Master Thesis
A Qualitative Study into the Coach’s Two-Client Problem:
How Do Coaches Reconcile the Difference of Needs and
Expectations between the Coachee and the Sponsor?
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Faculty of Economics and Business – Human Resource Management
Min-Jou Huang
Student number: 2115956
E-mail: [email protected]
Supervisor: Dr. Svetlana Khapova
August 2011
Abstract
As one of the training and development tools that companies today use to pursue
organizational innovation, adaptation and efficiency, coaching is suggested to be favored
for its individualization and versatility. In this study, we intend to find out how coaches
can link personal achievements of the coachee to the organizational performance
demanded by the sponsor. Together with our 22 respondents, we identified 6 sources of
problem arising from the coaching triangle, which we specifically defined as the
‘two-client problem’; and 10 strategies to cope with and further prevent those potential
complications. While these findings are by no means novelty, our study can contribute to
the discussion around the coaching triangle that is essential for a successful coaching in
corporate context.
TABLE OF CONTENT
I.
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4
1.
Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 6
2.
Academic & Social Relevance......................................................................................... 6
3.
Overview ....................................................................................................................... 7
II.
Theoretical Background ................................................................................................. 8
Coaching in Corporate Context .............................................................................................. 8
Coaching Relationship ......................................................................................................... 10
Coaching Process................................................................................................................. 12
Coaching Outcomes............................................................................................................. 13
III.
Research Methodology & Methods......................................................................... 17
1.
Data Collection ............................................................................................................ 18
1.1
Sample & Context ................................................................................................... 18
1.2
Interview Guide ...................................................................................................... 19
2.
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................... 21
2
IV.
1.
Findings .................................................................................................................. 23
Making Sense of the Two-Client Problem .................................................................... 23
1.1
Problems related to coachee’s organization............................................................ 25
1.2
Problems related to coachee .................................................................................. 28
1.3
Problems related to both clients ............................................................................. 30
2.
Reconciliation Strategies of the Two-Client Problem .................................................... 32
2.1
Investing time in the preparation phase .................................................................. 35
2.2
Managing expectations on coaching outcome ........................................................ 36
2.3
Intervening coachee’s interaction with the manager where it is necessary ............. 38
2.4
Acting upon professional integrity .......................................................................... 40
2.5
Creating sustainable coaching culture ..................................................................... 42
V.
Discussion ................................................................................................................... 44
Theoretical Implication ........................................................................................................ 44
Practical Implication ............................................................................................................ 46
Limitation............................................................................................................................ 47
Ending Notes ....................................................................................................................... 47
Acknowledge....................................................................................................................... 48
Reference.......................................................................................................................... 49
Appendix – Interview Guide (Final Revision) .............................................................. 54
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I.
Introduction
The past decade has seen a tremendous growth of coaching in the corporate context
(Feldman & Lankau, 2005; van Woerkom, 2010). A 2008/2009 global survey has shown
that there are about 18,000 business coaches within Europe, and that coaching is widely
accepted and used as a business tool in all Western/ Northern Europe countries (Bresser,
2009). One of the reasons that coaching has become so pervasive has to do with the
economic results it promises to deliver. Organizations are believed to benefit from
improved leadership effectiveness, higher performance, and increased learning
capability through better functioning and more competent employees. Another reason is
that coaching fulfills the needs of today’s workforce who look to their organizations for
professional development (Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006). This generation of workforce
has high expectations regarding organization’s investment in their career competences
(De Hauw & De Vos, 2010), including the three ways of knowing: knowing-why,
knowing-how, and knowing-whom (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1996). These reasons, along
with today’s rapidly-changing environment, have convinced corporations to replace the
conventional ‘one fits all’ development or training programs by this individualized and
more flexible performance improvement tool - coaching.
While the value of coaching is generally recognized by both employers and employees
who went through coaching processes, there appears to be a lack of concern on making
the distinction between the motivations and expectations of coaching for individuals as
coachees and for organizations as sponsors, and hence a lack of attention on the coach’s
position to guard the benefits of both parties and to bring out the win-win situation.
Literature has commonly assumed that by improving individual’s professional
performance and satisfaction, business coaching can contribute to organizational
effectiveness, but little research effort has been made to ask whether this link is always
direct and self-evident and, if it is not, what can be the coach’s contribution to look for
goal alignment between the coachee and the sponsor.
On the one hand, organizational performance can be improved by increasing human
capital, namely, the accumulated knowledge, skills, talent, and know-how of the
employees (Becker, 1964). Effective coaches are therefore demanded to carry out the
task of polishing up high potentials, fine-tuning talents, as well as rescuing managers at
risk. On the other hand, as Coff (1997) points out, human capital is different from other
tangible assets because of the freewill and mobility it possesses. Employees who receive
coaching can decide where they want to utilize the newly obtained skills and knowledge,
and this characteristic is especially true for today’s workforce. The generation of
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Millennials has a high level of careerism, which is defined as ‘a cosmopolitan career
strategy emphasizing a preference for changing organizations frequently to get ahead’
(De Hauw & De Vos, 2010, p.295), and tends to enact the idea of the boundaryless career
(Dries, et al., 2008; Tomlinson, 2007). Thus, corporations that are keen to invest in
developing talents, especially by hiring external coaches, have to take this uncertainty
and even risk into consideration due to the high cost it entails.
This study proposes that external business coaches, as the service provider to both
employees as coachees and employers as sponsors, play a crucial part in reconciling the
tension mentioned above. They have to be held accountable; on the one hand, for
satisfying coachee’s expectation of personal development which might or might not be
relevant to organizational goals; and on the other hand, for fulfilling sponsor’s need to
see the result of their investments. This dilemma is hereby defined as coaches’ two-client
problem which captures the additional challenge faced by company-hired coaches today.
Focusing on the perspectives of external coaches, this research aims to understand 1)
how they interpret the different purposes and meanings of coaching for organizations
and individual employees and 2) their ways of managing the relationship triangle (See
Fig. 1) and reconciling the tension should there be discrepancies of goals and needs
between the two equally important clients. It is in the hope that by such investigation,
one can answer whether company-hired coaches, besides making more effective leaders,
can also be used to achieve alignment between the coachees’ and the companies’ goals.
Figure 1. The Coaching Triangle
Coach
Coachee
Sponsor
5
1.
Research Questions
The primary goal of this research is to understand how coaches, specifically those who
are hired by corporations (either to develop internal talents and advance high potentials
or to modify the dysfunctional behaviors of their underperformers), perceive problems
arising from the relationship triangle illustrated above and consequently juggle with
different demands and expectations coming from employees and employers. Accordingly,
the research questions are formulated to capture this enquiry:

How do external coaches make sense of the ‘two-client problem’ and interpret the
different purposes and meanings of coaching activities for employees and
employers?

How do company-hired coaches manage the relationship triangle (i.e., the
two-client problem) in order to achieve alignment of goals and expectations
between sponsors and coachees?
2.
Academic & Social Relevance
Although coaching has been in existence too long to be a management fad (Cavanagh;
cited in Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006, p.23), it is still recognized as a field largely
under-investigated (Felman & Lankau, 2005; Kilburg, 2000; van Woerkom, 2010). The
practical literature outnumbers the academic counterpart in a far faster rate that even
coaching practitioners feel the need for more rigorous work being carried out (Felman &
Lankau, 2005; Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006). Responding to such request, this study aims
to contribute to the body of research on coaching by building and enriching theory
around how business coaching works. Recognizing that coaches today can no longer
leave sponsors out of the picture when they work to improve the effectiveness of the
coachee, we intend to advance knowledge in this triangle relationship and answer how
coaches can take organization’s needs into consideration without losing focus on
coachee’s personal and career development. Although not all company-hired coaches
perceive the two-client problem as defined above and some cases might demand more of
the reconciliation and goal alignment skills from the coaches than the other, this study
addresses the potential problematic issues coaches need to cope with and its results
might provide useful information to those who find themselves torn between the
different agendas between the coachee and the sponsors.
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Coaching relationship has been largely attributed as the critical factors in successful
coaching (Bluckert, 2005), but it continues to lack concerns from the academic studies
(O’Broin & Palmer, 2006). Even fewer has included coachee’s organization in this
relationship. As Stern (2004) rightly points out that the coach needs to take into account
the business of the coachee’s organization as much as the coachee him or herself and
work with both parties in partnership, this study follows the same line and further asks
how coaches can form the partnership with their two clients.
In his article discussing current and future trends of corporate coaching, Bluckert (2004)
asserts that, while the supply side of coaching market is growing rapidly, the demand
side is also becoming sharper and asking penetrating questions; they compare prices,
examine the effectiveness, and inquire specific questions on coaching processes and
techniques. Coaches today certainly need to make more efforts to clarify the
expectations from clients and foster informed choices. The answer to this research
question is hence of relevance to sponsors who, as coaching buyers, need to know
whether the money spent earns sufficient returns, or whether the investment ever
‘returns’; and to coachees that need to be assured that their expectations on personal
development are well-considered. By eliciting accounts from the coaches, this research
can provide useful insights to all three parties regarding how they can work together in
partnership to achieve maximum learning and impact.
3.
Overview
This report adopts the following structure:

Introduction: explaining research motivations and framing central questions

Theoretical background: reviewing literature and extracting relevant theories

Research
methodology &
methods: acknowledging
underlying
research
philosophy and explaining methods utilized to collect and analyze data

Findings: presenting research results

Conclusion and Discussion: summarizing learning points and contributions to the
existing literature and discussing limitations, implications, and future research
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II.
Theoretical Background
In this section, we draw on the theories and discourse of coaching, most of which built
on the experiences of practitioners. Ever since business coaching started to gain
popularity in the 1990s, a myriad of writers and researchers have attempted to
conceptualize key elements of coaching in their own ways. What turns out is a variety of
theories about coaching that is diversified in appearance yet convergent in essence. The
purpose of this literature review is to sort through the different ideas in order to lay a
more or less solid foundation upon which this study can be based. Most importantly, it
helps us to unveil a deep concern for the coaching relationship that this research aims to
address.
Coaching in Corporate Context
The word ‘coach’, in its rudimentary meaning, can be referred to a particular type of
carriage that ‘conveys a valued person from where he or she is to where he or she wants
to be’ (Witherspoon, 2000). Extended from this referent, ‘coaching’ today can be used to
express the process of equipping people with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities
they need to achieve desired personal and/or organizational goals (Feldman & Lankau,
2005). This study focuses on business coaching, which is a relatively nascent and
unestablished domain comparing to its sports counterpart. Emerging in the 1990s,
business coaching1 is described by Sherman & Freas (2004), using the metaphor of the
Wild West, as a frontier largely unexplored, chaotic, fraught with risk yet immensely
promising. In 2004, the research has already put the annual spending on coaching as
high as $1 billion, and this is solely the result in the United States. Today, large
companies like IBM, Bristol-Myers Squibb and many more choose to routinely offer
coaching as part of the executive development programs (Feldman & Lankau, 2005).
