Elsevier

The Leadership Quarterly

Volume 21, Issue 4, August 2010, Pages 585-599
The Leadership Quarterly

Evaluating leadership coaching: A review and integrated framework

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.06.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Leadership coaching reflects an evolving dynamic between the client and coach that is qualitatively different from most approaches to leadership development and therefore holds particular challenges for evaluation. Based on reviews of academic and practitioner literatures, this paper presents an integrated framework of coaching evaluation that includes formative evaluations of the client, coach, client–coach relationship, and coaching process, as well as summative evaluations based on coaching outcomes. The paper also includes a quantitative synthesis examining evaluation methodologies in 49 leadership coaching studies. The results revealed that self-reported changes in clients' leadership behaviors are the most frequently assessed coaching outcome, followed by clients' perceptions of the effectiveness of coaching. Recommendations to advance coaching evaluation research include the creation of collaborative partnerships between the evaluation stakeholders (client, coach, client's organization, and coaching organization) to facilitate systematic formative evaluations, the collection of multi-source and multi-level data, and the inclusion of distal outcomes in evaluation plans.

Introduction

Leadership coaching has only recently become a common mode of leadership development (Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001) with the last decade witnessing unprecedented growth in coaches, coaching programs, and coaching publications (Bolch, 2001, Brotman et al., 1998, Douglas & Morley, 2000, Goldsmith & Lyons, 2005, Quick & Macik-Frey, 2004). While leadership coaching programs have grown to meet the increased demand, little guidance exists on how to evaluate this unique leadership development practice. With this increased prevalence of leadership coaching in organizations – and the substantial time and costs associated with formal leadership coaching – evaluation becomes imperative for both assessing the outcomes of the leadership development intervention (i.e., summative evaluation) and also for improving program development and implementation (i.e., formative evaluation) in order to empirically advance coaching practices.

Leadership coaching is broadly defined in terms of a relationship between a client and a coach that facilitates the client becoming a more effective leader (Douglas & Morley, 2000, Kilburg, 1996, Peterson & Hicks, 1999, Witherspoon & White, 1997). For our research, we capitalize on the Center for Creative Leadership's (CCL) definition of coaching as a formal one-on-one relationship, “in which the coachee and coach collaborate to assess and understand the coachee and his or her leadership developmental tasks, to challenge current constraints while exploring new possibilities, and to ensure accountability and support for reaching goals and sustaining development” (Ting & Hart, 2004, p. 116). In addition to describing the coaching relationship, process, and results, this definition highlights the unique aspects of leadership coaching compared to other leadership development programs or interventions; namely, a focus upon a dynamic one-on-one relationship between a coach and client.

Leadership coaching is different from other approaches to leadership development and holds particular challenges for evaluation. Because coaching is provided in the context of a one-on-one relationship and the coaching process varies greatly from person to person, many of the methods of evaluating traditional training interventions may not be as appropriate. Coaching is designed and implemented on an individual level. To address the difficulty inherent in coaching evaluation, our goal is to present a conceptual model of leadership coaching and to present a systematic framework to evaluate it. Researchers and practitioners generally differentiate between two types of evaluation, summative and formative (Brown & Gerhardt, 2002, Patton, 1994). Summative evaluations assess the effectiveness of completed interventions whereas formative evaluations are process oriented and focus on identifying areas for program improvement (Beyer, 1995, Bhola, 1990, Patton, 1994). We propose that evaluating coaching requires an integrated evaluation framework including summative and formative criteria. Additionally, we review the leadership coaching literature—with an emphasis on how coaching is evaluated, to highlight the current state of evaluation practices. Finally, we make recommendations for researchers and practitioners toward promoting effective practices in evaluating leadership coaching.

Section snippets

The unique nature of leadership coaching

Leadership coaching differs from traditional leadership development in four ways: (a) leadership coaching focuses on the needs of the individual client as well as the client's organization and the unique characteristics each brings, (b) leadership coaching requires coaches to have unique skill sets, (c) leadership coaching places a premium on the client–coach relationship, and (d) leadership coaching demands process flexibility to achieve desired results. These four (client, coach, client–coach

Evaluating leadership coaching

Evaluation includes the collection of descriptive and judgmental information that is necessary to make decisions about the utility of training efforts and identify areas for modification and improvement (Goldstein & Ford, 2002). The number of organizations using coaching to develop leaders is increasing every year (Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006); however, despite the popularity of leadership programs and the criticality of program evaluation, the dearth of empirical evaluations examining

Review of leadership coaching evaluation practices

To better understand the current state of the leadership evaluation literature, we conducted a quantitative synthesis of studies evaluating leadership coaching. The goal of this review was to examine how evaluation is being conducted in the leadership coaching literature, with a focus on methodologies, data sources, analysis approaches, and evaluation criteria. Due to the nature of published research on leadership coaching, we were limited in focusing on summative evaluation criteria. The

Discussion

The goal of the current paper was to present an integrated framework for evaluating leadership coaching and to provide an overview of the frequency with which different outcomes are assessed in the leadership coaching literature. Not only is coaching an individual-level customized intervention, but it is also organic—adapting in response to a client's changing needs. Just as with other training evaluations, a summative component is needed to document the effectiveness of coaching engagements.

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