ASAP reflection papers (3) based on 5 articles each - Human Resource Management

Executive Coaching: The Road to Dodoville Needs Paving With More Than Good Assumptions

Rodney L. Lowman Alliant International University

This article reviews the 10-article, two-part spe- cial issue on executive coaching (R. R. Kilburg, 2004a, 2005). It identifies common themes and areas needing development. It identifies needed next steps in creating a psychology of coaching that is more than a collection of advice and techniques. The author argues that practice has greatly exceeded research in this area and that, whatever the findings in related fields such as psychotherapy, there is no substitute for empir- ical evaluation and restructuring of theories and practice on the basis of that research.

The special series of articles on execu- tive coaching assembled and edited by my long-time colleague and friend Richard R. Kilburg spans a number of theories and applications of executive coaching. Since both space and time are limited, I focus in this review article on a few central issues raised by the series, including possible in- tegration points and common themes among the disparate directions represented in the articles. I also attempt, to the extent these articles are representative of the field of executive coaching, to suggest directions the field needs to go next if this area aims to become something more than a practice- dominated collection of “how-to” guidance.

Kilburg, one of the psychologist- founders of the literature of executive coaching, has been a prolific contributor to this emerging literature. His writing (e.g., Kilburg, 1996, 2000) is both practice- and theory-based. No armchair theoretician, he and his colleagues have been very much immersed in the practice of coaching, in the challenging work of generalizing from ex- perience to theory, and in testing theory at least against phenomenology and a prag- matic sense of what works and does not in the real-to-life work of professional prac-

tice. The consulting work he and his col- leagues have done at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, presumably the archetype of the land of science, in diffusing coaching and organizational consultation approaches in a type of organization (education) that has largely been resistant to it is indeed impres- sive. Moreover, there are few professionals writing about coaching today who are as knowledgeable about a wide range of psy- chological literature as Kilburg. From this impressive base he has constructed various models and theories of coaching. These include a 17-dimensional model of psy- chodynamic and organizational systems (Kilburg, 2000; see also Cocivera & Cron- shaw, 2004).

The colleagues whose work is repre- sented in this two-part special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal span di- verse applications. Most are practitioners rather than academics, though two are based in academic settings (where they work mostly as internal consultants rather than primarily as academics). These con- tributors therefore reflect the broader state of the field of executive coaching (at least of the type practiced by psychologists) that to date has caught on more as an area of practice than as one of theory or research.

Strengths of the Series

There is much to positively recognize among any group of psychologists who are

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rodney L. Lowman, Office of the Provost, Alliant International Uni- versity, 10455 Pomerado Road, San Diego, CA 92131-1799. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation and the Society of Consulting Psychology, 1065-9293/05/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1065-9293.57.1.90

Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, Vol. 57, No. 1, 90 –96

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willing to put descriptions of their profes- sional practice with specific clients into print for their colleagues and others to cri- tique. Carefully described case material and identification of attempted interventions and observed outcomes are the stuff from which theories and ultimately empirical tests can be derived. Staying close to real- life experience enhances the likelihood that theories will ultimately be developed that have practical utility. Adding the perspec- tives of the person being coached (e.g., Peterson & Millier, 2005) is especially use- ful because what interventionists think may be of importance to a process of change may not be what was viewed as being most helpful by the client.

There are also limits to what case study material and nonempirically derived theo- ries can do. There are significant limits to self-reported case studies. Peterson (Peter- son & Millier, 2005, p. 15), for example, charges readers to aim toward greatness in executive coaching and observes that “good, however, is the enemy of great.” Unfortunately, he does not define the crite- ria of greatness in this field and leaves us therefore with an aspirational goal but little understanding of the desired end-state or the road that will take us there. Self-reports are inevitably biased by the human ten- dency to positive self-presentation and ego protection/enhancement.

In advocating, if that is not too strong a word, for a narrative-constructivist model of case studies as a counter as opposed to the so-called “academic” approach as- sumed to be based on logico-deductive em- piricism, Kilburg (2004a) suggests that the traditional routes that psychologists take from their scientist-practitioner models may lead us to the land of “Dodoville,” in which everything is equally valid and ev- eryone is entitled to a prize.