While coaching as a business tool continues to gain legitimacy (Coutu & Kauffman,
2009), it certainly still calls for more scrupulous examination on how and what it can
contribute to personal as well as organizational results
There are quite a few ways to define coaching, depending on which element of coaching
the writer wants to stress (See Table 1). Extracting from this overview of definitions, we
identified a few key components of coaching that most of the research effort is trying to
address. First of all, coaching is about the professional relationship between the coach
and the coachee that is characterized by reciprocity and strongly emphasized on trust
1
Often referred to as ‘executive coaching’ because of its constant demand from the development of
senior-level managers. Note: The distinction between executive coaching and other types of coaching is
recognized but not emphasized in this study.
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TABLE 1
Sample Definitions of (Executive) Coaching
Coaching Article
Definitions
Kilburg (1996b, p.142)
“...a helping relationship formed between a client who has managerial authority and responsibility in an
organization and a consultant who uses a wide variety of behavioral techniques and methods to help the
client achieve a mutually identified set of goals to improve his or her professional performance and
personal satisfaction and, consequently, to improve the effectiveness of the client’s organization within a
formally defined coaching agreement.”
Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck (1999, p.40)
“Coaching is meant to be a practical, goal-focused form of personal, one-on-one learning for busy
executives and may be used to improve performance or executive behavior, enhance a career or prevent
derailment, and work through organizational issues or change initiatives.
Witherspoon (2000, p.167)
“Executive coaching is an action-learning process to enhance effective action and learning agility. It
involves a professional relationship and a deliberate, personalized process to provide an executive with
valid information, free and informed choices based on that information, and internal commitment to
those choices.”
Stern (2004, p.154)
“Executive coaching is an experiential, individualized, leadership development process that builds a
leader’s capability to achieve short and long-term organizational goals. It is conducted through
one-on-one interactions, driven by data from multiple perspectives, and based on mutual trust and
respect. The organization, an executive, and the executive coach work in partnership to achieve maximum
learning and impact.”
Sherpa Executive Coaching Survey 2011
“Executive coaching means regular meetings between a business leader and a trained facilitator, designed
to produce positive changes in business behavior in a limited time frame.”
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and commitment. Utilizing well, coaching relationship can be a useful tool of change
(O'Broin & Palmer, 2006). Secondly, coaching is an individualized process that applies
tools and instruments to assess the focal person and to set mutually identified goals, so
that the third element, coaching outcome, can be reached through a systematic action
plan. Coaching directs the individual’s resources such as time and energy to improving
personal effectiveness. It can also be seen as a personal learning process that contributes
to the overall learning of the organization where the coachee is employed.
Corresponding to our identification of coaching components is Feldman’s (2001) article
in which similar three key elements were pointed out:

it [executive coaching] consists of one-on-one counseling about work-related
issues

it involves the use of 360-degree feedback on executives’ strengths and
weaknesses as its starting point

its purpose is to improve managers’ effectiveness in their current position
Having that sorted out, the following discussion will be based on these three key
elements, namely, coaching relationship, coaching process, and coaching outcome.
Coaching Relationship
Coaching relationship is, as Passmore (2007) called, a ‘partnership’ between the coach
and the coachee that determines largely the success of the coaching project (Bluckert,
2005; Kilburg, 1996b) and hence must be established before any deeper work can be
commenced. At the first contact, coaches are often introduced as advisors with broad
experiences in management, organizational politics, and sometimes even the particular
expertise in the field of the coachee’s organization (Levinson, 1996). They play the role
of advice- and guidance-giver and provide their insights of the business and the working
psychology to the coachees. Since coaching works essentially through providing
important feedbacks to the client (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999), effective coaching
requires the coach to be considered as knowledgeable and reliable by the coachees for
the feedbacks to be well-accepted and internalized. It is not to say that ‘winning’ the
coachee’s favor (i.e., trust of the coach’s competence) itself constitutes the condition for
successful coaching; instead, the coach needs to continue working on ‘maintaining’ the
relationship that encompasses mutual trust, respect, openness, and honesty (i.e., trust of
the coach’s integrity) (Bluckert, 2005; Passmore, 2007). On the one hand, coach is the
supportive mentor that listens and allows the coachee to show vulnerability; on the
other hand, coach is there to give the most candid comment on the coachee’s behavior
10
and to challenge the coachee’s thinking. To strike the balance between support and
challenge, as Bluckert (2005) points out, is one of the most important yet also one of the
most difficult tasks, among many others, of a coach.
As the word ‘partnership’ itself might already suggest, the relationship between coach
and coachee must be more collegial and egalitarian than dominating or authoritative
(Levinson, 1996). Similarly, Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck (1999) maintained that coaching is
not a one-way teaching in which coaches share their knowledge and insights with their
clients in order for them to perform better; instead, it is a two-way learning in which
coaches also learn from the organizations and their clients about the businesses they are
serving and the organizational politics that determines the effectiveness of coaching
process.
Albeit the coaching relationship is by its nature intimate and private between the coach
and the coachee, in the case of company-commissioned coaching projects, which this
study is dedicated to investigate, coachee’s organization plays an equally important part
as the system in which the coachee tries to function optimally and as the sponsor who
has its own interests and agenda to be satisfied. In these cases, the coach, the coachee,
and coachee’s organization form a relationship triangle that further complicates the job
of the coach. The coach has to satisfy the client, which is what Sherman and Freas (2004)
describe as a collection of interested parties, usually includes the coachee’s supervisor,
manager, and/or HR manager, and cope with the conflict of interests that might arise
from this relationship triangle.
Several writers have cautioned that the private nature of coaching process can give rise
to situations where the coachee wishes to lead the direction of coaching beyond or
opposite to where his or her organization has intended (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999;
Sherman & Freas, 2004). Coachees can exploit the opportunities of coaching for their
individual issues that might or might not have an influence on their organization’s
bottom-line results. Accordingly, companies are also growing conscious of the potential
risk of coaching going out of control (Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006).
External coaches, unlike their internal counterparts, are seen to have less advantage in
terms of understanding internal politics and encouraging alignment between personal
and organizational goals because of their role as an outsider (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck,
1999; Schnell, 2005). On the other hand, external coaches can enjoy more autonomy in
deciding what coaching activities to carry out and can promise more anonymity of the
information derived during coaching process. Feldman and Lankau (2009) expect that,
11
comparing to coaches hired by executives themselves, company-hired external coaches
will be more restrained in terms of the roles they play and the scope of activities they
can carry out. Organizations might also restrict the agenda of the coaching at the
beginning of the contract out of the worry that their best talents might be ‘coached out of
the job’ (Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006).
Coaching Process
The second key element concerns how coaches carry out a coaching trajectory. In this
study we do not attempt to probe into what exactly happened in the one or one and a
half hour of coaching session; neither are we interested in those different schools of
practices such as psychodynamic, behaviorist, or person-centered. Instead, our focus is
on how coaching can be proceeded in general, following the four stages below (Feldman
& Lankau, 2005; Thach, 2002):
1) contracting stage: the coach meets the client (individual client and/or organization
client) to discuss, develop, and negotiate the coaching contract, which includes the
goals, estimated resources, time frames, agreed-upon rules, confidentiality
commitment, potential methods, and costs of coaching. At this stage, all three parties,
the coach, the coachee, and the coachee’s organization, are engaged to create the
conditions of coaching and the foundations of coaching relationships.
2) data collection stage: coachees are assessed and analyzed using tools such as
personality and skill inventories, 360 feedback, and one-on-one interview by the
coach with supervisors, colleagues, customers and sometimes even the family and
friends of the client. The coach here can facilitate digestion of the feedbacks by
discussing with the coachee his or her strengths and weaknesses in job performance
and the coachee’s connections in the workplace. Based on Witherspoon’s (2000)
definition of coaching, this phase aims to provide the valid information about the
client, which enables the informed choices and internal commitment to the action
plan in the later stage.
3) coaching stage: the coach and the coachee sit down to discuss and analyze the results
of the data and come up with action plan to improve the status quo and to overcome
identified issues. The coachee’s progress is monitored with the help of his or her
superior and/or HR manager.
4) evaluation stage: the coach rounds off the coaching session with an investigation on
the overall improvement of the coachee’s effectiveness at work. Usually the coachee’s
12
supervisor and/or HR manager will again be involved to discuss the outcomes of the
coaching. At this stage, the coachee is transferred back to the organizational system
in which he or she has found a new perspective that enables more effective work
behaviors or attitudes.
During contracting period, it is important that the coach and the coachee together decide
a mutually agreed coaching agenda based on the coaching needs perceived by the
coachee. Witherspoon (2000) further identifies four situational factors to assess
coaching needs:

Clarity: the extent to which relevant parties (the executive, boss, others)
understand the business reasons for coaching, the primary coaching focus, specific
coaching goals, success measures, and so on.

Consensus: the extent to which relevant parties agree about the business reasons
for coaching, the primary coaching focus, success measures, and so on.

Commitment: the extent to which relevant parties are committed to goal
achievement and continually evaluate their own performance against these goals.

Control: The extent to which relevant parties consider the coaching goals to be
realistic and achievable.
The four situational factors are highly interrelated: once the most important factor, goal
clarity, is in place (i.e., parties know clearly what the mutually defined success is and
how to achieve it), higher degree of consensus, commitment, and control are likely to
follow. Having that said, it is imperative for all parties to pursue high goal clarity up front
for the optimal coaching outcomes.
Coaching Outcomes
Following the coaching goals come the expected coaching results. Hall, Otazo, &
Hollenbeck (1999) classify outcomes of coaching into four types of ‘protean learning’,
with the aspects of coachee’s professional and personal life as well as the short term and
long term effects: regarding the occupational behavior, the executive coachees learn to
perform better in the short term and are able to adapt better in the long term; as for
their personal life, they become more patient and more confident and the alternation of
attitudes in turn leads to identity change in the long run. Similarly, Witherspoon (2000)
credits coaching for two personal outcomes - effective action and learning agility. In
other words, coachees, after receiving important feedback about their personality and
13
professional performance that are normally unavailable from friends and family, are able
to accomplish more and learn better. This change in effectiveness can be seen as a result
of gaining new perspectives about themselves. Overall, coachees become more conscious
about their own behavior as the coaching process unfolds (Truijen & van Woerkom,
2008); they make more observation, become more interested and curious about their
own process, discover untapped potential, and learn to solve their own problems
through their increased self-awareness and enhanced competences. All of these changes
in behavior and attitude mentioned above render the coachee more flexible, better
prepared should there be an organizational change, and hence better suited for the
rapidly changing demand of the environment (Feldman & Lankau, 2005; Hall, Otazo, &
Hollenbeck, 1999).
In most cases, coaching is being seen as an effective intervention not only for personal
development but also for organizational goals. In principle, by contributing to improving
the coachee’s professional performance and personal satisfaction, coaching can bring
about improvement of effectiveness within the coachee’s organization (Kilburg, 1996b).
Companies are willing to spend time and money on coaching because they believe the
fate of an organization, success or failure, is closely tied to its leadership effectiveness
(Kilburg, 1996a). For example, coaching can help where the leaders lack personal drive
or appreciation of organizational culture and team cohesiveness to make strategic plan
for the entire company (Stern, 2004). Managers can also learn from their coaches the
effective way to communicate with their subordinates concerning expressing
performance expectations and providing feedback. As a result, the performance
management of the leader’s organization is likely to be enhanced (Stern, 2004;
Witherspoon, 2000).
