Towards a coachee-centred approach to coaching academic leaders

This thesis unifies the five elements of the research portfolio into a coherent whole. These elements comprise a small scale research project, an applied research project followed by a report on professional practice. In addition to these three distinct projects, a comprehensive literature review and reflective account are also part of the various elements of the portfolio. The above elements of the portfolio are organized into five chapters. The entire research is carried out in an organization that is a leading institution of higher education in the Middle East.

The first element of the portfolio is the literature review which is guided by the purpose of this qualitative research that aims to explore a learning-informed coaching framework for academic Deans. Guided by the objective and gap in the existing research, a comprehensive literature review on learning theories and coaching models is undertaken. Later, it was extended to include coaching competency frameworks. The small scale research project explores the lived experiences of two executive leadership coaches who coached 11 professional managers at the university to improve their leadership potential. It examines the literature on organizational leadership coaching in a university context. While using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology, the data analysis resulted in five themes: commitment to evolve and grow, role of goal-setting in coaching, impact of self-efficacy on goal attainment, 3-way meetings for accountability and support, and coaching for organizational leadership development. The research offers learning for practitioners such as coaches and managers of coaching engagements. The results of this study cannot be generalized, however, it advances the research conversations on the coaching for leadership development in universities. The small scale research project proved to be an excellent opportunity to practice methodology, data collection and analysis, and most significantly writing a research report. These learnings proved extremely beneficial during the main applied research project. In the applied research project, I explored the lived experiences of academic Deans in the university using the same IPA methodology. The analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in five themes: attract and retain faculty, disciplinary background, learning by observation, reflection, and thinking clearly while relaxed. By understanding the role, context and experiences of Deans, through the lens of classic learning theories, it informs a heuristic framework that is particularly relevant to coaching academic Deans. While this study is exhaustive, it is simply a tentative framework; additional research is required to develop a more complete framework. The key finding of the applied research project is that coaching academic Deans is a complex and context driven process. This finding, combined with some supporting evidence in the literature, led to the possibility that the current coach competency frameworks recommended by professional bodies may not be sufficient for coaching academic Deans. Therefore, the research was extended to explore that with the question: do existing coaching competency frameworks adequately address the complex task of coaching academic deans? The unit of analysis of this interpretative and evaluative case study is the coaching practice that is based on the core competencies as prescribed by International Coach Federation (ICF) and European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). It uses five different sources of evidence that converge to address the research question. The report concludes that an evidence-based approach to coaching that integrates scientific knowledge with the expertise of practitioners can be more effective, especially at the executive level such as Deans. Therefore, a competent coach is not enough to generate inspired insights for complex coaching of Deans. A deeper understanding of the purpose, relevant learning theories and context are other additional conditions for the coaching engagements. These are certain limitations to the study. It has been conducted in a single university with a single coach and five Deans. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized to other leaders and industries.