Client behavioural feedback for the executive coach
While executive coaches routinely give behavioural feedback to their clients, few ask them to reciprocate. Yet, theoretical investigations suggest that client feedback – if defined as the provision of information regarding effective behaviours observed during a coaching session – may improve the coach’s performance. However, existing scales may be inadequate to support such a process because they have not been built with clients. To contribute to knowledge and develop a client behavioural feedback instrument, the study was anchored in a pragmatic epistemology and in a coaching theoretical framework that I described as client-centred integrative. The development of the instrument followed a sequential exploratory design. It involved an international sample of executives. In the first qualitative strand (N=24), five focus groups of experienced clients developed a pool of executive coaching behaviours from a compilation of the literature. In the second quantitative strand, 107 executives were surveyed before and after a 3-4-month coaching intervention to develop and validate the instrument. A principal component analysis led to the Executive Coaching Behaviour Observation Scale. It contained 21 executive coaching behaviours loading on two components, indicative of a professional transformational learning process. Multiple regression analyses indicate that the instrument is significantly related to the strength of the relationship between the client and the coach and to the generation of new insights for the client. In their selection of behaviours, executives indicated their preference for being consulted about the coaching process rather than for passively accepting the coach’s preferred tools and techniques. At the same time, they expected their executive coach to deploy a range of influencing techniques to support the emergence of new insights. These techniques included informing behaviours, thus requiring the executive coach to showcase relevant business and organisational knowledge.
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