Lessons From the Dodo

Kilburg’s (2004b) analogy of Dodoville reflects his apparent unhappiness with the

psychotherapy efficacy literature’s persis- tent findings (e.g., Wampold et al., 1997) that have tended to empirical support only for general rather than for specific effects for the various approaches to psychother- apy, such as those represented by various schools such as cognitive, psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic. Kilburg wonders, at least by implication, if it is worth “trudging to Dodoville” if all we find when we get there is nonspecific effects that presumably would not match the theory-driven ap- proaches suggested by some of these arti- cles (e.g., Cocivera & Cronshaw, 2004; Ducharme, 2004; Kilburg, 2004c; Schnell, 2005; Sherin & Caiger, 2004).

In this context, it is worth noting that Dodoville is presumably fictional, but the dodo bird was not. The dodo became, over time, a poorly designed “bird” that appears to have evolved to flightlessness by the curious happenstance of ending up in a land with much food and no predators. There was no need to travel widely or scout for new food sources and no need to be nimble and able to flee predators. According to the American Museum of Natural History (http://www.amnh.org), the dodo bird be- came extinct less than 80 years after its first sighting by humans in Mauritius around 1600. The flightless design worked only so long as the environment was quiescent. When the sources of food in the dodos’ environment decreased because of the de- struction of the forested habitat and the introduction of predators in the form of animals being imported by man, the design failed and the bird became extinct. “Fat and happy,” but ultimately extinct, is one way to view that history.

Can Executive Coaching Evolve Without a Scientific Foundation?

Executive coaching has a following and not just among psychologists. It has market power, it is popular both with consumers and service providers, and it shows promise as a new outlet for psychological services,

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but as of this writing, as a psychological approach, it lacks a scientific base. In the absence of rigorous debate, vigorous em- pirical tests, and the revision of theory and practice based on those findings, interven- tion methodologies run the risk of either falling from their own bloatedness deriving from lack of intellectual exercise (the do- do’s fate) or of becoming internally consis- tent belief systems, preaching faithfully to the choir if unconvincingly to those who prefer to sing from other music. Psycholo- gy’s special, if no longer unique, imprint on a subject matter is the scientific study of human behavior. The field cannot have it both ways. It cannot assert it is exempt from the rules of scientific psychology while also laying claim to the mantle of psychology. (Interestingly, Kilburg, 2004b, while arguing for a narrative model of knowing, uses empiricism as the “gold standard” against which to demonstrate the existence of unconscious processes.)

If executive coaching puts itself in a position in which it considers case method- ology to be an adequate and sufficient sub- stitute for empirical evaluation, relying ex- clusively on a “constructivist narrative” ap- proach, its days, at least as a field that potentially belongs in the house of psychol- ogy, may be as numbered as few as were those of the dodo bird. I argue instead that scientific and logico-positive approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of executive coaching are the friend, not the enemy, of effective coaching. At this time there is no basis for concluding (a) that coaching is a validated treatment; (b) if there are effects, that they are specific rather than general; and (c) that certain techniques work best with certain kinds of issues, coaches, and/or clients. Even if, after years of re- search (most of which has scarcely begun), it is demonstrated empirically that coaching has overall effectiveness but only because of general factors rather than because of those factors advocated by practitioners of a particular theory or approach, that is not a

bad finding. For now, the psychotherapy literature demonstrating that general rather than specific factors are important in ther- apy cannot be the basis for drawing any conclusions about coaching because coach- ing is geared to a different population, with different purposes, and with different out- come criteria. Dodoville may be the desti- nation of coaching research literature, or it may not be. Without the necessary research there is little basis currently for drawing any conclusions. And in the absence of a rich and expanding empirical literature, the theoreticians, the dodo birds of today, get fatter but not necessarily healthier.

