Recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses have shown that coaching in organizational settings can be helpful in a variety of ways, including improving leader performance and work satisfaction, reducing stress, enhancing confidence, improving resilience and well-being, and bolstering goal attainment (Grover and Furnham, 2016). However, while the empirical coaching literature has burgeoned in the past decade, investigations into the impacts of coaching have remained somewhat one-dimensional, with simple pre/post designs the predominant approach to assessing change over time. 

Despite the common view that coaching is a reflective, dialogic process that encourages individuals to self-reflect, question assumptions, and reframe beliefs as they relate to their goals, one aspect of the coaching process that appears to have had relatively little empirical attention is learning. The change that can flow from such deep processing may not be immediately secured psychologically or successfully translated into behavior. It therefore seems likely that assessment of much of the impact that coaching has on coachees is being lost through research designs which fail to adequately capture the delayed effects that are likely to be set in motion by coaching conversations. 

This webinar will present findings from a pilot study conceived to investigate the prevalence and progression of coaching sleeper effects in a sample of 15 recently coached senior and mid-level managers. Data drawn from the personal stories of the coachees confirmed that coaching was beneficial in a variety of ways (e.g. modifying communication style). The data also showed that some effects were subject to some delay and required a period of incubation, or some triggering by events in the person’s life, to emerge. These sleeper effects may be a form of new learning, or alternatively, a cumulative or continuous form of learning. 

Although these effects were not prominent in every case, there are many possible reasons for this. The presenters will present a discussion (and modelling) of factors that might influence the emergence (or non-emergence) of sleeper effects along with recommendations for future research in this area.

Presenters: Dr. Gordon Spence and Dr. Sunny Stout-Rostron
Host: Irina Todorova