Experiencing Executive Coaching

This research focused on illuminating the phenomenon of executive coaching, an emerging occupation and field that is pursuing a pathway towards professionalisation. However, although executive coaching has risen in prominence as a commercial service offered by executive coaches and as a leadership development initiative utilised in organisations, it
remains neither clearly defined nor well understood in both theory and in practice.
The aim of this research was to make a contribution to the practice and the future of executive coaching (particularly in Australia) by developing a deeper and richer understanding of the phenomenon utilising interpretive paradigm research. I explored the nature of executive coaching and how it can be experienced (and practised). In doing so I addressed my primary
research question: What is the nature and experience of executive coaching? My secondary research questions were: (1) What is executive coaching (and how is it is emerging as a concept and as a practice); and (2) How do client executives and executive coaches experience executive coaching?
Through this research I identified several key features of the current status of the practice and knowledge base of executive coaching that made this research particularly challenging. Most evidently, there was no common or widely understood notion of executive coaching and there was a lack of agreement around common principles, practices and models underpinning
executive coaching. From this challenging baseline I conducted two studies with the aim of expanding this limited understanding of executive coaching.