Предпосылки и эффекты обучения коучингу молодых специалистов

This Master’s Thesis is devoted to the coaching training for young professionals in business and management field and formation of their coaching leadership style. In the introduction, the topic relevance and background will be introduced, then, the research gap and the research problem will be stated, and finally, research questions will be discussed with the linkage to the research outcomes.
1.1. Topic relevance and background
The research area of this Master’s Thesis is coaching training for young professionals. We will consider coaching regarding the definitions of Miles Downey and John Whitmore who contributed to the coaching development in the modern world. In (Downey, 2003) coaching is defined as “the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another”. This definition states for the main role of a coach who can influence the development of others. In addition, in (Whitmore, 2010) coaching is considered mostly from the perspective of self- development of a coachee with the help of a coach: “Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance”. Therefore, we can see from these two definitions, that coaching is a two-sided work of a coach and a coachee with the aim to develop the latter.
The research of coaching field which is applied to a career is a coaching leadership theory (or coaching leadership style, CLS) which is discussed in (Berg, 2016). This theory is not yet scientifically investigated (Cox et al., 2010) but is directly used as a practical approach in companies by managers, chief executive officers (CEOs), and entrepreneurs. Through coaching training, young professionals in the field of business and management learn how to implement coaching in their leadership style, therefore, after coaching training the coaching leadership style is developed and improved.
The history of coaching takes the origin from Socratic dialogue methods which took place in the second half of the 5th century BC (Vlastos, 1983) and consist of the logical system of questions for an interlocutor. Then the term “coach” appeared in the field of education in 1840s, in rowing sport in 1880s, and finally in management and administration in 1900s.
1.2. Research gap and research problem
Nowadays, all managers should face with daily objectives and tasks, therefore, they should work in a fast pace and bring results to their companies. However, there is another side of managers’ work which is communication with personnel, including support, help, motivation, professional
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development (Elrehail et al., 2020). Therefore, there should be a balance between seeking for the company’s performance and creating a fruitful atmosphere for employees on the workplace. (Heskett & Schlesinger, 1997; Lewis et al., 2014) That is why the topic of leadership style of a manager is relevant in today’s business literature, for instance, in (Shea, 1999; Bhattacharyya, 2006).
In this Master’s Thesis, the focus is made on young professionals in the field of business and management, therefore, the dilemma of performance and communication is relevant for them also as they form a specific group of managers. In this research, young professionals are those people who are currently working, under 35 years old, and graduated from the University no more than 3 years ago.
Moreover, especially young professionals usually have difficulties in communication on the first stages of work in an organization (Gunsalus, 2012). Therefore, the problem of building relationships with colleagues is particularly acute.
Since last several decades, coaching is becoming more and more popular approach to develop employees and make an easy-going communication between a manager and a subordinate in an organization. On the other hand, coaching leadership style of managers needs specific adaptation for their professional role, time, and place, therefore, managers who are coaches in their organizations may have problems connected to coaching practices which can weaken the efficiency of their performance. Coaching leadership style is the tool that facilitates communication with people (Goleman, 2000)
It is still a question whether age influence coaching success (Bergquist, 2016), but majority of researches are focused on adult managers (Lawrence, 2017) rather than young professionals. It can be supposed that young managers need some time to develop inclination to coaching and firstly should try themselves in working for a company. This can be the reason why, in general, many programs with coaching training are provided for MBA level attendees. Nevertheless, according to general researches devoted to coaching effectiveness, with training that helps to develop coaching leadership style, young professionals in the field of business and management can easier adapt for the work in an organization.
Therefore, the research gap is that there is much scientific research done in investigating specific factors that lead to the managers’ leadership style formation and particularly to the coaching approach. However, this field is not yet studied for young professionals in management. Also, there is no model of factors that can determine manager’s choice to apply
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coaching leadership style in their professional practice. It was noted by (Misiukonis, 2011) that there is still the uncertainty in the way how managers feel about their coaching practices, and what prerequisites they should have to start to implement coaching on their workplace.
As a result, the goal of the research is to investigate the path of coaching learning of young professionals in business education. The research objectives are:
1. To investigate the field of CLS;
2. To define factors that lead to CLS formation;
3. To investigate the industry of coaching training;
4. To build the model of factors that leads to CLS formation;
5. To evaluate the effects from coaching training that young professionals get during
passing the program;
6. To develop managerial implications for the organizations that provide coaching
education for young professionals in business education.
1.3. Research questions and expected results of the research
The research questions of this Master’s Thesis are:
RQ1. What factors influence the choice of young professionals in business field to develop in the field of coaching?
RQ2. What are the results of passing a coaching program for the professional and personal development of young professionals in business field?
The choice of the coaching leadership style in this research means that a young professional consciously uses any part of knowledge acquired during education on the program. This can be indicated by the subjective opinion of young professional. Since coaching field is closely connected with the psychology, there could not be provided yet any objective and scientifically proven measure of the coaching leadership style development level. That is why we accept the subjective opinion of the person basing on his or her consciousness. The narrower look at the coaching leadership style and its characteristics will be provided in further sections.
In this research, qualitative method would be used to learn what factors and effects coaching training have for young professionals and how their coaching leadership style develops. Yet there is no single theoretical framework or model that could list such factors and/or effects,
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therefore, it would be interesting to compile all related theoretical frameworks and see how they correspond with the reality by the help qualitative research in this paper.
The results of this Master’s Thesis would be (1) the conceptual model of prerequisites that lead young professionals in business and management field to the choice of coaching training; (2) the effects of coaching training for professional and individual developments of young professionals in business and management field; and (3) practical and theoretical implications for coaching training and institutes that provide such training.
The object of the research is coaching training for young professionals in the field of management and business. The subject of the research are factors and effects of coaching training for young professionals in the field of management and business.
As for the empirical part, the qualitative research will be done in order to answer the research questions and meet the research goal. In particular, single case study method and semi-structured interviews will be applied to understand what factors and effects coaching training has for young professionals. As for the case study, the coaching program “Go for Coaching” implemented by the Coaching Center of Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University (the Coaching Center of GSOM SPSU) will be taken for the analysis. In the study, the participants would be young professionals who successfully finished the program and use coaching leadership style in their professional practice.
This research will contribute to the coaching and leadership literature on the topic of leadership formation and young professionals’ propensity to coaching. Also, there are benefits for business environment. From one perspective, this research would be useful primarily for the organizations that provide coaching training. For them, it would be valuable to know how young managers are inclined to coaching and whether it is worth to develop coaching training especially for them as a target audience. From another perspective, this work would be interesting for managers of different positions and overall personnel of organizations as they can use coaching leadership style in their practices while being, for example, leaders of working groups or directors of departments. For HRM specialists it will be clearer how to analyse personality traits when it goes for the leadership style of the candidate.