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Leadership coaching's efficacy and effect mechanisms

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posted on 2025-05-11, 17:45 authored by Peter Ross Halliwell
Whilst significant evidence demonstrates the importance of leadership in organisations, research on ‘how’ to develop leaders is relatively sparse compared to the extensive literature on the ‘what’ of leadership. Leadership coaching, which is argued to be an effective leader-owned development intervention, is considered ahead of its theoretical understanding, with scholars calling for rigorous studies to validate its efficacy and explain its effect mechanisms. To assist in addressing this gap in the literature, this study develops and tests hypotheses relating to coaching’s efficacy and effect mechanisms utilising a quantitative pretest-posttest research design and data sourced from 70 coached leaders and 234 subordinates and supervisors. First, to assess coaching’s efficacy, participation in leadership coaching is hypothesised to be associated with enhanced cognition, emotional competencies, leadership behaviour and effectiveness (Model A). Second, responding to calls to investigate coaching’s effect mechanisms or coaching’s ‘black box’, two path models are developed (Models B & C) and assessed using partial least-squares structural equation modelling and construct latent change scores. Results provide two important contributions to the leadership development and coaching literature. First, this study provides strong evidence of coaching’s efficacy by associating the practice with the ‘discoveries and practices’ facilitating intentional change and transformative learning, and through results of the pretest-posttest analysis of Model A. Unique to the literature, this study found coaching to have a positive effect on leaders’ emotional intelligence and authentic leadership behaviour. Second, by assessing effect sizes in Model A and hypothesised relations in Models B & C, this study provides much-needed insights into coaching’s effect mechanisms. For example, this study provides new evidence of a positive association between coaching-related increases in emotional intelligence and leadership self-efficacy, and similarly, between coaching-related increases in authentic and change-oriented leadership behaviours.

History

Year awarded

2021.0

Thesis category

  • Doctoral Degree

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Supervisors

Boyle, Brendan (University of Newcastle); Mitchell, Rebecca (Macquarie University)

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

College of Human and Social Futures

School

Newcastle Business School

Rights statement

Copyright 2021 Peter Ross Halliwell

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