The coaching process seen from the daily (and controversial) perspective of experts and coaches.
| Autor | Sarsur, Amyra Moyzes |
-
Introduction
The main objective of this study was to analyze the coaching process from the perspective of experts and practitioners (coaches), addressing daily aspects of its practice, as well as controversial elements in the organizational field. It also examined the role of Human Resources (HR) professionals and departments, regarding their knowledge and monitoring of this process when hiring such services for their organizations. This objective also included underlying reflections on whether (or not) HR departments have evolved to become strategic units in the organizations, or remain as an operational and bureaucratic area. In addition, we aimed to expand the discussion, in academic terms, to understand this recent and complex subject (Laville & Dionne, 1999) that has gained relevance in the labor market, but still lacks an appropriate scientific support, being often considered a fad (Johnson, 2007).
We conducted the empirical research in 2017, based on 20 interviews with experts and professional coaches with knowledge and experience in the Portuguese organizational context and in other European countries, as some of them work in France, Germany, England and Spain.
We chose Portugal for the study given the cultural and linguistic proximity to Brazil, and the similar trajectories of the two countries in this field. Both saw the emergence of the coaching process in 1995, which has much increased after 2005, and experienced similar crises in their markets, which affected the hiring of coaching processes.
While in Portugal there is an effort to consolidate professional practices and its scientific development (Barosa-Pereira, 2008; ICF Portugal, 2016), a recent study in Brazil (Batista & Cancado, 2017) shows that there is no national regulatory body, with different institutions seeking to structure the professional activity and the academic education. The greater institutionalization of coaching in Portugal led to a better understanding of this context, contributing to scientific research in Brazil.
Portugal has experienced important changes in the labor market, and suffered the consequences of a crisis that led to a major economic slowdown (Rodrigues, Figueiras, & Junqueira, 2016). This resulted in a negative gross domestic product (GDP) performance, between 2004 and 2014, and a decline in household consumption expenditures by 64 percent of GDP in 2014 (INE/PORDATA, 2017). Unemployment rates also increased from 7.6 to 12.4 percent, between 2008 and 2015, above the EU average value of 9.4 percent in 2015.
This context brought greater job insecurity and increased levels of dissatisfaction, as observed by Amorim (2015) for the Brazilian labor market, and a similar result for Portugal, according to Matos and Domingos (2014).
This situation strengthened the need to introduce new management strategies for HR, to better ensure the engagement and retention of professionals, especially those who are critical for business competitiveness. Coaching thus emerges as an alternative, mainly in cases of leadership development (Underhill, McAnally, & Koriath, 2010) and their teams. The importance of coaching for professionals and organizations is demonstrated through the acceleration of professionals' development (Nieminen, Smerek, Kotrba, & Denison, 2013) and the higher level of satisfaction within companies (Whitmore, 2010; Goldsmith, Lyons, & McArthur, 2012). The increase of employees' personal and professional levels leads to improvements in organization performance and market competitiveness. These are actions about people's management; hence, it is necessary that HR professionals be more active and in line with business strategy and results, since coaching has been adopted as a management philosophy and not a specific development action in organizations (Hwang & Rauen, 2015; Joo, 2005).
Conceptually, coaching is a process in which a specialized professional (coach) helps the customers (coachees) to develop strategies for improving their performance in the organization (Whitmore, 2010) This process is supported by instruments that facilitate self-knowledge, learning and reflection on their potential, and define actions to achieve goals (Latham & Stuart, 2007). This relationship is often intermediated by HR departments, as the hiring party.
Although increasingly used by professionals and organizations, coaching is a frontier issue in academic studies. This is one of the main reasons for addressing it: it has been object of controversy, and considered a management fad (Wood & Paula, 2006), subject to judgments regarding its use and results (Milare & Yoshida, 2007; Wood, Tonelli, & Cooke, 2011). Even in the most recent studies, opinions remain the same, although there was a wide diffusion of the theme and expansion of its practice. Batista and Cancado (2017) and Rocha-Pinto and Snaiderman (2014) consider it a field under construction, with conceptual dissent and market expansion. Academic research has not followed the pace.