This one-on-one consultation process is also seen by companies as the solution to the
problematic behaviors of their high potentials or senior managers (Hall, Otazo, &
Hollenbeck, 1999; Levinson, 1996), because only when the focal persons come to realize
that their certain behavior keeps putting them in the conflicting situation can they learn
to avoid them. Moreover, coaching is ‘a form of active learning that transfers essential
communication and relationship skills’ (Sherman & Freas, 2004, p.3). Through working
on clients’ relationships with others and their ability to utilize the resources around
them, coaching can be helpful not only for the coachees to get a sense of control over the
environment and gain satisfaction from their work but also for the organizations that
want to smooth off the rough edges of the leaders and fine-tune images and reputations
with colleagues (Feldman, 2001).
14
In addition, corporations also use coaching to fulfill their responsibilities of developing
talent (Fillery-Travis & Lane, 2006; Witherspoon, 2000), articulating and amplifying the
knowledge residing in their employees to reinforce the performance of the organization,
and build pipelines for the key positions (Sherman & Freas, 2004). Overall, Companies
fare better with increased human capital, including expended knowledge and know-how
(Becker, 1964).
It appears that coaching as a management tool can flawlessly deliver the desired
organizational outcomes through their better functioning employees. While this logic is
true in most of the cases, one can argue that it ignores the independency and mobility of
coachees as free individuals who have free wills and can make their own choices.
Consider that what the employees are doing with their coaches, including reflecting their
own behaviors, their personal drives, and their workplace connections, is actually an
investment in their own career competencies. The focal person works together with his
or her coach on the knowing-why (i.e., beliefs, values, and identities with the employing
firm’s culture), knowing-how (i.e., career-relevant skills and job-related knowledge), and
knowing-whom (i.e., the set of career-relevant network) competencies (See DeFillippi &
Arthur, 1994; Arthur, Claman, & DeFillippi, 1995). Indeed, organizations are believed to
learn and adapt better to the rapidly-changing environment by drawing on their
individual employee’s learning capacity (Weick, 1996). So companies seek to tap the
enhanced competencies from the coached employees and to assimilate them into part of
the corporate culture, overall know-how, and inter- and intra-firm networks.
In the coachee’s perspective, however, by investing in their three ways of knowing, they,
as career actors, are invited to rethink the concept of jobs and careers in a new light
(Arthur, Claman, & DeFillippi, 1995). The new perspective prepares them to face the
challenges of work today that do not exist in the time of employment security and
hierarchical corporate structure. It further enables them to manage their career
intelligently regardless of the organizational boundary. Knowing why competencies
challenge the idea of secure, permanent job and, instead, ask the career actor ‘why’ they
work and what meanings they find in the job. Knowing how competencies encourage the
job-holder to attain knowledge, skills, and abilities beyond the needs of current work
situation. Knowing whom competencies request employees to work on interpersonal
relationships beyond organizational networks. Corresponding to this discourse is Ito &
Brotheridge’s (2005) findings that investing in employees’ career adaptability and
resilience by means of career development activities can increase their organizational
commitment and leaving intentions both at the same time. The increased commitment is
due to the fact that organizations are the ones who sponsor the opportunities for career
15
development; hence, the employees devote themselves affectively to their organization
in return. On the other hand, coaching, as one type of career development activities, can
facilitate the coachee’s mobility and promote the boundaryless career patterns which
might lead to turnover intentions.
Since a firm’s performance is determined largely by its ‘human capital’ (see Becker,
1964), or ‘intelligent capital’, which is, as Sherman & Freas (2004) described, a resource
regarded no less precious than money itself, it can be assumed that companies would
not be overjoyed to see their best performers walk away from their job, especially those
whom they ‘invest’ to go from good to great. We can say that organizations are
confronted with the dilemma when deciding whether to invest in their employees’
career development. If “career management is a risk management process” (Baruch,
2006, p.132), maybe we can ask whether coaching can add value by helping to bring out
the optimal results for both the employee being coached and the employer who pays the
bill.
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III. Research Methodology & Methods
The purpose of this study is to understand the defined problem (i.e., the two-client
problem) in coaches’ account and answer the two ‘how’ questions proposed; including
how coaches make sense of the two-client problem and how they bridge the expectation
gap between the coachee and the sponsor. The reality behind these enquiries is not facts
or laws per se, but is constructed and interpreted by the actors within the social contexts.
The approach adopted in this study is therefore that of a constructivist which involves
collecting and analyzing data from the shared experiences of the participants and the
researcher. It can also be said that the researcher aims to learn participants' implicit
meanings of their experiences in order to build a conceptual analysis of them (Charmaz,
2002). It is important to note that this study explicitly embraces the reality as mutually
constructed by the participants and the researcher. Such acknowledge allows the
thoughts and the logic of the researcher to be reflected in the selected data, the coding
scheme, and the data analysis.
Recognizing that coaching theory is still in its infancy with many blank spaces to be filled
(Felman & Lankau, 2005; van Woerkom, 2010), our research aims to increase density of
knowledge in this area by addressing what has been glossed over. For a long time, the
question of ‘how coach should act in the coaching triangle’ has been mentioned as a
word of caution and has never taken the central stage as ‘the issue’ to be dealt with. In a
rather nascent filed like this, it is strongly recommended by Edmondson & McManus
(2007) to adopt inductive, theory-building research method in order to achieve
methodological fit.
The rationale of research philosophy and strategy mentioned above has suggested that
qualitative interviews shall be preferred over surveys and other quantifiable measures.
Conducting interviews can add to the knowledge base, according to Barbour (2008), by
questioning a new group of people about a topic, or by questioning people about a new
topic. One can say that this research attempts to do both because it targets not coaches
in general but a sub-category of them which is external and in most cases developmental;
and it asks questions about the ‘two-client problem’ that is defined and stressed in this
study. Precisely how the interview was carried out and analyzed will be detailed in the
coming section.
17
1.
Data Collection
Prior to data collection, we revisited existing coaching literature, specifically those that
are published in academic journals. The purpose to embark on literature review is
two-fold. Firstly, the readings equip the researcher with knowledge necessary to carry
out the study. It facilitates the interview by knowing what relevant questions to ask and
by understanding the languages used by coaches. Furthermore, it enables us to
interrogate the data later on by constantly comparing and contrasting collected data
with existing theories (Barbour, 2008). Secondly, by revisiting issues that have been
widely discussed, we can avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ and causing the problem of
‘theoretical congestion’ (Morse, 2000), in which the researchers fail to “locate their
findings within the wider context of existing work” (Barbour, 2008, p.234). As earlier
mentioned, the relationship triangle of coaching, despite being recognized as an
important issue, has not yet been properly addressed with research rigor. Hence, the
research and the goals it intends to achieve – providing insights into coaching within
corporate context - gained their legitimacy during this preparation stage.
1.1 Sample & Context
In order to elicit authentic account on coach’s two-client problem and investigate it in
great depth, the researcher set out to sample purposively (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill,
2009), selecting respondents with seniority in practicing and/or managing coaching
activities in the Netherlands. The challenge of this task lies in the nature of this
profession. Most external coaches, even those that are employed by consultancies, work
independently without a fixed work schedule and face time, making the data collection
process - locating, persuading, and making appointment with each individual coach –
particularly lengthy and strenuous.
Initially, an association for more than 40 coaching, career counseling, and outplacement
organizations in the Netherlands were targeted and several of its member consultancies
were approached with the tentative research proposal. As a result, one of the board
members in this association showed interests in the proposed study and expressed the
willingness to make introduction on the behalf of the researcher. This key informant
plays the role of, as Odendahl & Shaw (2002) called, a gatekeeper who directs the
researcher to other individuals in his network and facilitates the access to the targeted
respondents. (The next section further shows how this gatekeeper can add extra value
to this research by cooperating in a piloting study.) Apart from utilizing the network of
this key figure, we continued to look for potential source of participants through the
18
researcher’s own network and via social network platform such as LinkedIn. Also,
subsequent to each interview, the responding coach or senior advisor was asked to
identify colleagues or friends who are suitable for participating in this research. Such
snowball sampling technique, despite time-consuming and prone to result in a
homogeneous sample
(Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009), is proven to be effective
when the interview targets are of high status and thus difficult to access for student
researchers. Moreover, it is believed that the sample homogeneity caused by snowball
sampling can be counteracted by sampling across a wide variety of consultancies.
The result of this data collection stage is a sample of 22 interviewees (See Table 2) from
14 different coaching organizations: a majority of 17 practice coaching either within a
consultancy (N=6), or in their own practice as a partner (N=8) or the owner (N=3). Only
one interviewee practices coaching as a free-lancer; however, at the final stage of data
analysis we had to drop her out of the sample due to the few years of experience in
coaching (0.5 year). Another special case is when we interviewed two coaches at the
same time. Because those two normally practice coaching as a pair, the interview was
coded and analyzed as if from one single respondent. In the end, the experience in
coaching of our sample interviewees ranges from 3.5 to 25 years. Among all
interviewees, only 3 of them, while do not practice coaching themselves, manage
coaching activities as part of their job duties and are often involved in the coaching
relationship with the coachee and the coachee’s organization who sponsors the coaching.
Last but not least, we have included one board member of a career professional
certifying body in the Netherlands in our sample to share his 27 years of experience on
the subject.
1.2 Interview Guide
The interview questions were developed originally by the researcher based on the
literature reviewed and some basic assumptions, such as: coaching is likely to lead to
coachee’s career switch and organizations might be reluctant to release talented
employees. During the piloting study, the first set of 22 questions was presented and
tested on the key informant mentioned earlier to check the validity, and the answers
provided by the interviewee have rendered several enquiries irrelevant to the central
theme of the research, trimming down the measurement into 10 to 12 revised questions.