If Dodoville is the ultimate destination of such research, coaches, or at least the psychologists among them, need to know that so they do not base their practice on false presumptions. They are of course free to practice coaching from whatever per- spective they want, but it cannot pretend to be validated or even psychology (at least scientific psychology) if it is not anchored in empirical research.

Coaching of course does not have to be “owned” by the profession of psychology just as the field of psychotherapy is now only partially owned by psychology. Psy- chologists can and have taken up coaching as their primary professional activity and in so doing join the ranks of those from many different disciplines, or lack of any profes- sional discipline, in conducting such work. Because there is a limited empirical litera- ture on coaching’s efficacy, they may be practicing on the basis of something other than psychology. What psychology uniquely brought to psychotherapy’s table was the empirical assessment of what worked and what did not. The only unique claim psy- chology has to the field is that which gen- erates from its rigor in researching what works and what does not in therapy and in extrapolating from a variety of methodolo- gies— qualitative as well as quantita- tive—to create better and more refined theories.

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Similarly, case study reportage can be done by coaches who enter the work from a variety of professional disciplines, includ- ing those who have no professional degrees before undertaking such work. It is to fields like psychology, however, that executive coaching must turn for the evaluation of the too-often extravagant claims of effective- ness. When, as in the case of coaching, practice is considerably ahead of research, there is the danger of self-assuredness and advocacy for particular methods and tech- niques and argument and experience being used as a basis for action. I argue that to the extent executive coaching is in the domain of psychology at all, its proponents who are psychologists must proceed with caution and must do the necessary work.

Ethical Standard 2.01 Boundaries of Competence of the Ethics Code of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2002, p. 5) provides relevant guidance in the meantime: “2. Competence—(e) In those emerging areas in which generally recognized standards for preparatory train- ing do not yet exist, psychologists never- theless take reasonable steps to ensure the competence of their work and to protect clients/patients, students, supervisees, re- search participants, organizational clients, and others from harm.”

Toward Standards of Case Studies: Does Anything Go in Dodoville?

While there are widely held consensu- ally agreed-to standards of the scientific, or what Kilburg calls the logico-deductive, models of scientific research, there are few consensually agreed upon criteria for case study development or presentation (see, among others, Lowman, 2001). Thus, as in this collection of cases, there can be wide variability in terms of what cases present, whether they demonstrate the application of a particular theory or technique or sim- ply describe factually or interpretatively a particular set of events or actions, the ex- tent to which they are descriptive or pre-

scriptive, the extent to which the interven- tion is clearly described, and the descrip- tion of outcome.

The choice of case material itself is an- other variable that implicitly matters for the development of a field. The articles in the present series, not atypically, show a posi- tive response bias in that mostly successful cases were chosen and presented. Not very many (though some, see e.g., Mirvis & Berg, 1977) case collections have focused more on failures than on successes. Still, case material would be more helpful if the cases were anchored in a particular context other than the consultant’s own perspec- tives. Is the individual one of 300 seen by the coach or one of 10? To what extent are the problems represented by the case pro- totypical of those in a practice? What vari- ables (age, gender, educational back- ground, and so forth) are represented in the case, and in what way were such dimen- sions influential in the case? Does this coach see individuals mainly of this type?—for how many sessions on average, and in what ways was this case similar or different from those in a practice or those in a particular class or category? A little more consistency in the framework of case ma- terial presentation will go a long way in being able, over time, to aggregate across case material.

Outcome criteria in cases also vary. There will be, of course, more credibility to case outcomes when outcome criteria are established at the beginning of an interven- tion and when the measures are multiple and not just subjective. Readers of this se- ries will note some variability on these dimensions.

Uses and Limitations of the Method

I raise these issues of course not to sug- gest that the case approach is defective but, rather, to counter an implicit suggestion by Kilburg (2004b) that the logico-deductive, scientific and the constructivist-narrative models are antithetical or that one is pre-

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ferred. Each has its uses and its limitations. Case studies are perhaps most useful in the early and more mature stages of an emerg- ing area of practice. Early on they are valu- able for generating empirically testable hy- potheses. Later on, having hopefully dem- onstrated that an approach or methodology works, they can be used to illustrate the artistry of applying an empirically vali- dated technique. However, cases are not the basis on which to draw conclusions about what works and what does not in other settings or applications without further em- pirical validation. For example, Wasyly- shyn (2005, p. ***) notes, in generalizing from a particular approach to coaching: “This is an approach that can lead to sus- tained results—with clients who want to learn, have the courage to change, and who perceive the need for change as one of life’s continuous gifts.” This is an interest- ing hypothesis that could be tested in other settings and even with other case material. As a conclusion, however, it seems premature.

