The double‐edged sword of coaching: Relationships between managers' coaching and their feelings of personal accomplishment and role overload

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21342
• Author: Zhuolin She,Quan Li,Manuel London,Baiyin Yang,Bingqing Li
• Date: 01 June 2019
• Published date: 01 June 2019

QUANTITATIVE STUDY

The double-edged sword of coaching:

Relationships between managers' coaching and

their feelings of personal accomplishment and role

overload

Zhuolin She

1

| Bingqing Li

2

| Quan Li

1

| Manuel London

3

|

Baiyin Yang

1

1

School of Economics and Management,

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

2

School of Management, Lanzhou University,

Gansu, China

3

College of Business, Stony Brook University,

Stony Brook, New York

Correspondence

Quan Li, School of Economics and

Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing,

China.

Email: liq5.14@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

Funding information

National Natural Science Foundation of China,

Grant/Award Number: 71232002 and

71872096

Attention to the effects of managerial coaching usually focuses on

subordinates.However, knowledge of the impact of coaching on the

coaches is limited. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory,

this study examined the extent to which coaching has benefits and

costs for managers who spend time and energy coaching their sub-

ordinates. Structural equation modeling results from a multisource,

time-lagged survey showed that managerial coaching rated by team

members affected managers' self-ratings of job attitudes through a

dual-path model.Managerial coaching was positivelyrelated to man-

agers' personal accomplishment, which had a subsequent positive

effect on their job satisfaction. However, coaching also heightened

managers' role overload, thus resulting in their workfatigue. In addi-

tion, results showed that managers who reported lower (versus

higher) perceivedorganizational support tended to experience lower

(versus higher) personal accomplishment and higher (versus lower)

role overload associated with coaching. Implications for theory and

practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS

conservation of resources theory, managerial coaching, perceived

organizational support, personal accomplishment, role overload,

structural equation modeling

1|INTRODUCTION

Coaching has gained progressive attention as a way to align and influence subordinates toward collective organiza-

tional success (Ellinger, Ellinger, & Keller, 2003; Hagen, 2012). Managerial coaching refers to a helping and facilitative

process that enables subordinates to learn and develop, thereby improving their job performance and, potentially,

DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21342

© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Human Resource Development Quarterly. 2019;30:245–266. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrdq 245

their career opportunities (Ellinger et al., 2003; Heslin, Vandewalle, & Latham, 2006). Existing research on managerial

coaching has focused primarily on its positive impact on subordinates' attitudes and behaviors (Hagen, 2012), such as

employee job satisfaction (Kim, Egan, Kim, & Kim, 2013), organizational commitment (Ellinger et al., 2003), job perfor-

mance (Agarwal, Angst, & Magni, 2009), and proactive career behaviors (Huang & Hsieh, 2015). While previous

research extols the positive effects resulting from managerial coaching on subordinates, it remains unclear whether

coaching has an effect on the managers who engage in coaching (Hagen, 2012).

Generally, managers' behaviors,such as transformational leadership and ethicalbehavior, not only affect theirsub-

ordinates, but can also have meaningful effects on the managers (Lanaj, Johnson, & Lee, 2016; Lin, Ma, & Johnson,

2016). Devoting energy to developing subordinates is another managerial behavior that bears investigation. Following

Ellinger etal. (2003), coaching is a role behavior that managersdo not necessarily have to do andthat takes extra effort.

Managers may view coaching as time consuming and distracting from overseeing the work of the team. However,

coaching may also be beneficial to managers by increasing their sense of accomplishment. Therefore, the purpose of

the present study is to explore whether and how (i.e., the processes through which) engaging in managerial coaching

affects managers themselves,thus extending the line of coachingresearch that previouslyhas not considered.

We examine the extent to which coaching may influence managers' job attitudes by drawing upon conservation

of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). The theory postulates that people strive to obtain,retain, and protect val-

ued resources (i.e., any physical, psychological, and/or social factors that people value) to attain goals (Halbesleben,

Neveu, Paustian-Underdahl, & Westman, 2014; Hobfoll, Halbesleben, Neveu, & Westman, 2018). Specifically, we

propose that coaching could affect managers' job attitudes through two distinct mediation mechanisms. First, man-

agers engaging in coaching may gain more relational and psychological resources from their subordinates, such as

positive feedback and recognition (Halbesleben, Harvey, & Bolino, 2009; Huang & Hsieh, 2015). This in turn should

lead to managers feeling more personal accomplishment and job satisfaction. Second, because managerial coaching

also entails consuming personal resources, particularly time and energy (McLean, Yang, Kuo, Tolbert, & Larkin, 2005),

managers engaging in coaching their subordinates may view this as an extra behavior that leads to feelings of role

overload and fatigue (Halbesleben, 2006). In addition, conservation of resources theory posits that situational factors

can influence individuals' resource generation and depletion (Halbesleben et al., 2014; Hobfoll, Freedy, Lane, & Gel-

ler, 1990). Thus, we incorporate managers' perceived organizational support into the model and test its moderating

role in the relationships between coaching and managers' job attitudes. We argue that managers who view their

organizational environment as generally supportive may be more likely to view coaching as an activity that is encour-

aged and rewarded. As a result, their perceptions of organizational support may increase the extent to which coach-

ing is positively related to their sense of personal accomplishment and job satisfaction (Erdogan & Enders, 2007) and

decrease the extent to which coaching is related to their feelings of overload and fatigue (Brotheridge, 2001;

Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). An investigation of this theoretical model will advance the current understanding of

the implications of managerial coaching, as well as the dynamic process through which managerial coaching affects

the job attitudes of managers as coaches. We show the proposed theoretical model in Figure 1.

2|THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT OF HYPOTHESES

To better understand the possible benefits and costs of managerial coaching for managers, we draw upon conserva-

tion of resources theory (Halbesleben et al., 2014; Hobfoll, 1989, 2001), which has been suggested as a particularly

relevant and useful theory to understand the consequences of work behaviors for actors themselves (i.e., managers

as coaches) (Koopman, Lanaj, & Scott, 2016). Accordingly, people are motivated to protect current resources and

obtain new resources including objects (i.e., house, car, and tools for work), conditions (i.e., employment, tenure, and

seniority), personal resources (i.e., key skills and traits such as self-efficacy), energies (i.e., credit, knowledge, and

time), and other things that people value. Resource gains and losses from work behaviors could have downstream

consequences for individuals' attitudes and behaviors (Halbesleben et al., 2014; Hobfoll, 1989, 2001). For example,

246 SHE ET AL.