19
Table 2: Interviewee Profile Overview
Code
Position
Areas of coaching*
Certification**
Note
T01
Manager
EC, DC, PC
CMI, NOBOL, NOLOC
HR advisory
C02
Coach, trainer
EC, DC, PC, OC
CMI, NOBOL, NOLOC, LVSC
HR advisory
E03
Coach
EC, DC, PC, OC
CMI, NOBOL, NOLOC
HR advisory, partner
F04
Manager
A05
Coach
EC, DC
H06
Coach, advisor
EC, DC, PC, OC
NIP
HR advisory
J07
Coach, managing
EC, DC, PC, OC
CMI
HR advisory
HR advisory
HR advisory
consultant
F08
Coach
EC, DC, PC
Business result company,
partner
E09
Coach
NIP, NV02
Self-employed
D10
Coach, trainer, manager
EC, DC, PC, OC
CMI, NOBOL, NOLOC
HR advisory
E11
Coach
PC
NIP, Ooa
HR advisory, partner
K12
Coach, trainer
EC, DC, PC, OC
HR advisory, partner
A13
Coach, consultant,
DC, PC, OC
HR advisory, partner
trainer
S14
Coach, trainer
EC, DC
Free-lancer
L15
Coach
EC, DC, PC
Self-employed
P16
Board member
EC, DC, PC, OC
CMI, NOBOL, NOLOC
Career professionals
examination institute
A17
Coach, trainer
DC, PC
LVSC
Self-employed
E18
Coach
EC, OC
NOBOL, NOLOC
HR advisory
H&J19
Coach
EC, DC, PC
A20
Coach
EC, DC, PC
L21
HRD advisor
DC, PC
HR advisory, partner
NIP, Ooa
HR advisory, partner
HR advisory
*EC: Executive coaching
**CMI: Career Management Institute
DC: Developmental coaching
NOBOL: Nederlandse Organisatie van Bureaus voor
PC: Performance coaching
Outplacement en Loopbaanbegeleiding
OC: Outplacement coaching
NOLOC: Orde voor Loopbaanadviseurs en
Outplacement Consulenten
NIP: Nederlands Instituut van Psychologen
LVSC: Landelijke Vereniging voor Supervisie en Coaching
Ooa: Orde van organisatiekundigen en -adviseurs
20
In general, the interview began with the interviewee briefly describing the process of
coaching in corporate context (i.e., commissioned by organizations), including first
contact with the client, the intake conversation, the coaching session, and the evaluation
of coaching outcomes. Interviewees were then asked to provide examples of challenges
encountered during coaching process concerning their ‘two clients’, especially situations
where the coachee expresses intention of leaving the company during the coaching. The
purpose here is to elicit how coaches communicate their role to the organization who
sponsors the coaching. The interviewer also leaves spaces for the interviewee to lead the
direction wherever deemed relevant. As Barbour (2008) refers, this semi-structured
aspect of interview is crucial because it inhibits the researcher from dictating the
direction of the encounter. Furthermore, the interview questions were modified and
refined through the accumulation of data to accommodate emerging themes and
theories, while maintaining focus on the central theme of the research – the relationship
triangle among coach, coachee, and coachee’s organization. Consistent with what
Odendahl & Shaw (2002) have described as ‘internalizing the instruments’, the
interviewer was in the end able to let the interviewee talk and at the same time lead
them to the relevant issues.
The interview was conducted in English instead of the interviewees’ native language,
Dutch, and was thus liable to some roadblock of communication and understanding. In
order to mitigate the inconvenience of searching through lexicon and the risk of losing
essence of the intended meaning, the interviewer encourages the respondent to say, if
necessary, the specific word in its original language, Dutch. In that case, the interviewer
can either provide the English translation on the spot with her knowledge in Dutch
language or look up the meaning later during transcription.
The duration of each interview ranges from 27 to 68 minutes. Each interview was
video-recorded after the informed consent agreement was signed by both the
interviewer and the interviewee to guarantee the anonymity of the interviewee.
Subsequent to the interview, the conversation was transcribed verbatim and the
transcription double-checked for mishearing or typos.
2.
Data Analysis
Taking Barbour’s (2008) advice, the analysis of this research took place concurrently
with data collection in an iterative fashion. Each interview was transcribed, coded,
compared to other interviews, and used to interrogate the existing and the forming
theory frameworks; in other words, the analysis is ‘grounded’ by the data collected (See
21
Glaser and Strauss, 1967). We deliberately chose not to use research software program
for coding and further analysis in order to avoid problems arising from learning how to
do qualitative research and how to use specific computer package at the same time
(Barbour, 2008). Basically, the analysis is carried out through the following two stages:
Stage 1:
At the early phase of data collection (c.a., interview 1-8), we apply open coding and
prepare next to each transcription a summary with initial analysis of the emerging
themes. For instance, we have found at this stage that coaches identify the ‘two-client
problem’ more often when organization misuses coaching to get rid of employees
instead of when coachee takes advantage of coaching to find another job, as we earlier
assumed. It also came to our notice that some coaches do not even perceive the
relationship triangle as problematic as long as they are ‘clear with what they are doing.’
Through this iterative data processing procedure, it became clear that new findings can
be extracted from the subsequent interview declined gradually with the increasing
amount of the data; in other words, the marginal gain of the new insights is decreasing.
By the end of processing the eighth interview, we decided to move on to close coding
and make changes only when new information lends itself to critical emerging themes.
Stage 2:
After the transcription of the twelfth interview was prepared, we were ready to sort the
data into two categories: one is the when the coaches describe the ‘two-client problem’
as they perceive it, and the other one when they give account how they solve the
problem mentioned. Within each category we further break down the problem and the
solution into sub-categories. For instance, the two-client problem can be related either
to the coachee or the coachee’s organization, or both. With the help of spreadsheet, the
data was arranged into categories and sub-categories with the original quotes attached
next to it as evidence. The final presentation of the findings (Refer to Table 3 & 4) is the
result of iterative arranging and re-arranging data in search of the most proper way
possible to conceptualize interviewees’ accounts. Lastly, we attempt to give readers the
clearest picture possible of the discussed problem by utilizing examples and cases
provided by our respondents in the analysis.
22
IV. Findings
In this section we arrange our findings into two parts, which are, respectively, ‘what is
the two-client problem’ and ‘how do coaches resolve it’. By organizing our analysis in this
sequence we attempt not only to build and enrich theory of coaching around the
relationship triangle that are encountered by many coaches today, but also to give the
whole analysis a storyline with the revelation of the problem and eventually the solution
to it.
1.
Making Sense of the Two-Client Problem
“If there’s a hidden agenda, the coach will always lose, because either one of the parties
will be dissatisfied.” --- (F04, Manager)
Before we can answer how coaches solve the problems arising from the relationship
triangle with their two clients, one is the coachee whose career development is at stake
and the other one is the coachee’s organization who pays the bill, we must ask what
exactly the problems are; in other words, what it entails when the coach is said to
encounter the ‘two-client problem’. Hence, here we first define the problem through the
coach’s account as a disagreement between the coachee and the sponsor on coaching
process or coaching goals that would lead to situations in which either the coaching
trajectory needs to be suspended or the outcome of it can only be suboptimal. This
discrepancy, regardless in needs, expectation, or purpose, can pose to coaches as an
extra challenge aside from what they have to deal with in the one-on-one relationship
with the coachee.
Next we break down the problem into those that are related to coachee’s organization,
the coachee him- or herself, or both (Refer to Table 3). By conceptualizing the defined
problem, we attempt to give it a theoretical structure.
23
Table 3: Coach’s Account on the ‘Two-Client Problem’
Two-Client Problems
Problems related Hidden agenda
Account
“I think the problem is most of the time that the company, the employer is
to coachee’s
not open about the performance of the employee. So they think, ‘Ok, I’ll
organization:
hire a coach and with a coach the employee will decide, “Ok, I have to
leave,” so that’s more easy for us, for the company, so we don’t have a
conflict or something like that.’” (E18)
“The wrong reason could be that they have a negative ambition, they’re
looking to fire people, and they wanna use us to kind of point out why
these people need to be fired.” (F08)
Privacy issue
“So it’s confidential, so I can’t say, ‘Ok, he or she is having problem in this ....’
So it’s always difficult to convince a manager or HR if they’re impatient.
“ (E09)
“You as a coachee has a privacy, I am not allowed to tell about that to your
manager. Problems in the dilemma have most of the time to do with the
privacy!” (E03)
Limited time frame
“...there was no intake with human resource manager, and there was no
intake of with the manager.... Then there is no proposal, or there is very
small proposal, or there was not a good intake. The rules are not clear,
then things go wrong!” (E3)
“...someone doesn’t recover quickly enough... and doesn’t do his job very
well, and they [coachee’s organization] want to give him or her a chance
but can’t wait any longer. (E09)
Problems related Hidden agenda
to coachee:
“And now I come to the conflict of interest. If I, in an intake conversation,
discover that the employee has other goals than I have been informed of
by the manager, I stop the conversation because that has not been
discussed between the individual, the employee, and the manager in the
company. (T1)
“...there is a man and he wants to be coached also, and his question is, ‘What
do I really want?’ But then after the question came, ‘And do I want that in
this organization?’ And then I had to say, ‘Stop, when you’re looking
maybe another organization, then we have another contract.’” (A05)
24
Problems related
Divergent perceptions
to both clients
or opinions between
was clear this person really wants to look what his next step, can be in or
the two clients
outside the company, and then if the manager by that time says, “No I
“But imagine I would have a coaching trajectory and from beginning on I
don’t want it, because I want him to create happiness and stay with us.” I
cannot do the coaching.” (D10)
“That can also be conflict between the vision of the coachee who thinks I
can grow to another job and the vision of the client [coachee’s
organization] who thinks she cannot grow into another job.... So then you
have the conflict.” (J07)
Incongruence between “...there will only be a conflict of interest, I think, if the needs of the
personal and
organizational goals
employee doesn’t match the needs of the company, point.” (T1)
“So it always gets difficult if the task you get from the one who pays you not
integrate with the path the coachee has to go. Then it’s getting difficult.”
(A20)
1.1 Problems related to coachee’s organization
Hidden agenda
The most common ‘two-client problem’ identified by coaches during the interview is the
hidden agenda of the ‘opdrachtgever’ (Dutch: ‘Sponsor’), which can be the coachee’s
supervisor, reporting manager, or HR manager. A typical situation of this can be when
the ‘opdrachtgever’, literarily meaning ‘the person who gives the assignment’, is
considering the suitability of a particular employee, regardless whether the ‘suitability’
is defined by the employee’s performance, potential development in the company, or
interaction with co-workers; yet at the same time is not able or willing to openly discuss
this concern with the employee. In other words, this supervisor or manager looks to
coaching as a way of ‘buying out’ the problem and saving them from directly confronting
the troubled employees. It is, in one of the coach’s word, a ‘negative ambition’ of hiring a
coach, because the coaching result is then predetermined by company to ‘get rid of ’
undesired personnel. An example given by the coach is as follows:
25
“...you can’t say they don’t perform, but they don’t perform enough for me
and the effect I want to get. They have to leave, I need strong, new managers.
I will not be able to develop them anymore. They are 45 or 50 plus and lack
of energy....” So I ask him, “Well, do you discuss outplacement with them?” He
said, “I can’t! I can only try to motivate them to leave the company, but can
you have intake with a number of those people and then try to sell, but don’t
call it, outplacement?” (T01)
The problem of this kind of coaching intention is that the coach is made to side with the
company, take up the roles of the manager, and eventually prevent the necessary
confrontation between the manager and the problematic employee from happening.
Moreover, since there is bound to be dishonesty in the coaching triangle of such
assignment when it comes to agreeing on expectations and goals, the coach is risking
losing credibility from the coachee which all the rest of the coaching process shall be
based upon (Bluckert, 2005). If we examine this situation with Witherspoon’s (2000)
three core values of coaching: because the coach, when working for company’s hidden
agenda, fails to provide valid information (e.g., truthful feedbacks from the 360 degree)
for the coachee, thus making the coachee’s choices uninformed and further leaving his or
her action plan uncommitted. Hence, hidden agenda of coachee’s organization is viewed
by the coach as a ‘two-client problem’ that can put his or her professional integrity in
danger.
