Whether you’re an executive coach or not, Rosanne Scriffingnano’s paper “Coaching within organisations: examining the influence of goal orientation on leaders’ professional development” (Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 2011, 20-31) provides some essential considerations about the impact of clients’ goal orientation on their development. Given the prevalence of the goal setting process in the field of coaching, this research has clear implications for your coaching practice.
COACHING RESEARCH:
This study, which involved 110 executive leaders, sought to shed some light on “the relationship between goal orientation and leaders’ professional development during executive coaching engagements” (p.20). It highlighted two major forms of goal orientation: learning or performance (which, by the way, proved in this study not to be mutually exclusive). Here are the definitions:
- “Individuals with learning goal orientation (LGO) believe that they can improve their abilities by acquiring new skills” (p.21)
- “Individuals with performance goal orientation (PGO) tend to focus on achieving goals based on performance appraisals and comparisons to others” (p.21)
Some of the findings of the study highlighted that individuals with learning goal orientation “believe that they can acquire new skills and master new situations; whereas performance goal-oriented individuals tend to believe that their abilities cannot be expanded” (p.27). In addition, more participants in this study were identified as learning goal oriented rather than performance goal oriented and it was suggested that one reason for this may be leaders’ interpretation of executive coaching i.e. it tended to attract people with a learning orientation.
IN PRACTICE:
The paper itself identifies two implications for coaching professionals:
- “to enhance [your] clients’ coaching experience, [you] should consider deepening [your] understanding of goal orientation to help drive appropriate motivation during the goal setting phase” (p.28), as coaching efficacy may be affected by inappropriate goals e.g. if you set a performance goal with a learning goal oriented person
- as a coach, you need to understand your clients’ goal-orientation preferences in order to support them more effectively
In the light of this, you might also consider:
- What is your natural goal orientation?
- Does the coaching model/process you currently use support this orientation?
- How can you incorporate a consideration of your clients’ goal orientation in your coaching practice?
- What clues may help you identify a client is learning or performance goal oriented?
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