How can executive coaches’ prior career experience affect their relationships with their clients?

This thesis and its underlying research projects seek to narrow a notable gap in the extant peer reviewed academic literature on executive coaching by addressing one question and two observations made by other researchers. In 2009 Kauffman and Bachkirova (p.3) posed the question “Does the coaches’ background make a difference…?” In 2015 Athanasopoulou and Dopson (p.31) suggested that “…it would be valuable to obtain better understanding of the role that a coach’s background plays in the outcome and quality of the coaching intervention”. Most recently, Pandolfi (2020, p.13) suggested that “…more research is needed to understand the influence of coaches’ background on outcomes”. How one aspect of coaches’ backgrounds can influence their coaching is examined here by exploring the question: ‘How can executive coaches’ prior career experience affect their relationships with their clients?

This single question is addressed in depth and from different angles in a portfolio of four distinct research projects, as prescribed by Canterbury Christ Church University’s guidelines. First, a critical review of the extant literature (Section 2) traces how the role of coaches’ prior knowledge and expertise has changed over the past one hundred and fifty years. Second, a small scale research project (Section 3) explores the researcher’s own experience of the phenomenon as a practicing executive coach. Third, an applied research project (Section 4) examines the experiences of the phenomenon of cohorts of other coaches and of their clients. Fourth, a report of professional practice (Section 5) explores how a leading training organisation covers the topic in its training programmes.

A qualitative research approach with a critical realist philosophical perspective was applied throughout the thesis. A series of electronic searches of literature databases and ‘snowballing’ were used to review the extant literature; a self-reflection exercise and a methodology informed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith et al., 2009) were applied to the small scale project; a methodology informed by IPA was also employed for the applied research project; and thematic analysis (TA) was used to analyse data for a case study in the report of professional practice.

The overarching finding of the research undertaken is that coaches’ backgrounds can make tangible differences to coaching relationships and affect them in a number of different ways.

For the coaches themselves, it can underpin their abilities to develop peer to peer relationships with clients; to question, probe and challenge their clients; to empathise and engage deeply with their clients; to make interventions they might otherwise avoid; to share practical learning gained from their own organisational ‘mistakes’; and to normalise their clients’ concerns and vulnerabilities.

For clients, their coaches’ prior experience can increase the credibility and substance of their coaching; strengthen their trust in coaching; help them feel understood; and provide validity to their sense checking of thoughts and ideas.

The report of professional practice (Section 5) asserts that the coaching accrediting body studied makes no reference in its competence framework to how coaches might use their prior experience in their coaching; that the training delivered by the organisation studied focusses on increasing participants’ self-awareness and on non-directive skills; and that it covers listening skills thoroughly but devotes little attention to questioning techniques or how to incorporate prior knowledge and experience in their questioning.