Privacy issue
Although external coaches enjoy a great deal of independency as to how the coaching
should be proceeded and what goals to be reached together with the coachee comparing
to their internal counterpart (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999), they are nevertheless
commissioned by organizations and thus are obliged to report back from time to time
the progress of coaching. According to our interviewees, coaches can establish during
the contracting phase a few moments of contact with the sponsors, such as an interim
and a final evaluation. Normally, the coach is able to provide the information needed to
appease the curiosity of the ‘coaching stakeholder’, the organization, without breaching
the privacy of the coachee (e.g., personal or family issues that are not meant to be known
by other organizational members); however, a few of our respondents do indicate that
there are cases, especially those that involves dysfunctional employees, when the
organization gets a bit ‘nosy’ and places more pressure than necessary on the coach to
reveal coaching details, as one of our respondents describes:
26
They [coachee’s organization] want to know everything; they want to know that
somebody shows up, if somebody cooperates, they want to know everything. But
I’m very reluctant to that. It is the privacy between the coachee and coach. (J07)
The consequence of breaching coachee’s privacy is twofold: firstly, coach, as a
professional, has its code of ethics to be followed, and one of them listed by European
Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) under the title of ‘integrity’ is to maintain the level
of confidentiality agreed upon at the beginning of the relationship throughout the
coaching process and to disclose information only when it is explicitly endorsed by the
coachee. Having that said, it is thus regarded as ‘unethical’ if the coach surrenders under
the pressure of the organization to reveal coachee’s personal details discussed in the
coaching session, even if the information can be used to explain coachee’s derailed
behaviors at work. Secondly, spilling the beans of the coachee can be deemed as a strong
violation of the trust in coach-coachee relationship. As mentioned earlier, coaching is
destined to fail without that key element as foundation to generate the energy for change.
Thereby coaches are again facing dilemmas resulted from the two clients; on the one
hand the coach has to keep the privacy of the coachee intact and on the other hand he or
she also has to take care of the inquisitiveness coming from coachee’s organization. It is
suspected that this particular issue can become even more problematic when the
coaching buyer today is asking sharper questions and demanding a more transparent
coaching process (Bluckert, 2004). Furthermore, this two-client problem can be
complicated by the limited time horizon of the company for the coaching result which
will be illustrated next.
Limited time frame
In order to build up a sound structure and relationship of optimal coaching, time is a
necessary investment. The three parties need to take time to understand each other’s
purpose of coaching and eventually reach an agreement of coaching goals that
“genuinely further their own interests as well as the common good” (Sherman & Freas,
2004, p. 3). Not to mention that coaching usually requires the coachee to reflect on his
behavior and to push the limit of his comfort zone (Peterson, 1996), which is certainly
not something for a quick fix. Diedrich (1996) even explicitly cautioned the coach not to
take assignment of less than six months in duration, concerning all the details needed to
be taken care of during the entire coaching process (i.e., contracting, data collection,
coaching, and evaluation). However, time is valuable resource, and so is the money spent
on coaching. Management can be inclined to pull back when they do not see the prospect
of on-going coaching or simply when they are tight with the budget. The coach can thus
27
hit upon difficulties if the time horizon needed is not permitted or if the sponsor is
getting impatient with the progress of the coaching, because, as a coach, coachee’s
readiness is also an important factor to be taken into consideration. A coach had shared
this concern with us during the interview:
She had a heavy story, a heavy life story, and she was doing progress, but not so
quickly as the company wants to. And then I feel that’s hard, because the woman
was really doing very good in the coaching, reflecting good and open for
confrontation, trying to do new tools, but I can’t manage process to do
quicklier...it’s not a process like fixing coffee or something, you’re dealing with
life and living material and that has its own rhythm. (A05)
Our example illustrates a contradiction many coaches today have to face: the needs of
the individuals versus the interests of the commons. Coaching is supposed to be
tailor-made to address each individual coachee’s problem and development, so certainly
there will be difference in time and efforts needed to bring out the same quality of
results, if ever possible, for different individuals. At the same time, coaching has to be
placed under scrutiny in terms of bottom line profit, which renders every single hour
with the coach a payable on the account. As Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck (1999) recognized,
coaching works least well when timing is poor and when the coach is impatient about
the coachee’s learning. How to cope with the pressure coming from the coachee’s
organization without turning to push the coachee thus presents to the coach as yet
another ‘two-client problem’.
1.2 Problems related to coachee
Hidden Agenda
By leading the focal person to go on a journey to the inner self and to reflect on his or her
strengths and weaknesses, coaching can actually help with gaining new perspectives as
well as taking control over one’s own career. What’s more, through this individualized
learning process, the employability and leadership effectiveness of the coachee can also
be enhanced (Parker & Arthur, 2004), hence making him or her more attractive in the
job market. Based on these personal benefits of coaching, we have been suspecting from
the beginning of this investigation that coaching can be easily misused by the coachee as
a spring board to ‘hop’ to a yet better job. While this scenario is intuitively and
theoretically plausible, we look to our respondents for the validation of our hypothetical
28
problem. And here is the account from one of our interviewees who recalled herself
being caught in the coachee’s hidden agenda to leave the company with better
alternatives:
And then I thought, “Hey, listen, your manager, your company is paying me for
helping you find your way in your function, and at the same time you’re asking
me to find something else. That’s a conflict.” (H06)
Similar to those coaches who encounter hidden agendas from the coachee’s organization,
the coach here is made to take side of one of the clients and to go beyond or directly
opposite to what has been commonly agreed among the coach, the coachee, and the
sponsor. What can aggravate the situation is that the coachee might attempt to exploit
the private space that is shared together with the coach and to make career
advancement outside the sponsoring organization without them knowing it. While the
coach should be genuinely committed to the career achievement of the coachee, one
should not forget that the ultimate success lies in the achievements of all the coaching
stakeholders, which certainly include coachee’s organization (Sherman & Freas, 2004).
Not to mention that the consequences of neglecting sponsor’s needs can simply mean
the end of customer relations.
However, one thing we would like to note here is our discovery that coachee’s hidden
agenda does not often come from a negative intention as we have presumed. Instead of
tricking the coach to find them another job, coachees can have the motives to be silent
about their career movement when considering their own suitability for the job but are
not yet convinced by the thoughts of leaving. A lot of employees also avoid showing
careerism because they do not feel that the company would support their career
development, especially if that means leaving the current organization. So they are afraid
of being blacklisted by the company and losing their job before they can weigh all the
different options, as the following example attempts to illustrate:
I have people coming to me and say, “Can I do a career check?” “I’ll inform your
manager, I’ll let him know because they’ll have to pay.” “No no no no no, I don’t
want him to know that I’m doing this.” Because they don’t feel secure, they don’t
feel safe. They think, “Well, next reorganization they’ll just skip my name,
because I’m already looking.” (F04)
29
Nonetheless, thoughts like leaving intentions are difficult to escape from the scrutiny of
the coach, who is there to ask questions and demand honesty. So when that intention is
spotted, it is truly a challenge for the coach to turn the table around and create the
win-win situation out of the dilemma.
1.3 Problems related to both clients
Divergent perceptions or opinions between the two clients
The last group of the two-client problem to be discussed can come from the incongruent
information that the coach received from the coachee and the sponsor. Coaches can meet
difficulties when the coachee expresses conflicting opinions against that of his or her
manager (i.e., ‘opdrachtgever’) concerning, for example, what questions to address, what
goals to achieve, or what competencies to improve. While sometimes the problem can
arise simply because the coachee cannot or is not willing to recognize the issue that has
been expressed by his or her manager, a worse scenario can be when these incompatible
perceptions attempt to use coaching as a ground to wrestle each other. One of our
interviewees provided an example of how she found herself stuck in-between the two
clients’ conflicting opinions:
...he [coachee] was a manager and he found he’s been treated unjust, and he
wanna use the coaching to prove that he was ok in his job. And his manager felt
he was not ok as a manager and he wanna use the coaching as a proof that he
was not ok.... (D10)
As our literature review indicated that goal clarity is essential for optimal coaching
because of its interrelation with other important factors, including consensus,
commitment, and control (Witherspoon, 2000), a fuzzy starting point is definitely the
least desirable for the coach. When the consensus is falling apart due to discrepancy in
perceptions or needs, neither of the party would commit themselves a hundred percent
to the coaching process. Moreover, conflicting views could also frustrate coaching
process by blocking both clients’ openness for coaching outcomes. In practice, when the
coachee cannot agree on the problems or themes his or her organization has identified
to work on during the coaching, he or she simply would not endorse the coaching
proposal and the assignment would grind to a halt. For this reason, the coach can
encounter serious obstacles carrying out coaching when her two clients cannot agree
with each other.
30
Incongruence between personal and organizational goals
What has distinguished this two-client problem from the one that we have just
addressed is that instead of having both clients coming in with different ideas, the coach
can find out together with the coachee during those one-on-one sessions whether the
match actually exists between the focal person and his or her organization. As the coach
set out to investigate, for instance, the reasons for the coachee’s dysfunctional behaviors
at work, he or she might discover the real problem lying deep under: the development
needs of the coachee cannot be fulfilled in the sponsoring organization. In other words,
there appears to be a missing link between the person’s career competencies (i.e.,
knowing-why, knowing-how, and knowing-whom) and the organization’s core
competencies. The following example provided by the career development manager
during the interview can give an idea on how this two-client problem can occur:
If that is your conviction and you want to become a project manager, yeah, look
for another company who may invest in that education, development, or yet,
spend the money yourself and afterwards going to apply another company, but I
will not pay for that.... You won’t improve skills or whatever which is not in line
with the company’s needs. That’s almost the reality. (T01)
Although organizational goals can by no means capture or represent the personal goals
entirely; according to Gross (1969), organization can provide means to take care of
personal goals of the people in it so that those people will be motivated enough to forgo
those goals that are incongruent with the direction the organization is taking. Companies
can offer financial incentives as well as development opportunities for the employees to
take part in achieving the company goals, given that their paths are, if not overlapping,
parallel to each other at certain point. However, in those cases where the employee can
no longer be motivated to participate in moving along with the company and where the
low morale is turning to dysfunctional behaviors; the task for the coach can be difficult if
either the employee or the company is not willing to come to terms with the problem.
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2.
Reconciliation Strategies of the Two-Client Problem
K: But you told me before that you don’t perceive this as a conflict situation?
D10: No I meant to say that I don’t find it difficult because it’s very clear! Our lines, it’s
very clear my ethics and how we deal with it, so I don’t find it a problem.
After identifying the six major two-client problems acknowledged by our responding
coaches, we now turn to the part where they talk about how they react in the situation of
two-client dilemmas.
Whilst identifying the problematic situations of coaching regarding the two clients is one
of our goals in carrying out the research, we have noticed throughout the investigation
that coaches who participated in the interview generally do not perceive this
relationship triangle as problematic. For them, the problems defined above are, in one
interviewee’s words, ‘risks that can be managed by coaches’. We have also experienced
some degree of reluctance from the respondents to use words like ‘problem’ or ‘conflict
of interests’, which are regarded as overrated in terms of the overall impact felt by the
coach. However, most of our interviewees would agree that problems are more likely to
occur when the coach does not address the coaching triangle properly. By ‘properly’ we
mean tactically utilizing the following strategies identified by our respondents as the key
to all the hassles that might arise in the relationship triangle among the coach, the
coachee, and the sponsor.
