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The Development of an Executive Leadership Coaching Framework

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Abstract

Due to the executives’ key role in the business sphere, organisations have shown great interest and investment in developing their executives to understand their work context and the people they work with so that a constructive, productive and healthy environment can be created in the workplace. One way in which executives can be assisted to learn as well as develop themselves is executive coaching. However, executive coaching is still a young research field, with the practice in this field ahead of the relevant theory. It is necessary for executive leadership coaching theory, frameworks, and models to be critically reviewed, and a focus on Positive Psychology Coaching as well as Cognitive Behavioural Coaching will offer greater insight. This study used an exploratory qualitative constructivist research approach, to gain insight into executive leadership coaching, allowing the researcher to focus on greater understanding of this complex social phenomenon. The researcher adopted a critical analysis strategy of existing secondary sources, followed by a deductive content analysis to retest the existing knowledge in a new setting, through the analysis of models, concepts, and categories. The research was limited to testing existing exploratory models or theories about executive leadership coaching against the data, moving from a more general and abstract focus to a more specific and concrete one. However, the study does not seek to operationalise the findings. The critical content analysis in the study discovered various elements necessary for effective executive leadership coaching and these are: coaching process aspects; personal development; leader and leadership competencies; personality traits and behaviour; business environment and context; relational and team leadership; diversity and culture; and leadership style and influence. The main contribution of the study was the development of an executive leadership coaching framework that describes all the steps in a full coaching intervention.
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