New findings on the effectiveness of the coaching relationship: Time to think differently about active ingredients?

Abstract

This article critically reviews two recent, large-scale, randomized controlled trials in executive coaching, in order to drive further exploration into the topic of the coaching relationship as a predictor of coaching outcome. One of the trials was designed at senior levels in an industrial setting and the other was an experiment with coaching in a business-school context. Each trial demonstrated considerable and significant coaching effectiveness with the coaching relationship ('working alliance') as an important ingredient of effectiveness. The more recent randomized-controlled-trial sample, which was longitudinal, seems to show that we may have to radically change our

Change Process in Coaching: Interplay of Nonverbal Synchrony, Working Alliance, Self-Regulation, and Goal Attainment

“…Numerous findings in psychotherapy research show that working alliance is the best-researched predictor for therapeutic outcomes (Flückiger et al, 2018). It has also been found to be of central importance to coaching effectiveness both in coaching process research (Gessnitzer and Kauffeld, 2015) and coaching outcome research (e.g., de Haan et al, 2013de Haan et al, , 2016de Haan et al, , 2019de Haan et al, , 2020. Llewelyn and Hardy (2001) argued that there are sufficient similarities between psychotherapy and coaching for the literature on therapeutic process research to be considered in coaching (e.g., Peltier, 2011).…”

Exploring the Process of Transformative Learning in Executive Coaching

“…In studies conducted by Ianiro et al (2015), Ianiro and Kauffeld (2014) and Gessnitzer and Kauffeld (2015), the working alliance as a process was examined by assessing the relationship between the coach and the coachee in terms of reciprocal friendliness, patterns of dominance and affiliation. However, while a working alliance was found to foster a deep level of psychological understanding between the coaching dyads (De Haan, 2019), it was found to be only a mediator of coaching success, without any direct relationship traceable to that success (De Haan et al, 2020). Rekalde et al (2015), in turn, view the coach focusing on objectives, providing feedback, and continuously challenging the coachee as central to the process.…”

“…Several authors have identified factors that contribute to successful coaching outcomes. These are: coach competencies (Blackman et al, 2016; Rekalde et al, 2015); coachee motivation and readiness (Blackman et al, 2016; Bozer & Jones, 2018; Lai & McDowall, 2014); the coach–coachee relationship or working alliance (Bozer & Jones, 2018; De Haan, 2019; De Haan et al, 2020; Sonesh et al, 2015); contextual factors internal and external to the organization (Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018; Blackman et al, 2016); and the coaching process (Campone, 2015; Van Oosten & Kram, 2014).…”

“…While these studies have provided some insights into understanding the various factors that contribute to the efficacy of executive coaching (Bozer & Jones, 2018; De Haan et al, 2020), the process of achieving the desired outcomes remains relatively inadequately defined. For example, in some studies, the coaching process was understood to comprise a working alliance.…”

What changes with coaching? Investigating within‐person changes in reflection, the predicting role of implicit person theory and the effects on perceived utility of coaching

“…First, by examining different types of change that may occur as a result of coaching, our study offers a deeper understanding of the intra‐individual process of change that coachees experience. This is an important lacuna in coaching research dominated by pre‐ and post‐coaching comparisons that simply assume a linear increase (with few notable exceptions exploring the change over time; De Haan et al, 2020). Second, we focus on reflection which, as better elaborated below, is an essential competence to be developed in coaching (Theeboom et al, 2017).…”