The Contrasting Effects of Coaching Style on Task Performance: The Mediating Roles of Subjective Task Complexity and Self‐Set Goal

• Date: 01 December 2013
• Author: Ray Tak‐yin Hui,Robert E. Wood,Christina Sue‐Chan
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21170

The Contrasting Effects of

Coaching Style on Task

Performance: The Mediating

Roles of Subjective Task

Complexity and Self-Set Goal

Ray Tak-yin Hui, Christina Sue-Chan, Robert E. Wood

The effects of two coaching styles, one guidance and one facilitation, on the

performance of coached and transfer tasks were examined in an

experimental study. With the aim of improving and enhancing individual

performance, guidance coaching entails the coach as a role model, delivering

clear expectations and feedback about how to improve in a directive manner,

while facilitation coaching involves the coach’s helping the individual to

explore and evaluate the task and self-developing the correct responses for

improving performance. Tests of the mediating effects of self-set goals, which

are defi ned as desired levels of performance to be attained on a task, and

subjective task complexity, which is defi ned as an individual’s perception of

the complexity of a task, on the coaching style–performance relationship

were also conducted. Participants (n = 127) were coached in the use of two

software programs, PowerPoint and Excel 2007. The results showed that

guidance coaching is more effective for improving coached task performance

than facilitation coaching, while facilitation coaching is more effective for

improving transfer task performance than guidance coaching. Subjective

task complexity and self-set performance goals mediated the effects of

coaching style on the performance of both coached and transfer tasks.

Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.

Key Words: coaching style, guidance coaching, facilitation coaching, subjective

task complexity, goals, task performance, mediation

ARTICLES

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 24, no. 4, Winter 2013 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21170 429

This research was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special

Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 148708) awarded to the second and third authors.

430 Hui, Sue-Chan, Wood

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

In the past 20 years, coaching has received increasing attention and endorse-

ment as an important managerial activity (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2002).

Coaching as a managerial practice is widespread, with 71% of surveyed orga-

nizations using it to facilitate employee learning and development (Chartered

Institute of Personnel and Development, 2007). In some global companies,

such as YUM! Brands (Mike & Slocum, 2003) and Motorola (Latham, Almost,

Mann, & Moore, 2005), managers are increasingly expected to provide coach-

ing to their subordinates (Latham et al., 2005). Thus, over 50 years after its

introduction into management (Evered & Selman, 1989), management schol-

ars and practitioners alike have come to endorse Mace’s (1950) view that

coaching is an important managerial activity for developing employees on the

job. According to Mace (1950), coaching is a valuable and acquirable manage-

ment skill that is performed by an immediate supervisor to encourage and

enhance the growth and development of subordinates in an organization.

Coaching is commonly defi ned as a developmental practice that requires

the coach to provide an informal, ongoing form of goal-focused development

aimed at improving and enhancing a person’s performance (Hall, Otazo, &

Hollenbeck, 1999). From a behavioral perspective, previous human resource

development (HRD) studies have examined the role of manager as coach and

taxonomies of specific coaching behavior and skills (e.g., Beattie, 2002;

Ellinger & Bostrom, 1999; Ellinger, Ellinger, & Keller, 2003; Ellinger,

Watkins, & Bostrom, 1999; McLean, Yang, Kuo, Tolbert, & Larkin, 2005). A

review of the HRD studies of coaching shows that most share a common implicit

and narrow framing of coaching as facilitative and developmental in nature

(Hamlin, Ellinger, & Beattie, 2008). For example, Ellinger and Bostrom (1999)

suggested that coaching includes two clusters of behaviors—empowering

and facilitating—while Hamlin (2004) suggested that leaders facilitate subor-

dinate development through empowerment, delegation, participation, and

concern. Yet previous studies have found that leaders also use a more directive

style (Yun, Faraj, & Sims, 2005). For example, Beattie (2002) proposed that,

in addition to empowering, developing, and challenging, leaders who coach

also inform, assess, and advise their subordinates. To reconcile these two per-

spectives on coaching, we adopted Maier’s (1976) two approaches to perfor-

mance appraisal, and proposed that, instead of a single, prototypical coaching

style, there are two possible types of coaching—guidance and facilitation—

that can enhance different types of task performance. With the aim of improv-

ing and enhancing individual performance, guidance coaching entails the

coach, as a role model, delivering clear expectations and feedback about how

to improve in a directive manner, while facilitation coaching involves the

coach’s helping the individual to explore and evaluate the task and self-

developing appropriate responses for improving performance. Consequently,

the fi rst purpose of this study is to extend the coaching literature by examin-

ing the impacts of two distinct coaching styles on the performance of

individuals.