Coaching that works: Applying an evidence-based lens to workplace coaching
Workplace coaching has gained momentum over the past years with a significant increase in coaching professionals. Coaching critics sometimes question if coaching is actually empirically based or worth the level of investment. So it may be interesting to ask if coaching actually works and if so when and under which circumstances.
The concept of coaching itself has been influenced by many psychological disciplines such as Positive Psychology highlighting the positive aspects of human behaviour and experiences. Coaching can either be considered as a process (e.g., to support the client through listening, Socratic questioning to gain additional insights), or as an outcome (e.g., focusing on goal setting to achieve sustainable behavioural changes). Coaching outcomes are commonly grouped into broader categories: affective/attitudes (e.g., well-being, job satisfaction), cognitive (e.g., problem solving), and behaviours (e.g., leadership behaviour).
Coaching efficacy – a bird’s eye perspective
It’s important to note that this blog only refers to meta-analyses that examined the effectiveness of coaching. Meta-analyses represent a specific type of study that combine the results of many individual studies on a similar topic - like coaching effectiveness – to provide an overall answer (e.g., Is coaching effective?).
Overall, coaching shows to have moderate positive effects on broader coaching outcome categories (affective/attitudes, cognitive, and behaviours) with self-report measures used most frequently to evaluate coaching effectiveness. Coaching has been shown to facilitate positive work-related outcomes such as self-efficacy, goal attainment, workplace well-being, professional skill development, and performance. These findings are based on comparing many coaching intervention studies that fulfill an important requirement - something that’s considered as the common ‘gold-standard’ that is Randomised Controlled Trials, short RCT. RCT means that there is a random allocation to either an intervention and non-intervention group, which helps to properly assess the actual coaching-outcome relationship and to compare the findings with a control condition. So RCTs are a good thing!
Importantly, the aggregated effects of coaching (i.e., the summarised effects across studies) show a high degree of heterogeneity, which means that there are additional factors that may influence the coaching-outcome relationship. So it’s important to consider what influences the effects of coaching (e.g., the circumstances, coaching approaches being used etc.) to understand the bigger picture. The next section provides an overview of most the commonly examined factors that may (or may not) influence coaching effectiveness.
What does work and under which circumstances?
Now that we know coaching shows moderate positive effects on different individual and organisational outcomes, some of you might wonder if there are any differences in the coaching efficacy depending on the setting or coaching duration? Thus, I will summarise some of the most common questions:
Is face-to-face coaching better than virtual coaching?
No, studies did not find any systematic differences that yield to significant better outcomes. Thus, coaching effects are not dependent on the delivery mode of coaching.
The longer the coaching session, the better the outcomes, right?
This is only true for the attitudes outcome category in executive coaching sessions, indicating that the longer the coaching, the stronger the effects in this category. The amount of total coaching hours does not predict better coaching outcomes.
Are coaching effects stronger when we rely on self-report measures?
Yes, this is true when we compare self-report measures with observed measures provided by direct reports or peers regarding the effectiveness of coaching. In empirical sciences, we consider the coaching effects to be ‘skewed’ upwards for self-report scores.
Same same, but different – What about different coaching approaches used?
Common evidence-based coaching methods that are being used in coaching settings are cognitive-behavioural approaches, the GROW model, and positive psychology coaching (PPC). Apparently, coaching approaches that combine the different approaches show overall slightly higher effects on coaching outcomes than only relying on one specific approach.
Does the quality of the client-coach engagement matter?
Yes, it does! The quality of engagement between the coach and the client is commonly referred to the ‘coaching alliance’. It’s considered as the quality of the collaborative partnership between the client and a professional coach. While the coaching alliance itself hasn’t been examined as something that might alter the coaching-outcome relationship (i.e., something that does either strengthen or weaken it) (at least am not aware of any meta-analyses), research shows that the coaching alliance positively influences quite a few important outcomes such as perceived coaching effectiveness, satisfaction with coaching, and a client’s degree of goal attainment. Thus, a high-quality working alliance between client and coach seems to be quite important in coaching sessions.
Wrap up – What do we know?
To summarise, we can say:
Coaching does show moderate positive effects on different work-related outcomes.
There are important boundary conditions that must be considered to better understand coaching effects.
Face-to-Face coaching is not better than virtual coaching.
The number of coaching hours does not predict better coaching outcomes.
Self-report measures are commonly used to evaluate coaching effects and effects are higher compared to the use of observed measures.
A combination of different coaching approaches shows higher effects on coaching outcomes.
The working alliance between client and a professional coach does matter.
Overall, coaching does seem to show moderate positive associations with important individual and workplace-related outcomes. Another question could be if coaching can also have negative side-effects or even cause harm to individuals or teams, but this is something we will explore in another post. Stay tuned!
References:
Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Bowers, C. A., Carlson, C. E., Doherty, S. L., Evans, J., & Hall, J. (2023). Workplace coaching: a meta-analysis and recommendations for advancing the science of coaching. Frontiers in Psychology, 14(October). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1204166
de Haan, E., & Nilsson, V. O. (2023). What Can We Know About the Effectiveness of Coaching? a Meta-Analysis Based Only on Randomized Controlled Trials. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 22(4), 641–661. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2022.0107
Graßmann, C., Schölmerich, F., & Schermuly, C. C. (2020). The relationship between working alliance and client outcomes in coaching: A meta-analysis. Human Relations, 73(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718819725
Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta‐analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12119
Nicolau, A., Candel, O. S., Constantin, T., & Kleingeld, A. (2023). The effects of executive coaching on behaviors, attitudes, and personal characteristics: a meta-analysis of randomized control trial studies. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1089797
Wang, Q., Lai, Y. L., Xu, X., & McDowall, A. (2022). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: a meta-analysis of contemporary psychologically informed coaching approaches. Journal of Work-Applied Management, 14(1), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWAM-04-2021-0030