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Business coaching is generally recognized as a significant contributor to business success. While the need for business coaching differs across individuals and organizations depending on particular circumstances and the availability of resources, it is widely asserted that many leaders and companies on a trajectory of success are likely to benefit from coaching support. This is true for those leaders who have relatively mature careers having already achieved some measure of success, and it is arguably true for those new to leadership who are in the early stages of their professional passage. It is also recognized that quantitative evidence in support of coaching is inadequate (Feldman and Lannkau, 2005; Beattie et al., 2014). The motivation for this paper is to bring together both academic and practitioner experience to provide more evidence and understanding related to the coaching definition, its implementation and effectiveness. While not conclusive in the absolute sense, the original data collected and analyzed for this research is based on known client contacts in close time proximity to the coaching engagement and delivers added insight to current research.
In his recent DBA dissertation, Wiginton (2018) offers a comprehensive definition of business coaching which serves as the operational definition understood for purposes of this paper.
Business coaching is the art of providing appropriate diagnosis and guidance to an organization and/or its leader(s) by an experienced, trusted advisor who actively contributes to developing situational clarity, specific action steps, and accountability for measurable results within an environment that is confidential, candid, wisely-cadenced and progress-focused for the benefit of the client individually and the business as a whole (Wiginton, 2018, p. 17).
Research on business coaching and its actual, measurable impact on an organization's progress gives rise to four primary themes. First, coaching is not identified as an academic discipline in and of itself. It is multidisciplinary having roots in management consulting, training and development, and consulting psychology, that is, both business and social science studies. In part, this explains the second theme, that is, coaching is ill-defined and its scope is vague. Third, the fact that coaching is not consistently defined has allowed the coach, the coached, or other interested stakeholders to make untestable declarations of success or non-success. Fourth, subjective views of the impacts of coaching...