Gender doesn’t usually influence a client’s choice of coach, but male sexism is alive and kicking, according to research. David Gray and Harshita Goregaokar report
To date, the coaching literature has been largely silent about one essential ingredient of coaching: the coach-client matching process. Our study describes the results from a coaching programme in which clients were asked to justify their choice of coach.We wanted to study coach selection processes within the coaching literature but found a lack of evidence. Hence, we turned to mentoring as a close proxy, since many matching studies in mentoring focus on gender. Women, for example, face more barriers to obtaining a mentor than men, and there is often a shortage of suitable mentors occupying high organisational ranks.
However, cross-gender relationships may bring with them special difficulties, including office gossip and sexual innuendos. Female mentors may be seen as effective role models for women mentees by exhibiting behaviours needed to overcome career challenges faced by women.
The results
Qualitative analysis
Key findings:
- Females offer more personal support
- Females can act as role models
- Male sexism exists
Qualitative data suggested that both male and female clients exhibited a preference for female coaches. Women coaches, for example, were seen to offer more personal support, being “easier to talk to from a personal point of view”. Women had the ability to be a “good listener” while being able to communicate “on a fairly personal basis”.
The mentoring literature had alerted us to the potential for coaches to act as role models for their clients, particularly female coaches with female clients. One of the traits sought was that of assertiveness. However, one female client had chosen a female and one a male coach.
For the same-gender pairing, the female coach was chosen because of her experience of working in a similar, male-dominated work environment to the client. Ironically, the other female client chose a male coach for very similar reasons, being a female manager “in a 98 per cent male dominated environment”.
Another theme to emerge was that of male sexism. One male client stated that he had chosen his female coach because “she looked the most glamorous”. This was further reinforced by incidents during the matching process.
One of the women coaches asked to be withdrawn from her commitment to one, male, client after four hours of coaching. Another female coach confronted sexist male attitudes directly.
“As I was leaving he said something really sexist. I said, ‘You know, remember I’m here just as much to find out if I can work with you, and I feel it inconsiderate.’ And he nearly fell off the top of the stair. He couldn’t believe me. ‘Gosh you’re pretty strong with it.’ I said, ‘Maybe you need a strong coach. Goodbye’.”
The outcome was that he chose this woman as his coach, and she reports that they “did some very interesting work together”.
Quantitative analysis
At the end of the programme records were examined to identify the gender of clients and their coach. Table 1 shows that 64 male clients chose male (same gender) coaches, and a slightly larger number of female coaches (67).
In the case of female clients, a larger number of female coaches were chosen (39 female as against 31 male). Statistical analysis, however, revealed that none of these differences was significant (Pearson chi-square = .382; sig = .535). The proposition that clients have a propensity to choose women coaches is not supported by the quantitative data.
Conclusions
The results suggest that while some female clients clearly preferred a female coach as a role model, this trend was not general or borne out statistically. Indeed, most women respondents made no mention of gender when articulating their reasons for choosing a coach.
In general, we conclude that, when making their selection, most men and women are ‘gender blind’.
Key findings and recommendations
- Clients tend to base their choice on the professional characteristics of the coach rather than their gender
- Organisations that sponsor executive coaching need to provide a diversity of coaches for selection (since, for a minority of clients, gender is an issue)
- Coaches may wish to indicate their awareness of sexism issues as part of the contracting process and indicate the circumstances in which they will terminate a contract
- Clients who experience sexual harassment should know who they can turn to for help
Methodology
The intervention
The study was based on a coaching programme managed by the University of Surrey and delivered by a team of 20 executive coaches who provided 10 hours of one-to-one coaching to 201 UK-based owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The coaches’ CVs were imported into a booklet containing their photographs, qualifications (including specific coaching qualifications, if any), methods and philosophy. This booklet was given to all the SME managers who had joined the programme. Clients were asked to identify three potential coaches and to arrange either a face-to-face or phone meeting with each of them. Clients then informed the university of their choice.
Research design
Intensive, qualitative face-to-face interviews were conducted with a sample of clients. After data analysis, the issue of gender in matching emerged as an important, but ambivalent theme, mentioned by 15 of the 46 interviewees. Two focus groups of coaches sought to validate the interview data by addressing the following questions:
What factors influenced the coach selection/matching process?
To what extent was gender a factor in coach selection?
At the end of the programme, records were accessed to identify the number of male and female coaches chosen by each gender of client. This allowed for the verification, or otherwise, of the qualitative data.
Clients came from a wide variety of sectors, organisations and businesses. Most were owner-managers or directors or managers at or just below board level. The gender breakdown was 65 per cent male and 35 per cent female.
David Gray is professor of management learning and Harshita Goregaokar is research fellow at the School of Management at University of Surrey.
For a full version of this article see: Gray, D.E and Goregaokar, H. (2010) Choosing an executive coach: The influence of gender on the coach-coachee matching process. Management Learning 41(5) 525-544.
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 6