Table 4: Ways to Reconcile Different Coaching Needs and Goals from the Two Clients
Reconciliation Strategy
Account
Investing time in the
Probing motivations and
preparation phase
expectations behind
spot, ...everything at the right spot is what I said, the intention of the company:
coaching
what do we want to achieve with this process for the coaching; to have the
“...in the beginning you have to just put everybody on the right
idea of the coachee himself: what do you want to achieve with it.” (J07)
“...in that meeting I’m searching for the answer, ‘Is there a real coaching demand
from the person itself or from the organization?’ For me it is very essential
that the person himself or herself is the demanding person for personal
question or personal problem, and I’m searching for the answer.” (L15)
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Establishing professional
relationship with the
manager
“...we know our clients and we know those managers of course, and if we don’t
know them, we go visit them first.” (T01)
“I always try to meet with them in person. It’s not always possible because if
they don’t want to invest the time, but then I’ll call them. So there has to be a
real life contact, on the phone. I prefer face-to-face.” (A20)
Managing
Indicating what can (not)
expectations on
be expected of the
first, ‘make that 130%, that’s more reasonable. Believe me, we have that
coaching outcome
coaching outcome
experience.’” (F08)
“We come in, we say, ‘200% is not feasible,’ we challenge the company on that
“So I’m very clear to him, also to the director. ‘I can only do something when the
coachee wants it, it’s not so that you can ask me for holding him here and
solving your problem.’ That’s not my role.” (L15)
Requiring flexibility for
the coaching outcome
“The outcome may be that the person may not be in the right position where he
is today. That COULD be the outcome, but it is the outcome based on positive
intention..., what it is not, is come in and say, ‘He [coachee] needs to be laid
off.’” (F08,)
“...you need to be able to say to the company or the manager, ‘No I’m not gonna
do that.’ And to the client, ‘No that’s not where we go. You both have to be
open in this coaching and see what comes out.’” (D10)
Intervening Coachee’s
Gaining consensus on the
Interaction with the
coaching needs and goals
“’...this meeting is about if we can work together and if you want it to work.’ And
then he says, ‘What’s going on?’ ...and I also ask the HR manager to tell her
Manager where it is
story. And then I ask him, ‘Do you recognize what she tells?’ And then when
necessary
they’re on the same level, we can go on.” (A05)
“I see a difference in what you want, both. Please, let we investigate the
situation, and then I ask first to the manager to give examples from what
happened, what he sees and what he wants. And then I ask [coachee] to react
to that, and then I try to make clear where the differences are. And when
that’s clear, and then I say, ‘Ok, what do you want? Both?’” (E03)
Demanding
transparency and
open communication
From Coachee:
“I said, ‘Ask him! Yeah, ask him!’ So he goes to his boss, he says to his boss, ‘Boss,
I think about going away with the company because I wanna have your job. I
wanna be the boss of this department, otherwise I go away. For my career I
wanna have my own department.’ ‘Well,’ said the boss, ‘good you asked,
because I’m leaving.’ Problem solved.” (K12)
“ Sometimes it’s my part to say, “If you want to go to Africa, then that’s ok with
me, because I don’t have any judgment about it. But your manager might have
the judgment about it and it’s good for you if that’s really what you want to go
talk to your manager about this.” (A20)
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From Coachee’s Company:
“I basically say the company wants that, I say, “Go out there and tell them you
want them to leave. Don’t use us. Don’t do that. Be honest with your people.”
(F08)
“...I put it back to the company and I say, ‘You have to communicate to her what
your intentions are, if you just want to keep her on that spot, you have to talk
with her, because I notice in my interview with her that she had the ambition
to grow.’” (J07)
Acting upon
Giving priority to
professional integrity
coachee’s privacy
“That you have communicate very clearly about, ‘This is how I work, so this is
beginning, six or eight times, this is the end, strictly confidential, but if you
want to know something about the process you can always contact me, if you
know some more detail you have to ask the employee.’” (E11)
“…there are of course some things you need to agree on: first of all, nothing
goes to your boss before you see it yourself, as a client. And not only see it, but
say it’s ok, because that’s something different…. That sometimes needs some
policy but is in most cases easy to do.” (P16)
Staying neutral
“If there’s a conflict, yeah, the coachee will talk to me and say, ‘Well, he’s not
treating me the right way.’ And I’m not the mediator who’s going between
them and being ambassador for the coachee. It’s not my role in it. It’s not the
part I should play.” (J07)
“I think as coach you’ve always laid back and look what’s needed, and not go into
the fields and play the game together.... You gonna be part of it and I don’t
think you’re gonna be effective. You lose some credibility. So then you’re
becoming, from the coachee or from the manager, and you can’t benefit for the
both system, you can’t contribute to the whole system.” (E11)
Giving back or suspending “…my opinion is you should stop and you should tell the boss he should get
the case if necessary
another consultant for this job. I took up the first job…try to get him in place
in the company, but if you want to kick him out, I’m not the guy who will do
that, he’ll need to get it somewhere else.” (P16)
“So you also have to be open and clear. Sometimes I give advice to the employee,
‘If you don’t trust that or you think there’s something else, talk about it and we
can stop the coaching for a while...for me it could be a mistake to go on with
coaching and after six months, ‘Oh it doesn’t work.’” (E18)
Creating sustainable
Implanting coaching
coaching culture
element in the daily
important thing. And there’s coming now that somebody in his team, in fact, is
routine
not professional enough to stay in his team, and then I say to him also, ‘Talk
“...use your relationships to get strong, so ask for feedback. That’s in fact an
with your HR manager how you can go clearly to this process. Maybe there’s
another place for this person in the company, or the person needs really to go
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out.’ But talk with the others, do it together, we’re looking for connection.”
(A05)
“I try to stimulate the manger to have a role during the coaching process as a
partner of the coachee, internal coach, he or she knows the theme and I
stimulate the two meet each other frequently, so the manager gives a bit
feedback on the behavior of the coachee regarding to the goals of the coaching
traject.” (L15)
2.1 Investing time in the preparation phase
Probing motivations and expectations behind coaching
Behind every coaching request, there is and should be a reason for it; be it to develop
talents, correct dysfunctional behaviors at work, cope with work-related stress, or orient
a person to another function or even another job. The reason serves as the starting point
of the coaching on which expectations of coaching outcomes and the measurement of
them are based. However, as we have found out in the two-client problem, the
motivation of the coachee and the sponsoring party may not always be explicit and clear,
both clients can have the tendency to cover up their real intention of wanting a coach
when it might offend the interests of the other party and involve a confrontation.
Whereas according to Sweeney (2007), one of the golden rules of coaching is from the
beginning to agree on expectations and to establish the benchmark; as a coach, it is thus
essential to know the reason and know it well.
Our responding coaches have indicated that to search for the answer to ‘Why coaching?’
the coach’s listening skills are critical. When the coach is approached by the requesting
person, be it the coachee or the manager, they listen carefully what the client has to say
and hear the nuance in the request while at the same time observe attentively the
behavior, emotion, and the way the client cooperates in the coaching. According to our
interviewees, the experience of the coach can contribute significantly to the extent which
they are able to elicit the truth from the client and the precision of their judgment. In
addition, it is also of the coach’s interest to know whether the coachee is self-motivated
to the coaching herself or ‘sent’ by the organization. As Sherman & Freas (2004) pointed
out, coachee is the one who does the hard work while everyone else only supports from
the side; therefore, it is important that the coachee herself can see the points of engaging
in the coaching activities.
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Establishing professional relationship with the manager
A successful coaching is not only determined by the well-being of the coachee, the added
value to the business result is just as important (Sherman & Freas, 2004). What the
coachee is working on during those one-on-one sessions with the coach should be of
relevance to the company’s bottom line result. Note that it is not the same as saying that
coaching is always directed to financial gains; instead, the coach can help boost up
productivity, for instance, by making the coachee a healthy, work-life-balanced person or
by assisting them to discover their ambitions and purposes at work. On the other hand,
many have also cautioned that coaching should stick to work-related issues rather than
tackling problems that are much too personal and touchy, turning coaching into a
therapeutic treatment (Levinson, 1996). The point we are trying to make here is that the
coach should always keep focus on the person in the organizational context and not try to
drift away from it.
In order to keep coaching activities always aligned with organizational purposes, a
strategy mentioned by many coaches in this study is to stay in good contact with the
manager of the coachee. The manager, as a part of the organizational context, is one, if
not the most, important source of information among the 360 degrees that the coach can
get concerning the coachee’s performance, attitude, and interpersonal relationship at
the workplace. In addition, as an external party, the coach also relies on the manager to
provide knowledge about the company, including its operation and purposes. By visiting
the company and/or having face-to-face conversation with the manager, the coach can
gather information needed to organize a result-oriented coaching trajectory that
benefits both the coachee and the company. However, there is also a word of caution: the
coach should be aware that the relationship and interaction with the manager must stay
professional throughout the contract so that the coach’s neutrality and credibility would
not be jeopardized.
2.2 Managing expectations on coaching outcome
Indicating what can (not) be expected of the coaching outcome
People can have unrealistic expectations about coaching concerning what it can deliver
and under what time frame the result can be achieved. According to our respondents,
many organizations see coaching as a sort of magic formula that can fix all kinds of
difficult problems faced by the management, including rescuing a derailed employee and
36
getting rid of problematic personnel. In one specific case, our interviewee was even
asked to persuade a senior member of the organization to stay on the job. Others, as we
have identified in the two-client problem, expect coaching to be a quick remedy of
coachee’s dysfunctional behaviors and unsatisfying performance at workplace. A
coaching trajectory that starts off with impractical expectations can put the coach under
unnecessary pressure and further result in a premature ending of a could-be-promising
coaching. Also, in the special case provided by our interviewee in which the coach was
asked to act as a sort of mediator, not only that the coach can take on the wrong position,
but he is also susceptible to high risk of a lose-lose situation (e.g., the coachee is upset
about the political agenda held together by the coach and the company and insists to
leave, making the sponsoring party unsatisfied about the result). Hence, it is of the
coach’s own interests to set the expectations right and clear from the very beginning.
The key to prevent negative effects ensued from wrong expectations lies in a good
coaching contract. Most coaches in our research agree that the more specific the content
of the contract is, in terms of the coaching goals to achieve, the resources needed (e.g.,
time, costs, support and feedbacks from 360 degrees) and the ways to measure success,
the more likely the client will be satisfied. What is equally essential is how the coach
communicates the reality to the client. The coach has to be able to explain, based on his
professional expertise and experiences, why certain outcomes are more realistic than
the others, and be convincing in his ground of argument. This implies that the coach
must be clear and open about his competences as well as his limitations (Levinson,
1996). Knowing that an outplacement coaching should never be undertaken by a
performance coach who has no clue how to deal with the emotion breakdown of the
coachee is the first step to prevent a frustrating and disappointing coaching trajectory.
Requiring flexibility for the coaching outcome
One of the coaches we have interviewed relates her experience of coaching to ‘journeys
that she took on together with the coachee’. Indeed, if we look at coaching as the
coachee’s search of inner self, then the coach can be seen as the helpful and trustworthy
companion in the journey of discovery. For the coaching to be effective, the coach has to
leave the judgment behind and find ways that work the best with the coachee (Hall,
Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999), even if that might imply surprises or even risks at the end of
the discovery. For instance, there can be situations in which the coachee finds out half
way through the development coaching that what he has been striving for is actually not
something that fulfills him. Just as what we have assumed in the beginning of the
research, the coachee can indeed be coached out of job, given that there is a mismatch
37
between the person and the job at the first place. On the other hand, there can also be
cases where the sponsor decides with the help of coaching that the employee is not the
right candidate for a certain job. Hence, if the client, either the coachee or the sponsor,
has a strong stand point and is not open to the uncertainty that might come in the way,
as we have found out in the identification of the two-client problem, then the journey to
inner self might end up going nowhere.
