The Influence of Coaching on Employee Performance: Results From Two International Quantitative Studies

Abstract

Coaching has been identified as a key managerial behavior that organizations must promote to develop employees and achieve higher levels of performance. Despite this agreement and an increasing interest in coaching, there is still a paucity of studies exploring the impact of coaching on individual performance. This article presents an empirical investigation from two international field studies, one using business‐to‐business salespersons working in Latin America and the other one using business‐to‐consumer frontline employees from a service organization in Canada. Building on leader‐member exchange theory, we propose that coaching increases individual performance beyond the potential impact of sales experience and tenure. We find that coaching can explain between 2.9% and 6.2% of the variance in performance when controlling for tenure and experience. This article makes several scientific and managerial contributions, and also opens new avenues for research.

Is managerial coaching a source of competitive advantage? Promoting employee self-regulation through coaching

“…However, results also suggest that, in the presence of self-efficacy, the direct link between coaching and performance becomes non-significant. This was somewhat unexpected, because the direct link between managerial coaching and employee performance has received widespread support in the scientific literature (Agarwal et al, 2009;Ellinger et al, 2003;Pousa and Mathieu, 2014b), and we were expecting a partial mediation effect of self-efficacy rather than a complete one. One potential explanation is that the overall magnitude of the relationship between selfefficacy and performance is so important, that it could be masking other effects.…”

“…Despite sharing a common basis and origins (Hagen, 2012), executive coaching and managerial coaching differ in several respects (Pousa, 2012;Pousa & Mathieu, 2014b). In executive coaching processes, an external coach works with a top executive in order to help him/her achieve self-defined goals (or sometimes, mutually identified goals), improve his/her professional performance and personal satisfaction, and consequently improve the effectiveness of the organization (Joo, 2005;Kilburg, 1996).…”

Exploratory Study Examining the Joint Impacts of Mentoring and Managerial Coaching on Organizational Commitment

“…Managerial coaching can be regarded as a representation of perceived organization support as well as an effective management and favorable leadership behavior [35,55]. Therefore, managerial coaching could give rise to employee's satisfaction on the job and engender a reciprocal commitment to the organization in the social exchange view [35,[55][56][57].…”

“…Mathieu and Zajac [53] emphasized that participatory leadership, such as coaching, is related positively to organizational commitment. According to norms of reciprocity in social exchange theory [54], employees would feel appreciated or even obligated to return beneficial behaviors and to care about the organization's success when they perceive organizational support [55,56]. Managerial coaching can be regarded as a representation of perceived organization support as well as an effective management and favorable leadership behavior [35,55].…”

An integrative six‐domain model of employee training and development

“…Other strategies have also been found to increase performance. These include the critical incident technique whereby observers critically analyze performance (Flanagan, ), behavioral event interviews in which only a sampling of behavior is analyzed for evaluation (Boyatzis, ), and coaching (Pousa & Mathieu, ).…”