From Whence Does Good Theory Derive?

The use of case studies as a basis for creating a sound theory and ultimately em- pirical research literature is perhaps a nec- essary, or at least a commonly encountered, stage in the initial process of developing a new field of inquiry or practice. Case stud- ies, or what Kilburg calls the “narrative approach” (Kilburg, 2004b), have the ad- vantage of describing, one hopes factually and accurately, a phenomenon, a way of approaching an intervention, and even, at least perceived, outcomes.

The contributions of case study devel- opment can be multiple, but, I would argue, it is decidedly not sufficient basis on which to base an empirically validated theory. Too much of the executive consulting lit- erature to date, I argue, is derivative, not original, and in that sense it rests on a slippery slope if it intends to use primarily

narrative approaches to present and evalu- ate applications of theory or research cre- ated for other purposes and in other con- texts. This approach begins not with empir- ical research or even with an objective description of the phenomenon at hand from which it then seeks to create a theory and literature but, rather, with a theory in psychology derived for some other purpose and rather loosely plopped down on the new phenomenon being studied. And the ethics of psychologists do demand the sci- ence—for example, Ethics Standard 2.04 Bases for Scientific and Professional Judg- ments states: “Psychologists’ work is based upon established scientific and professional knowledge of the discipline” (APA, 2002, p. 5).

Requisite Conditions

Necessarily, then, I suggest this series of cases is most useful for clinical purposes— thinking about what one believes has hap- pened and why. Unfortunately, however, there was little search in the series for com- mon factors and little energy expended in generating testable hypotheses. What hy- potheses might be generated from the series about what works and does not in coach- ing? I would suggest that common themes from this collection of case studies might include the following:

1. The ability to establish a relationship of trust may be critical to the success of a particular intervention.

2. Coaching must take into account the environmental context in which it finds itself.

3. The particular model (rational-emo- tive, cognitive therapy, psychody- namic, and so forth) used by the coach may matter less than the firm- ness of the conviction held by the coach as to the efficacy of the model.

4. Coaching, when effective, removes barriers to individuals’ understanding

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or solving issues faced in the workplace.

5. Effective coaching appears to focus more on strengths than weaknesses.

6. Effective coaching appears to be an- chored in multiple levels: individual, group, and organizational/systemic.

7. Effective coaching appears espe- cially to integrate individual psychol- ogy with organizational needs.

Other reviewers of this rich and help- ful series will find other hypotheses. The implied work however—and it is indeed time-consuming, tedious work with no short cuts—is empirical. That work may require a different skill set than that which seemed to predominate in this se- ries. Neither is superior to the other, but neither is sufficient as a stand-alone ap- proach or basis for drawing well-vali- dated conclusions.

Conclusions

Narrative critique and logico-positivist and “modernist” approaches to scientific inquiry are not antithetical or mutually exclusive, nor do they benefit from going their separate ways. The models can and should intersect. Each approach has its own unique contributions to make and its own limitations. Ungrounded in the phe- nomena that it seeks to study, the tradi- tional scientific approach to psychology is lifeless and irrelevant. Ungrounded in scientific evaluation of its theories and claims, the narrative critique method can lead to unfounded assumptions, advocacy on the basis of argument, and a mutual admiration society. Executive coaching as a psychological approach remains, at best, in its adolescence. The growth pro- cess is perhaps necessarily slow and in- cremental. If, however, consulting psy- chology wants to claim executive coach- ing as part of the field of psychology, it must be more rigorous and more demand-

ing, and it must clearly differentiate es- tablished fact and advocacy.

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