The Relationship between Coach and Coachee: A Crucial Factor for Coaching Effectiveness

Abstract

Coaching, and especially executive coaching , is one of the fastest growing industries in recent years and is being used more and more often for the development of workers. This chapter seeks to explain the effectiveness of the relationship between the coach and the coachee in collegial coaching. For this purpose 35 coachees and their coaches were interviewed. The coachees were all managers working for the Dutch government. Their coaches were also managers who were trained to coach their colleague managers from other departments within the government. The findings show that coachees attributed the effectiveness of their coaching to a large part to the relationship they had with their coach. Receiving unconditional acceptance and respect from the coach was not only a facilitative condition, but also directly responsible for change. Furthermore, the findings indicate that although there should be a certain distance between the coach and the coachee, a purely formal unilateral helping relationship is less effective than a mutual relationship in which a deeper personal connection exists between the coach and the coachee. Also, the findings suggest that while differences between the coach and coachee in terms of personality may lead to useful challenge, when it comes to beliefs and values more similarity between coach and coachee is desired.