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RESEARCH MATTERS: LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AND THE POTENTIAL SYSTEMIC OUTCOMES FOR EMPLOYEES

by | Feb 27, 2025 | Articles, Research matters

Martina Doherty and Julia Papworth explore leadership coaching and the ripple effect on employee wellbeing

 

Influenced by the challenges of employee retention and worrying mental health trends, employee wellbeing has become a top priority for many organisations. Coaching may be offered to executives to improve wellbeing or facilitate leadership function and organisational goals, but are there any wellbeing outcomes of coaching beyond the leader themselves? Is there a ripple effect?

Executive coaching received generalised and wide-scale acceptance in the 1990s (Kilburg,1996). The narrative around executive coaching still focuses on individualised leadership development, with success primarily evaluated in terms of the coached leader. The individual domain is where benefits of leader development occur, and where most results are expected (Grove et al, 2005). It remains difficult to conclude definitively if systemic outcomes can result from executive leaders receiving coaching. Does this one-to-one intervention benefit a privileged few or add tangible value at a broader level? More explorative research at a systemic level is crucial. Treading on ground formed from assumptions, or generalised opinions that coaching executive leaders will improve employee wellbeing, or that positive outcomes exist across an organisation, are shaky at best.

Researchers have considered the efficacy of executive coaching across diverse domains, from mitigating toxic leadership behaviours (Coutu & Kauffman, 2009), to facilitating goal achievement and navigating change (Goldsmith, 2009), return on investment (ROI; Anderson, 2001), the coaching process (Jones et al., 2016), and the coach-coachee relationship (de Haan, 2012). There’s sparse research on the broader system effects of executive coaching, although some studies have focused on leaders’ subordinates as potential beneficiaries, including addressing how coaching impacted subordinate absenteeism (Talboom, 1999) or employee satisfaction (Anderson, 2001). 

Employee wellbeing is a topic of increasing interest in organisations, and while Zheng et al., (2015) suggest it’s an ambiguous construct, there’s a general consensus that it encompasses two universal elements: feeling good and functioning well (Pradhan & Hati, 2019). 

Research shows that leadership behaviour is a key contributor to employee wellbeing, and it’s suggested that leadership behaviour can be improved through executive coaching, but that’s as far as the correlation goes. There’s little to no insight in how wellbeing is experienced by the subordinates of leaders receiving executive coaching. Does executive or leadership coaching improve employee wellbeing outcomes? Is there a ripple effect from the coaching?

 

Evaluation

By investigating the ripple effect of leadership coaching across an academic organisation, O’Connor and Cavanagh (2013) evaluated wellbeing measures from non-coached employees in a leader’s network. Wellbeing was evaluated only through psychological wellbeing measures, ignoring subjective wellbeing, job satisfaction, employee engagement or workplace relationships, all of which impact how individuals function in the workplace and feel about their work (Warr et al., 1979). While this research touched on the subject of the ripple effect, there’s not enough evidence-based data in the coaching field to justify, nor indicate correlations between leaders receiving coaching and the positive (or otherwise) effects of coaching on subordinates in general – specifically their wellbeing.

With this in mind, the first author of this article, supervised by the second author, carried out a quasi-experimental research study aimed at exploring the potential ripple effect of executive coaching on the wellbeing of a leader’s subordinates. A six-session coaching programme was delivered to six executive leaders, with subordinates’ wellbeing measured across six different scales before and after each programme. It’s interesting to consider that no overall significant improvements were found in subordinates’ wellbeing, indicating that a ripple effect beyond a coaching client is not a given if measured in purely statistical terms. It could indicate that there are two holes in this topic: the question of the ripple effect itself, and how research sets out to measure it. 

The simple quantitative methodology of this study was a key limitation in being able to conclusively determine any ripple effect since mediating factors such as pre-existing relationships between executive leaders and their subordinates were not considered. Also, pre-existing turnover intentions or other pre-existing wellbeing factors among employees couldn’t be considered, nor was it possible to capture exactly how wellbeing may be expressed in narrative terms. This illustrates the complexity of trying to understand and generate evidence for measuring impact in a systematic manner. 

