The data was collected between January and November 2019. The first focus group was executed in late January, as a part of Aducate’s event called the Coaching Launch. The Coaching Launch is a full-day event where students of the executive MBA programme, who have yet to undergo coaching, attend lessons detailing what coaching is, and discuss and share on their individual opinions and experiences of being a leader. The students had completed set homework and previous courses before attending the event. After lessons and group discussions, willing attendants stayed behind to participate in the focus group. There were three members and the discussion lasted around 40 minutes.
Surprisingly, some members of the group had already undergone three to five coaching sessions, even though the event was intended to those who had not started coaching
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sessions with the coach provided by Aducate yet. Table 1 below presents a summary of data collection as a whole.
Table 2. Data collection.
Collecting method Duration/length Collected in Focus group discussion 37 minutes January 2019 Individual semi-structured
interview
30 minutes November 2019
Voice recording and observing
2 hours, 25 minutes January 2019
Written material 12 PowerPoint-slides and a two-page brochure
January 2019
A second focus group discussion was originally set to happen in October 2019, but due to cancellations to the Coaching Launch event, it was not completed. Instead, I performed an individual supplementing interview with an eMBA student (person C) that had attended the previous focus group in January 2019. The supplementing interview was performed in November 2019. The interview took around half an hour, and the
interviewee explained their insights on the coaching that they had received during 2018, as well as their view of the effects that had emerged in a year after the sessions had ended. The interview was a semi-structured interview, as according to Eriksson &
Kovalainen (2016, 94-95) this style is systematic and comprehensive way of gathering information, while the tone of the interview is informal and allows room for changes if necessary. During the interview, this style made possible to slightly change the questions in response to what the interviewee had already explained, and also to have additional, more in-depth questions and commentaries on the topic at hand.
Both the focus group discussion and the individual interview were recorded with a voice recorder, and then transcribed to text format for data analysis. The transcriptions do not indicate the exact length of pauses or other such non-verbal nuances in the speech.
However, when necessary, notes about verbal and no-verbal details, such as sighs or
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laughing, were included inside parentheses according to the notes made during the focus group discussion and the individual interview. This was done in order to remember the participants gestures, facial expressions and various nuances of their speech during the communication. The material was coded according to arising themes with an open coding scheme and then analyzed with constant comparative analysis.
To further complement the previous data, the presentation material and various voice recordings from the Coaching Launch event in January 2019 were analyzed as well. The presentation material included a slideshow and other written materials, and the voice recordings were made during the group discussions and lessons in the event. The voice recordings span altogether over two hours and they were later partially turned to text format as handwritten notes of the main points to complement the observations I had made during the event.
The written materials for the coaching launch included a reading list and guidelines for written assignments that the participants needed to complete before attending the event and the coaching sessions. The reading list consisted of one book and two doctoral research papers. The first written assignment was centered on the theme “my leadership”
and it could be carried out either as a creative freeform essay about the participant’s personal journey to becoming a leader, or as a video, photograph or voice recording exploring the same topic.
The questions that needed to be considered in this assignment included:
• naming good examples of leaders from one’s work, childhood or youth, and reflecting how those aspects are mirrored in one’s current situation
• naming one’s own remarkable experiences as a leader, and considering how they have directed one in their own path
• considering one’s leadership style, values and principles
• looking into the future, and describing one’s goals, ideal situations or career related dreams
The second assignment was for the participants to finish their personal leadership improvement plans, and to do a Leadership Judgement Indicator test. These materials
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from the second assignment were meant to be reviewed with the coach later in the individual coaching sessions after the launch event.
The final written material from the launch event was a set of PowerPoint-slides on the topic of coaching and the Leadership Judgement Indicator (LJI) test as supportive measures of personal development. The slides explained basic principles of what
coaching is and included links to several scientific studies on effectivity of coaching and leadership tests/reviews. The process of LJI test was explained in detail, from the
preparation before the test to taking the test, to the very end of the process, including reviewing the results with a coach and forming a plan for developing oneself. At the end of the slides there were points about incorporating flexibility to one’s leadership, as well as questions that the coaching launch event participants discussed together in pairs or small groups.