outcomes sought.
The second one of the antecedents we referred to above, modeling, has been used for the training of
managers (Sims & Manz, 1982) and has proved its effectiveness as a form of learning. It is based on the
fact that managers learn through the observation of other managers’ behaviors (models) which constitute
an important set of antecedents for behavior that is valuable for its frequency of appearance. Modeling is
possible through four sets of learning activities: modeling strictly speaking, role game, social reinforcement
and training transfer or generalization (Goldstein & Sorcher, 1974). The observation of the right behavior,
its practice and the achievement of positive feedback has proved very useful in the development of
management and problem-discussion skills.
2.3. Consequences
Just like what happens before the behavior influences the way it starts, what happens afterwards is
essential for its reinforcement and consolidation. A consequence is any event that follows behaviors and
has an impact on how likely they are to occur in the future. If the antecedent serves as a cause of the
ensuing behavior, the consequence serves to determine the behavior preceding it. If we want to influence
the behavior before it happens, we will be using the antecedents. Instead, if we want to influence the
behavior after it has occurred, we will be using the consequences. Consequences affect performance,
improving or worsening it, and are the most effective tool for the modification of managers’ performance.
In a study which reviewed more than 10 years of research, Daniels (1989) found that managers spend an
average 80% of their time in activities that can be categorized as antecedents (defining tasks, creating
procedures or giving instructions), as opposed to the rest of follow-up or consequence facilitation tasks.
Nevertheless, the most effective leaders spend more time speaking to and asking their employees; in
other words, providing consequences (Komaki, 1998).
In leadership development interventions that use executive coaching, the feedback process focused on
managers’ performance can help us utilize consequences for the purpose of introducing adjustments in
their learning goals and persuading them to dedicate more time to the most productive managerial tasks.
When trying to achieve this, feedback is one the most powerful intervention instruments which can be
used within a executive coaching process for leadership development, because people learn most
effectively when they receive prompt, clear and objective feedback about their performance (Ericsson &
Charness, 1994).
As a type of informative consequence, feedback becomes a key component within the learning process
(Kuchinke, 2000) and improves performance because it can result in increased self-awareness and more
dialogue between leaders and subordinates. Self-Awareness is the key to leadership development
(McCall, 1998) and can be developed through the practice of seeking ongoing feedback.
The way in which feedback is provided affects its effectiveness in the reinforcement process. Effective
feedback is characterized as being: Positive, Immediate, Graphics and Specific (the PIGS acronym). On
the other hand, verbal feedback on a one-to-one basis and avoiding evaluations is more likely to be
effective (Makin & Cox, 2004). What managers do with feedback also seems to matter. Recent research
findings indicate that managers who met with direct reports to discuss their upward feedback
demonstrated greater change in the form of performance improvement than managers who did not
discuss their feedback (Walker & Smither, 1999).
3. Conclusions
Acting faster and faster, depending on shared knowledge and competing in complex, global and diverse
scenarios are some of the critical requirements of the new economy environment where leaders will have
to get by. In this context, new principles, should be shared before taking action: the consideration of
leadership as a type of talent constituted by a series of competencies which have to be developed under a
performance improvement approach.
In this process where effectiveness has to be assessed from the very beginning, we act on adults with
their own learning principles and inside a specific organization with its own determinants for behavior.
Besides, we believe that with a clear orientation toward organizational results, measurement, and what
has been scientifically proved, the best approach must be based on hard training, sustained over time,
which takes into account the antecedents and consequences of behavior and finds its support on the
accelerators of learning derived from the social, technological and human aspects.
More research is needed to fully understand managerial leadership development (Collins, 2001). We must
resort to what has been proved as a result of the research work, connect the academic world with the
business world and link studies to the achievement of results. Further research is necessary to determine
when and what leadership activities influence organizational performance and the conditions under which
these activities may have maximum effect (Svyantek & DeShon, 1992). More evaluative research needs to
be conducted too (Burke & Day, 1986), particularly on linking managerial leadership development to
performance improvement (Lynham, 2000).
It is also necessary to create specific working models that can guide us in the search for the best results,
which take into account the specificity of the situation, and which are contingent rather than generalist (of
“best practices”). A significant difficulty in our ability to assess the impact of training may be the lack of a
unifying model and theory of research (Dionne, 1996). The ‘competential command structure’ (De Haro,
2005) is an example of this type of approach which allows us to use the concept of competency as a
behavior/outcome association when it comes to defining the learning objectives and the assessment of
effectiveness in the programs. The executive coaching can benefit from using these types of models. More
specifically, it can improve its effectiveness by following the model which considers the improvement
process like the acquisition of expertise by means of deliberate practice. In order for coaching to contribute
to the acquisition of executive talent, it is essential to take into consideration what happens before the
behavior, as well as the consequences of this behavior, as we show in the following graphic:
The evaluation of the outcome of coaching processes which use this model, will lead us to the validation of
its effectiveness in the improvement of leadership competences, which will provide us with some
guidelines to define the best criteria for the use of coaching as a leadership development tool. As Feldman
& Lankau (2005) suggest, the use of a practice-based model of coaching effectiveness as a starting point
might help future researchers to determine the variables which make up a coaching intervention.
José Manuel de Haro josemadeharo@hotmail.com
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