 

Further exploration

Kelloway and Barling (2010) argue the intention of leadership development is not primarily to affect participating individuals but rather to positively affect other indirect participants, eg, subordinates. In a coaching context, this view is supported by Hawkins and Turner (2019) who purport that there can never be a coaching client without a systemic context. This makes this current research a starting point for further exploration, knowledge creation and evidence around the ripple effect of EC in two key areas: first, it highlights the difficulties of evaluating the systemic impact of coaching in a real-world environment of complex organisational structures with multiple factors and ethical considerations at play. Second, in the context of wellbeing as a priority for many organisations undergoing challenges of employee retention (van Wyk, 2021), it’s the first study of its kind to look at the ripple effect of executive coaching on employee wellbeing. It calls for further research by coaching practitioners, academics and organisations to highlight the need for discussion and evidence-based research around its ripple effect to validate coaching as a systemic, value-enhancing intervention that can deliver broader organisational benefits beyond the individual.  

 

References

  • Anderson, M. C. (2001). Executive Briefing: Case Study on the Return of Investment of Executive Coaching. MetrixGlobal LLC.
  • Athanasopoulou, A., & Dopson, S. (2018). A systematic review of executive coaching outcomes: Is it the journey or the destination that matters the most? The Leadership Quarterly, 29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.11.004
  • Coutu, D., & Kauffman, C. (2009). What can coaches do for you? Harvard Business Review, 9.
  • De Haan, E. (Ed.). (2012). Coaching Relationships: The relational coaching field book. Libri Publishing.
  • Goldsmith, M. (2009). Executive coaching: A real world perspective from a real-life coaching practitioner. International Coaching Psychology Review, 4(1), 22-24.
  • Grover, S., & Furnham, A. (2016). Coaching as a developmental intervention in organisations: A systematic review of its effectiveness and the mechanisms underlying it. PLOS ONE, 11(7), e0159137. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159137
  • Hawkins, P., & Turner, E. (2019). Systemic Coaching: Delivering Value Beyond the Individual (1st ed.). Routledge.
  • Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12119
  • Kelloway, K. E., & Barling, J. (2010). Leadership development as an intervention in occupational health psychology. Work & Stress, 24(3), 260-279. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2010.518441
  • Kilburg, R. R. (1996). Toward a conceptual understanding and definition of executive coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 48(2), 134-144. https://doi.org/10.1037/1061-4087.48.2.134
  • O’Connor, S., & Cavanagh, M. (2013). The coaching ripple effect: The effects of developmental coaching on wellbeing across organisational networks. Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and Practice, 3(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/2211-1522-3-2
  • Pradhan, R., & Hati, L. (2019). The Measurement of Employee Well-being: Development and Validation of a Scale. Global Business Review, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0972150919859101
  • Talboom, A. M. (1999). The welfare sector hits hard: Exploratory research after the role of coaching and counseling within organizations.Nijmegen Business School.
  • van Wyk, R. (2021). The employer-employee power shift. Barnett Waddingham. Retrieved from Barnett Waddingham website: https://www.thehrworld.co.uk/85-of-uk-businesses-feel-the-pinch-of-the-great-resignation/
  • Warr, P., Cook, J., & Wall, T. (1979). Scales for the measurement of some work attitudes and aspects of psychological wellbeing. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 52(2), 129-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1979.tb00448.x
  • Zheng, X., Zhu, W., Zhao, H., & Zhang, C. (2015). Employee wellbeing in organizations: Theoretical model, scale development, and cross-cultural validation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(5), 621-644. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1990

 

 

About the authors

  • Julia Papworth is an experienced independent coach and lecturer in Coaching and Mentoring Practice at Oxford Brookes University Business School.
  • jpapworth@brookes.ac.uk

 

  • Martina Doherty is an EMCC practitioner coach working with business founders and international corporate organisations.
  • martina@mdconsulting.com