Being a good companion, the coach has to be able to cope with some degree of
uncertainty and further be candid about the unpredictability of coaching. This means
that it is not sufficient to merely provide guidance to the coachee on the discovery of the
self and be open about what might come out as a result, the coach has to go one step
further and require the same flexibility from all parties. The strategy mentioned by many
coaches in our interview is to communicate upfront, verbally or written down in the
contract, that coaching is not a guarantee to any predetermined result. The client cannot
ask the coach to promise what changes are going to take place by the end of the coaching,
either can he use coaching to ‘prove’ his side of the story. Both the coachee and the
sponsor need to free themselves from the fixed agenda and embrace what might turn out
for better personal as well as organizational outcomes. Moreover, it is based on this
mutual understanding that the coach can communicate with the organization his
minimal role in coachee’s decision should the coachee end up making an unthinkable
career change. Lastly, we would like to point out that it should not be a tradeoff between
defining tangible success and staying flexible about the turns that might show up by the
end of the road; instead, the coach needs to strike the fine balance between them in
order to bring out the optimal coaching outcomes.
2.3 Intervening coachee’s interaction with the manager where it is necessary
Gaining consensus on the coaching needs and goals
Coaching thrives on the grounds of consensus and commitment to the common goals
(Witherspoon, 2005). When all the parties involved are aware of the shared benefits of
coaching and are willing to dedicate to achieving them, the coach can more easily pull off
the coaching result that is successful in both clients’ opinion. Conversely, a coaching
trajectory that begins without a clear starting point concerning what to work on and
who gets what is more likely to end fuzzily too. As we have mentioned in the
identification of the two-client problem, the ‘assignment-giver’ can come to the coach
with stories and issues that the coachee either cannot recognize or does not agree. In
38
other words, there can exist a discrepancy or even a conflict of perceptions and opinions
between the coachee and the sponsoring party, leaving the coach confused about what to
work on.
As a coach, the task and the challenge here is to bring the two stories as closely to each
other as possible. It is certainly not to say that one must agree a hundred percent with
the other; instead, the art of it is to find out at what points and to what extent the two
clients can meet each other half way. The coach who has investigated thoroughly the
motivations and expectations of both the coachee and the sponsor would obtain
information that enables him or her to find the shared interests with less difficulty. The
coach can also contribute by making those motives and interests as explicit as possible
so that the match (or mismatch) can be spotted out and accepted. If the coaching request
is coming from the coachee’s manager, what the coach can do is simply to ask whether
the manager has discussed with the coachee why he thinks coaching can help this
person. What the coach can also do is to put against the coachee the issues on which the
manager has expressed concern and to see whether the coachee would recognize and
react on it. If the coaching is initiated by the coachee him- or herself, it is then important
for the coach to confirm with the manager whether the coaching themes proposed by
the coachee are also relevant to the sponsoring organization. Only by brining the two
clients on the same page can the coach ask for a similar, if not the same, level of
commitment in the coaching triangle.
Demanding transparency and open communication
Whereas we keep emphasizing the importance of being explicit about expectations and
motivations of coaching, it is recognized by Witherspoon (2005) that people tend to
make implicit and critical assumptions concerning the purposes, roles, responsibilities,
and the willingness of others. These assumptions about the relationship can provide the
coachee or the sponsor motives to have agendas secretly behind the back of the other,
making parties difficult to commit themselves fully in the process of coaching. Since
transparency is next to trust the key factor for a positive and productive relationship
triangle (Gyllensten and Palmer, 2007), it is hence the coach’s job to make sure that these
assumptions of the clients are spelled out loud at the beginning so that each party is
given the chance to clarify their positions should there be any misperceptions.
39
It is easier said than done to ask people to be open about things that concern their own
interests and their relationships with others. People might be reluctant to say what
really matters to them out of shyness (yes!), unwarranted assumptions, or the fear for
confrontation. Thus, the challenge of the coach here is to encourage both parties to put
the fish on the table (otherwise it’ll start to stink!) and to facilitate communication
between them. An experienced coach is a keen observer of the dynamics between the
two clients and is capable of intervening the conversation in a way that the two will
speak up and engage themselves in understanding each other’s point of views. Having
that said, it is important for coaches to know the concerns of the two clients well,
especially the unspoken ones, and to create an environment where the clients feel safe to
have a constructive confrontation, if necessary, by using their knowledge on human
psychology along with the information they got from both clients. Once the clients are
capable and willing to ask direct questions and be ready to give answers truthfully,
instead of dodging the issue, a successful coaching is already within reach.
2.4 Acting upon professional integrity
Giving priority to coachee’s privacy
Trust has been identified by most of our interviewees as the essential element in the
coaching triangle. Without trust as the base of relationship, particularly with the coachee,
it is difficult to achieve the level of vulnerability necessary for disclosure, self-reflection
and action learning (Bluckert, 2005). If the coachee ever doubts that the information she
reveals might end up in her boss’ ear, she will attempt to hide her thoughts behind what
seems to be politically-correct and socially-desired answers. So a reliable coach places
coachee’s privacy, including personal issues, stories, and family problems, as top priority,
and protects it against curiosity coming from the sponsoring side. As a matter of fact, the
coach can kill two birds with one stone: in order to be keep the private space between
the coach and the coachee intact, the coach has to earn trust from the sponsor first. Once
there is faith in the coach’s competence and integrity from both sides, the coach can
avoid unnecessary inquisitiveness and be ready to demand honesty from the coachee.
A professional relationship, facilitated by the contract, with the coachee’s manager based
on timely feedbacks and mutual understandings of each other’s process can be helpful
for building trust with the manager and for the cooperative action necessary for bringing
out the optimal coaching results. Stressing on working ethics, the coach has to at the
same time keep the communication with the manager within what has been explicitly
40
accepted by the coachee. In other words, no information should go unnoticed by the
coachee to his or her manager, unless the coachee is on the edge of breaching the
contract agreed by all parties. But even in the rare cases when the coach finds it
necessary to discuss with the manager what has happened in the coaching, the strategy
often mentioned by our interviewees is to encourage the coachee to take initiation in the
conversation. Instead of ‘reporting’ to the manager under the coachee’s permission, the
coach asks the coachee him- or herself to speak what is needed to be out there on the
table, provided that the coach has already achieved mutual understandings with the
manager and is confident in involving him or her in the process. But then again, to create
an environment in which the two clients would feel safe and confident to open up is the
very essence to the success of this strategy.
Staying neutral
When asking how coaches can fail to align the two clients in the coaching triangle, many
of our respondents would be ready to say, “By taking sides!” Coaches, especially those
who have picked up this profession only recently, can be inclined to get too involved in
the case, to the extent of letting their personal feelings and emotions flow in the process
of coaching. The negative consequences can be that the coach grow attached to the
coachee and drift away from the common goals shared with the sponsor; or that the
coach becomes too eager in the achievement desired by the sponsoring party that he or
she can lose focus on the coachee’s personal learning. No matter which side the coach
end up taking, the relationship of the three parties can lapse from a golden triangle into
a zero-sum game where coachee’s gain is the loss of the sponsor, or vice versa. Therefore,
one can say that the coach without concerns on both sides does not only fail to advance
both clients’ benefits but even worsen the relationship between them.
Coaches, especially the external ones, can contribute to the employer-employee
relationship by being the independent third party with no personal interests and
political agenda. Their objectivity and neutral position, along with their competence,
grant them the creditability and influence to drive change. In order to stay impartial, the
coaches in our study apply the strategy to limit their role to facilitators instead of
mediators. By ‘mediator’ we mean the person who goes back and forth between the two
parties and makes peace by expressing positive opinions of one party to another; while
‘facilitator’ is someone who demands open communication between the two clients by
utilizing communication skills and interventions. The coach who facilitates the
interaction between the coachee and the sponsor does not go into the fields of either
party but stays detached for a better overview. In their point of view, it is not the coachee
41
nor the sponsor but the whole organizational system which they are responsible for.
Giving back or suspending the case if necessary
Many coaches would agree that certain requirements are necessary in order for the
coaching to be successful. Not only that the coachee needs to be motivated and be ready
to reveal vulnerability (Bluckert, 2005), but that the sponsor, also referred to as the
‘internal collaborator’ has to show involvement and give supports wherever needed
(Wasylyshyn, 2003). Above all, both clients must be outspoken about their expectations
and purposes of coaching upon which consensus can be sought. When these conditions
are nowhere to be found; for instance, when the coachee and the sponsoring party
would not agree with each other in terms of the needs to be addressed and the goals to
achieve, or when they do not trust each other enough to commit to the coaching, the
coach will sweat over nothing. One of our interviewees even suggested that the coach
might do more damage than help to the relationships between the two clients when
decided to carry through the trajectory regardless of a poor setting.
Coaches can be inclined to take on assignments that are not meant for them either
because they have an unrealistic ambition to ‘fix’ problems or simply because they do
not want to give up the commissions that are on hand. However, as part of the coach’s
professional integrity, it is important to say ‘no’ sometimes. When the circumstances do
not permit the grounds for a good coaching trajectory, the coach might contribute more
by suspending it to work on the preconditions, if possible; or by turning down the
assignment, provided that the situation is hopeless. It is important for the coach not to
forget that a lot of work has to be done between the coachee and his or her manager and
the coach is only there to facilitate learning. In addition, when the request is beyond the
areas in which the coach can be of help; for instance, when the issue is touchy and
non-work-related, it is to the coach’s professional ethics to acknowledge his limitations
and pass on the case to experts in the relevant area.
2.5 Creating sustainable coaching culture
Implanting coaching element in the daily routine
Most coaches cannot deny that, however extensive a coaching trajectory is, there is bound
to be a cap on the time permitted to address the coaching needs and to achieve coaching
goals. According to Feldman & Lankau (2005), the duration of coaching relationships are
42
usually short, ranging from 6 to 18 months: some coaching themes, especially those that
aim to re-orient the coachee in the job market, can take as long as one year or more,
whereas some specific coaching requests such as improving skills or performance might
be realized in a few months. In either case, when the coaching rounds off, mostly with an
evaluative conversation, no one is certain about whether the effects achieved can be
long-lasting. The conversation opened up by coach’s intervention can be blocked again
and the coachee’s newly-learnt behavior can be forgotten if no integration with the daily
chores is made. Whatever difference that has been aligned by the coach using the
above-mentioned strategies can fall apart when the coach draws back. Hence, the
question posed to the coach here is: How can coaches make sustainable contributions
instead of a nine day’s wonder?
