Because of the changing environment, organizations have to stay competitive. This means that companies have to change their culture to respond to the changing needs of the environment.
Focus points should be on innovation, flexibility and adaptability. Without innovativeness there are no new products, services and procedures. (Viitala, 2009) Companies with a highly adaptive culture can reach higher performance levels in the future and in the long term. (Kotter &
Heskett, 1992)
From an organization’s perspective, this means that to be adaptive organizations have to build a transformational culture with some areas from transactional culture. From a transformational perspective, it is important that companies focus on innovations, transformation and change. It is also important that the organization is flexible, adaptive, dynamic and informal, but there is still the need for rules and guidelines from a transactional culture. (Bass & Aviolio 1993)
For leaders, this means that leaders need to approach individuals from two different angles, from human and from economic perspectives. The human perspective offers a softer approach where the focus is to develop organizational culture and human capabilities while building trust through teamwork and communication. The economic approach focuses on raising profitability and pushing through the changes which benefit shareholders. Modern leadership is focusing on individuals and the idea is to reduce punishments and control. The focus should be 70-80 per-cent on individuals (Beer & Nohria 2000; Viitala 2009; Kouszes & Pozner 2003; Kotter; 1996).
One way to develop human capabilities, teamwork and communication can be done by creating a coaching culture. Coaching as a leading method for individuals has increased over the last years. Coaching is a style of managing and is one method to help people work together and grow and change at the same time as with the organization. At the individual level, this means that everyone is developing and improving themselves as well as the performance of others as part of his/her own job. These behaviors can motivate, increase job satisfaction and strengthen the bonds between team members (Clutterbuck & Meggison 2005; Beer & Nohria 2000; Hart 2005). It can be said that coaching can improve teamwork and strategy implementation. It is something that develops a person’s skills and knowledge in a way that their performance im-proves. Coaching can enhance job performance by developing an individual’s own develop-ment, management development and organizational development. It is also proven that coach-ing has a positive effect on developcoach-ing leadership skills and effectiveness. (Rock & Dunde 2008; Wales 2003; Hart 2005; Jarvis 2004)
From the leader perspective, it has also helped leaders to change habits like running meetings and time management. It also helps individuals to solve problems using one’s own thinking and in that way develop one’s own learning (Rock & Dunde 2008). Companies use internal coaches in situations where they want to create a clear vision about the culture. Internal coaches are used also for skill-building and in-house leadership training programs because they have better knowledge about the company. (Wasyhylysyn 2003; McDermott 2007)
The framework of this study is not just focusing on the effectiveness of leadership training programs. As stated earlier, the purpose is also to find the connection between coaching and transformational leadership and how they fit into organizational culture. The framework for this thesis is the combination of five different fundamental practices from transformational leader-ship by Kouzes & Posner (1987) and seven key components of effective coaching conversations
by Bowerman & Collins (1999). The results for the effectiveness and evaluation can be formed by using Salas & Garofano’s (2004) Integrated Model of Training (IMTEE) which is the com-bination of the most used evaluation theories. As a result, we can form the following framework for this thesis:
Figure 4. Theoretical framework of the study.
Transformational leadership fundaments usually are: charisma-inspiration, intellectual stimu-lation and individualized consideration (Schruijer & Vansina 1999) but to form a more under-standable context, I use five fundamental practices from Kouzes & Posner (1987). These fun-daments are: Challenge the Process, Shared Vision, Enable Others, Model the Way and En-courage the Heart.
These are the fundaments for a transformational leader and transformational coaching is needed to create a coaching culture. (Kirkpatrik 2006.) If people want an adaptable organization, they must learn how to get out of their comfort zone (Quinn 2004). Kouzes & Posner (1987) also proposed that transformational leaders must create clear visions which encourage people to move from their comfort-zone into uncertainty. In continuous cultural change, everyone has to want to improve their skills, knowledge and expertise. Coaching and effective coaching con-versations support this cultural change.
Transformational leadership
To make sure that everyone is involved in the process, Bowerman & Collins (1999) created seven key components for effective coaching conversations: recognizing blind spots, building trust, the coaching relationship, observing performance, listening on three levels, cycles of ac-tion and experiencing breakdowns and breakthroughs.
With this framework I want to define what is the focus of this thesis. In this thesis, the focus is on understanding how these coaching conversations are experienced among the employees but also how leaders already use different practices and key components concerning transforma-tional leadership and effective coaching conversations. In this way, I can evaluate how effective the training program has been for leaders but also give ideas to organizations for the future development of training programs.
3 RESEARCH METHODS