The coaching paradox

Abstract

As managers have shifted from controlling to empowering their employees, coaching has become a vital managerial tool. The primary goal of this paper is to begin a dialog on coaching that will facilitate theoretical development and empirical testing. We surveyed hotel managers to determine what they think coaching is, how they approach it, and how often they attempt to use it. The results of this exploratory analysis uncovered two coaching paradoxes: (1) managers attest that coaching is imperative for developing high caliber employees, yet they do not understand how coaching fits into the psychodynamics of the workplace; and (2) managers believe that they spend a high proportion of their workday coaching employees, yet critical analysis of their coaching incidents reveals that much of what they believe to be coaching actually is not coaching. Studying both these paradoxes sheds light on three primary misconceptions about coaching: (1) coaching is reactive and either a form of discipline or reward; (2) coaching is training; and (3) coaching requires only part-time attention.

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