Most coaches participated in the research have pointed out the critical role played by the
coach’s manager, who sees and works with the coachee day in and day out. Supporting to
this point of view is the research on training which shows that unless the manager also
accept and support the changes that have been made, the trainees can easily inclined to
fall back to their old, however ineffective, patterns of working (Schneider, Brief, & Guzzo,
1996). For the sustainable change to take place and the real alignment to be achieved,
coachee’s manager must be involved at certain points of the coaching. Firstly, the manager
must commit to the success of the coachee by explaining explicitly at the beginning of the
trajectory his motivation to have this employee coached and discussing attentively with
the employee what they want to achieve together. Secondly, when the coachee attempts to
experience with the new behaviors, the manager can be of great help by being supportive
and providing timely feedbacks. If the coach can utilize her influence, including the
coaching skills and the solid relationship foundation established earlier in the trajectory,
to make managers attentive to these few points, she can contribute to create an
environment that promotes growth and learning. An extended application of this strategy
is provided by one of our interviewees who coach a group of employees to challenge each
other to become better and stronger so that the element of coaching can be deeply
embedded in the company culture.
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V.
Discussion
Theoretical Implication
Feldman and Lankau (2005, p.843) asked in their review on executive coaching, “Who is
the ‘client’ in an organizationally arranged coaching relationship: the executive or the
organization?” With this research we are ready to answer: “Both.” Coaching in corporate
context cannot and should never overlook the importance of the organizational factor in
achieving coaching results, even if a great deal of autonomy is permitted. Note that it is
not the same as saying the coach should work solely on the behalf of the organization, as
many coaches would find it downgrading the profession of being a coach. In the holistic
perspective of coaching; however, it is almost imperative that the coach “understand
and work within the organizational system” (Stern, 2004, p.155). Instead of asking
‘What does my coachee want?” the coach should be able to answer “What do my two
clients want to achieve together?” Unfortunately, the problem still waiting to be
addressed is how much do we actually know about the needs of the clients? It has been
indicated that we as a part of coaching discourse know very little about the specific
coaching needs from the executives as well as the needs of the organizations (Feldman &
Lankau, 2005), and whether those needs are compatible to each other. This grey area
certainly leads to many unsettling situations that we would like to call – the ‘two-client
problem’. Thanks to the quantitative research conducted by Kauffman and Coutu (2009),
now we have a list of tasks – ranging from developing capabilities of a high-potential
manager to assisting in outplacement or “counseling out” – in which coaches are most
frequently engaged. However, we reckon it still insufficient to address the fact that the
needs of the coachee might be different from the one who pays the bill. So to continue
and further extend this research effort, we probed into the difference of opinions and
perceptions between the two clients that might pop up as a roadblock for the coach
during any point of time in the coaching. Furthermore, once the problems were evident
and specified, we went on asking how coaches can contribute to reconcile the
discrepancies. Recognizing that our research is rather explorative, we hope to see future
research on this ‘two-client problem’ use quantitative method to boil down the key
variables that trigger the discrepancies as well as the critical elements that reconcile
them. In addition, due to the specific cultural context, Dutch in this case, where the
research took place, we could not confidently generalize the results to coaching practice
in, for instance, the whole Europe, let alone the whole world. Reconciliation tactic such
as encouraging open communication might work well in Dutch culture, where the
people are comfortable with blunt feedbacks and can tolerant diverse opinions; but
whether the same strategy will be accepted and deemed useful in, for instance, Asian
44
culture where face-saving is highly-regarded is still debatable. Hence, we hope to see
more future studies address the diversity in cultural context.
In our early discussion we touched upon the subject of coaching relationship which is by
and large defined as the connection and rapport built between the coach and the
coachee. Indeed, the coach-coachee relationship is essential for powering change
(O’Broin & Palmer, 2006); but as we have found out, whether the change can take place
successfully and sustainably depends highly on the other two links – the coach-manager
relationship and the coachee-manager relationship. As Sherman and Freas (2003,) have
pointed out, it is inevitable for coaching in corporate context to create this “triangular
relationship between the coach who provides the service, the coachee who receives the
coaching, and the client that pays the coaching bills” (p.3). Our discovery also directed us
to the recognition of disturbance that might come into play if the coach does not
communicate sufficiently with the manager and misconceptions that could exist
between the manager and the coachee; all these factors can have an influence on the
coaching outcomes. Hence, the question we would like to propose here is, “Is it sufficient
to define coaching relationship solely as the relationship between the coach and the
coachee?” Conversely, we wonder whether it would generate more practically relevant
and useful discussions if the sponsoring party is also included in the coaching
relationship. Many authors have already been emphasizing the importance of sponsors
as the key stakeholder – not only because the money they invest in the coaching but also
because the support and feedback needed from them to make successful coaching
(Diedrich, 1996; Sherman & Freas, 2004; Stern, 2004) - but we look to future studies to
integrate sponsor’s role and position into discussion of the coaching relationship. We
are curious to know the difference between connections the coach should establish with
the coachee and with the sponsor; and to what extent the coach can and/or should
intervene in the interaction between the manager and the coachee.
Another intriguing issue among our findings is the sustainability of coaching – “How
long-lasting is the effect of coaching?” and to be more practical, “How to achieve
coaching sustainability?” The truth is, we know very little about the level of
sustainability in the aftermath of coaching which should have a high relevance to
organizations as coaching buyers. There appears to be an uncertainty in coaching’s
long-term effect due to the limited time frame and the uncontrollable variables, such as
the manager’s attitude and company culture, in the organizational context that might or
might not support the coachee’s newly-learned behavior. Nonetheless, our investigation
does show some hints on how this sustainability can be achieved. By including the
manager in the coaching relationship and emphasizing his or her role in coachee’s
45
development, the coach attempts to implement coaching not only in the coaching space
but also in the workplace. Coaching leadership has been on the agenda for companies
these days with more and more managers being trained to develop their coaching skills
(Grant, 2007). As leadership practice is indicated to be influenced by leaders’ personal
experiences of reciprocal learning relationships (Robertson, 2009), our study suggests
that external coaches might have something to offer to managerial coaching by
partnering
the
manager
in
coaching
process
and
leading
them
through
manager-subordinate conversations. Therefore, extending Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck’s
(1999) view that coaching is a two-way learning between the coach and the coachee, we
propose that the learning can be further maximized among the three parties, benefiting
coaches and their two clients. This area certainly calls for more attention and
understanding before fruitful conclusions can be drawn. Potential future research can
dwell on the elements that make sustainable coaching outcomes or compare the
contextual factors between sustainable and short-living coaching effects. Longitudinal
studies are imperative.
Practical Implication
The two-client problem might have been pinned down just now by this research; but in
reality, it has been challenging coaches' communication skills and strategic maneuver
for a long time. Our study, if not offering new insights, can provide guidelines in terms of
how coaches should act in the coaching triangle as well as how coaching should work.
The identification of problems shall not make the job of the coach seen more
complicated and intimidating than it actually is. On the contrary, it is to prevent those
potential issues from growing bigger by pointing out where the obstacles might lay.
Advantaged by the sophisticated coaching culture in the Netherlands where coaching is
said to reach a maturity stage comparing to other countries that are still in introduction
or growth phase (Bresser, 2009), our findings might be practically valuable to the less
experienced coaches who are not yet familiar with the tricky relationship between
individuals and organizations. Even for those who have practiced sufficiently long
period in the profession of coaching, there can be a tendency to overlook the importance
of the sponsoring party due to their tight schedules or the precedence taken by the
coachee. We do not mean to say that there is one and only way to carry out coaching and
both clients are important in every situation; instead, by this study we would like to
raise consciousness from all parties of their roles in achieving optimal coaching
outcomes, individually and collectively; and to point out the possibility of compromising
win-win situation if benefits of one of the clients is compromised.
46
Limitation
Firstly, this study is bounded by the amount of time available for the researcher. The
whole research process, including building contacts, arranging meetings with
interviewees, carrying out interviews, transcribing, making analysis, and finally writing
up the report, has all to be compacted in a short period of three and a half months. While
this research can still be sufficiently conducted, we do recognize that a longer time
horizon can allow a more thorough investigation. For instance, the amount of time does
influence the pool of interviewees available for our research. As mentioned earlier, our
sample is selected using snowball strategy. Contrary to what the literature has
suggested, this chosen method actually brought to this study a wide variety of coaches
with different coaching styles and practicing methodology. Thus, the underlying
question is whether it is legitimate to generalize our finding from such heterogeneous
sample. Secondly, due to the fact that this study was conducted by a novice researcher,
the quality of which is regarded as more or less compromised because of the lack of
experience in carrying out interviews and qualitative data analysis. For instance, the
interview questions might not be the most appropriate and consistent instrument for
answering the research question or the interviewer was not able to elicit the most
relevant account by utilizing spontaneous probes. Also, the data might not be analyzed
or interpreted with sufficient rigor. Concerning the points illustrated, this study should
be seen more of a learning process for a beginner researcher than a meticulous scientific
study. Lastly, despite most of the interviewees have conversational level of proficiency
in English, it still posts to the researcher as a major limitation to conduct the interview
in both the interviewer’s and the interviewee’s second language. The nuance of the
answer might not be sufficiently addressed and/or understood. It is also difficult to
scrutinize whether certain wordings are interpreted in the way the speaker has
intended.
Ending Notes
Unlike the gold rush in the Wild West that eventually faded throughout time, coaching
seems to be here to stay and even growing stronger. There appears to be a strong belief
among our participants that by using coaching to invest in people’s employability, the
two clients can benefit equally profoundly: not only that the coachee can learn to
manage their career intelligently, but the company can also gain knowledge on
managing their talent within and beyond organizational borders. Indeed, our question of
how coaches can add value to personal as well as organizational success has found its
answer in the countless win-win situations created by the coaches.
47
Acknowledge
I dedicate this study to my Grandfather (1917-2011), who had shown his faith in my
pursuit of academic achievements to the very last day of his life; and I attribute the
accomplishments of this research to my thesis supervisor, Svetlana Khapova, who has
given me absolute freedom to take up the topic of my interests, always managed to
motivate me to push my limit, and shared with me her passion of being a career
researcher. I am also thankful for my professor from TsingHua University, Aaron Winter,
who has coined the term, the ‘two-client problem’ and given me infinite inspirations
while I was feeling absolutely at sea. This research would be impossible without my key
informant who has supported and appreciated my ideas from the very beginning and
used his network to make those ideas come true. Finally, I owe deeply to every of the
interviewees for their willingness to contribute to the research, their insightful opinions,
and nice coffee.
48
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Appendix – Interview Guide (Final Revision)
1.
To begin with, could you describe to me the whole process of coaching, from
the first contact with client, the intake session, to coaching and the
evaluation?
2.
Can you give me an example when you feel your two clients, the coachee and
the opdrachtgever, want different thing? What was your reaction to this
situation?
3.
How do you perceive your relationship with the two clients?
4.
What do you think is crucial in this relationship?
5.
How do you think the opdrachtgever can add value to the coaching process?
6.
In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge for a coach working for the
company?
7.
Can you recall a case when your client, during the coaching process, reveals
his or her intention to leave the current organization to look for better
opportunities? What is your reaction to this situation?
8.
How do you communicate with the organization this potential risk of losing
their talent?
9.
Can you tell me from your experience, why some coaches fail to reconcile the
goals of the two clients?
At the end of this interview...
10. Is there something we haven't covered but is relevant or important for you?
Do you have any advices for other coaches on this two-client problem?
54