Strengthening leader’s impact and ability to manage change through group coaching

Abstract

In this article, the author will focus on finding out, how does coaching influence strengthening leader’s impact and leader’s ability to manage changes. Longitutional study was conducted in the Estonian biggest telecommunication company. The goal was to investigate how leadership group coaching influences the performance of the team leaders. In 2009, 11 teams took part in the study (97 participants) and in 2010, 9 teams took part (57 participants). There were 8 months between the studies. The leaders, their managers and team members all participated in both studies. Based on existing literature, the author developed a theoretical model “Components of influencing leaders change management ability” consisting from three components: leader, relationship orientation and task orientation in team. Each of these components can be divided into two. In addition, trust in the teams was investigated. The study showed that in 2010 the results were higher than in 2009. According to the study results group coaching had the strongest impact to the task orientation in teams. Group coaching influenced the common perception of the leaders’ trustworthiness the most.