The Effect of Leaders’ Coaching Behaviors on Employee Learning Orientation: A Regulatory Focus Perspective

Abstract

Although scholars have recognized leaders' importance in facilitating employee learning, the potential role that leaders' specific behaviors play in followers' learning outcomes remains elusive. Based on the literature, we identified two styles of leaders' coaching behaviors that may promote followers' learning, namely encourage-to-explore behaviors and guide-to-learn behaviors. We expect that these two styles of coaching behaviors would have different relationships with employee learning orientation, moderated by employees' regulatory focus. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two studies: an experimental study using scenarios of leader behavior with data collected from 124 undergraduate students (study 1), and a field study with data from 334 pairs of employees and their direct supervisors (study 2). Results showed that encourageto-explore behaviors had a positive relationship with employee learning orientation, whereas guide-to-learn behaviors had an inverted U-shaped relationship with employee learning orientation. When employees had low levels of promotion regulatory focus, encourage-to-explore behaviors showed a positive correlation with employee learning orientation. However, when they had low levels of prevention regulatory focus, employee learning orientation increased as the guide-to-learn behaviors increased; this increased up to an intermediate level and then decreased. As such, this study provides novel theoretical and empirical insights into leadership and learning literature.

The relationships among workplace role modeling, learning goal orientation and proactive behavior

“…The present research indicates the importance of role modeling (Bandura, 1986(Bandura, , 2004Gibson, 2004;Wood and Bandura, 1989) in facilitating state LGO. Although previous studies have found a positive influence of LGO training (Noordzij et al, 2013), mastery-approach goal structure (Michou et al, 2013) and leader's coaching behaviors (Liu and Xiang, 2020) on LGO, this study may be the first to identify the effect of role modeling as an antecedent of LGO.…”

“…Chi and Huang (2014) reported that transformative leadership enhances team LGO, implying that leadership may promote employees' state LGO. Liu and Xiang (2020) also found that leader-coaching behaviors had a positive effect on employee-state LGO. Notably, Vandewalle et al (2019) stated that leaders could help followers enhance their LGO by acting as role models.…”

“…Compared to research on personal antecedents, only a few studies have examined the situational antecedents of LGO. Such exceptional studies reported that LGO was enhanced by leaders' coaching behaviors (Liu and Xiang, 2020) and mastery goal structure in a classroom setting (Michou et al, 2013). Reviewing the literature on GO, Vandewalle et al (2019) suggested that further research is needed to explore the antecedents of LGO.…”

Managerial coaching behavior and subordinates’ learning effects in cross-cultural context: a moderated mediation study

“…Employees' learning effects refer to the extent to which an individual uses the knowledge and skills acquired to perform tasks and improve work processes and work performance in the workplace (Matsuo, 2018). Supervisors' leadership behavior has a positive impact on subordinates' learning effects (Gray, 2006;Liu and Xiang, 2020). Therefore, based on the path-goal theory, we predict that managerial coaching behavior is positively associated with subordinates' learning effects.…”

When does daily job performance motivate learning behavior? The stimulation of high turnover rate

“…Encouraging employee learning behavior is a constructive way to accumulate more knowledge to help companies to stand out in the highly competitive market. Employee learning behavior thus has often been regarded as a useful route toward organizational competitiveness and excellence (Maurer and Tarulli, 1994; Liu and Xiang, 2020). Studies confirmed that the companies with more learning behaviors among employees can indeed get a higher profit and more organizational innovation (Yang and Konrad, 2011), and build better relationships with customers and suppliers (Dimovski and Skerlavaj, 2005; Škerlavaj et al , 2007).…”