Leaders being coached are more goal-conscious and the positive effects of coaching continue beyond the coaching engagement
What Do Leaders Gain By Being Coached?
Coaches help clients who proactively work towards their own goals, but what do the leaders concretely gain by being coached?
Our latest researched revealed that being coached had a positive effect on the leaders' consciousness and actions taken towards their goals. Importantly, the effect of coaching continued beyond the coaching engagement.
This research focused on how the leaders' consciousness and actions differed between those who have had experience being coached, and those who had none at all.
In a survey, we asked participants to rate themselves in the following three points:
- I have my own future vision and goals.
- I actively set goals and work towards them.
- I create dialogue with others to achieve my goals.
7-point scale ( "1-Strongly disagree" - "7-Strongly agree")
n=204
Coaching Research Institute, 2015
Graph 1 above showed that leaders who had experienced being coached rated themselves higher for all items compared to those who had no such experience.
Coaches work to clarify the goals their clients have set themselves through dialogue. This is reflected in the high scores shown in Graph 1. But how long does the effect of coaching continue? Is coaching effective only during the coaching engagement, or does the effect continue beyond that?
To answer this question, we asked survey participants to rate the lasting effect of the coaching they received using the same three points mentioned earlier.
This time we divided the participants into three groups:
Group A: Leaders who are currently being coached
Group B: Leaders who have been coached in the past
Group C: Leaders who have not been coached
The results between the three groups are shown in Graph 2.
7-point scale ( "1-Strongly disagree" - "7-Strongly agree")
n=204
Coaching Research Institute, 2015
In all items listed, Group A, current coachees, ended up with the highest score. Significantly, the past coachees of Group B had higher scores than Group C, which shows the ongoing effectiveness of coaching.
Furthermore, the biggest difference seen between current coachees and past coachees were in "Have goals and visions" and "Work toward goals". This suggests that maintaining a high level of consciousness about one's goals is an effortful task that fades over time.
The item that had the smallest difference between current coachees and past coachees was "Create dialogue with others". From this result, we can say that having dialogue with others to achieve their goals remained a habit beyond the coaching engagement.
In conclusion, our research showed that being coached has a positive effect on leaders' consciousness of their goals and the actions they take to achieve them, and that the positive effects of coaching continued beyond the coaching engagement.
Research overview
No. of samples : 204 survey respondents (readers of COACH A Weekly Global Coach newsletter)
Period : October - November 2015
Survey method : Online survey
Survey tool : Survey regarding experience and effects of coaching