In this regard, Micklethwait and Wooldridge (1998) argue that some organizational practices are first adopted in the market, and later studied at universities. This seems to be the case with coaching, whose practical literature and user manuals are more abundant than scientific papers (Johnson, 2007; Orenstein, 2002), which are scarce, possibly because of its stigma among academics. Therefore, its recency and complexity increase the responsibility for conducting studies (as a typical topic of applied social sciences), to better serve the market as final user (Fischer, 2001).
-
Theoretical framework: the coaching process
Our theoretical approach sought to understand the relationship between people strategic management and coaching as a human development process. The discussion about the (non) evolution of HR departments as strategic units in the organizational context serves as background for this perspective. Since coaching is a recent and different approach to traditional human development actions, HR professionals and departments, supposedly strategic, should be familiar with its implementation, monitoring and benefits for the organization.
2.1 Strategic management of people: analysis of its (non) evolution
This discussion about the supposed evolution of HR departments as more strategic units is not recent. Souza (1979) already indicated how HR departments were changing their names (e.g. talent management), without an effective change in practice, and so did Souza, Calbino, and Carrieri (2010).
The literature on this topic, although it discusses the importance of this strategic and business-related action, shows that this new positioning is not a real fact. There is a dichotomy between the speech of a modern HR area and a still operational and reactive practice (Boxall & Purcell, 2011; Brewster, Mayrhofer, & Reichel, 2011; Legge, 2006; Ulrich, Ypunger, & Brockbank, 2008; Wood et al, 2011).
Several studies on human resources management (HRM) indicate the need for interaction with the organizations' strategies (Ulrich et al, 2008). The idea of a strategic HRM should consider its alignment and influence on organizational decisions (Schuller, 1992), and the measurement of its financial contribution to company's earnings (Brewster, 2007). In addition, it should be a source of competitive advantage (Fischer & Albuquerque, 2005), keeping the excellence of its operational activities (Legge, 2006), and articulating the HRM dynamics with the labor market and work relationships (Delbridge, Hauptmeier, & Sengupta, 2011).
In the case of Portugal, crisis' intensification in 2014 and political, social and economic changes (Rodrigues et al, 2016) affected HR departments and professionals in the job market. There was a dismantling of structured HR departments, centralization of actions in organizations' headquarters, extinction of HR departments in local units, and reduction or suspension of investments in development programs (Dominguez, 2016). Nevertheless, professionals and organizations increasingly used coaching as one of the answers for meeting competitiveness demands in the job market (Joao, 2017).
2.2 Understanding the coaching process
To understand the coaching process from an academic perspective is a stimulating and necessary challenge. From the outset, it is hard to point the origin of the term "coaching" (Joo, 2005; Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001). According to Barosa-Pereira (2008) and Witherspoon and White (2001), it ranges from comparisons with the Socratic method to references to "coche" (a particular type of carriage), passing by its association with sports (Araujo, 2010).
The first coaching schools emerged in the 1980s, and during the 1990s they started to enter companies (Lages & O'Connor, 2010). Their growth began in 1995, through the creation of the international coaching federation, a global organization for gathering professionals and their popularization spurred the growth of training and certifications (Ferreira, 2008; Coelho, 2016). Since the 2000s, we have observed the increase, although slow, in international scientific production (Kampa-Kokesch & Anderson, 2001; Grant & Cavanagh, 2004; Kets De Vries, 2005).
Hodge (2016) carried out a bibliometric survey between 2003 and 2012, showing that the body of knowledge in the area was still incipient. He published the paper in one of the few scientific journals focused on coaching, the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, published since 2003 in Oxford. He observed that most of the authors were from the UK, the articles were mainly about coaching (vs mentoring), and their content was mostly developed in the business context.
These results may indicate that the organizational field is undergoing a process of institutionalization, according to DiMaggio and Powell (1983) definition, where isomorphism mechanisms are developed for new practices, such as the coaching process.
Although there are many concepts...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
