Preventing workplace mobbing and bullying with effective organizational consultation, policies, and legislation.

Workplace mobbing or workplace bullying has only recently entered the lexicon of the American workplace. Although its impact is devastating to the health and well-being of individuals, organizations also experience its effects in terms of loss of productivity, absenteeism, turnover, legal costs, and negative publicity. Legislation and policy development are 2 key initiatives that, used wisely, can help prevent such mobbing and bullying. Although the United States currently has no legislation addressing workplace abuse, it is anticipated that bullying and mobbing will be the next legislative front for the protection of workers and the improvement of workplace culture. Today, many organizations are working with consultants to develop policies to prevent bulling/mobbing and to foster high-care work environments. A template for developing effective antimobbing/antibullying organizational policies is provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Workplace mobbing and bullying: A consulting psychology perspective and overview.

Mobbing and bullying are forms of abusiveness that are of increasing concerns in the workplace. This special issue overviews various issues and interventions relevant for the practice of consulting psychology. The articles describe theoretical issues including prevalence, definitional clarity, and the influence of individual, work group, and organizational dynamics; they also describe various organizational interventions, including alternative dispute resolution, antimobbing training, and antibullying policy development. These articles and commentaries are intended to inform, provide strategies, and foster discussion of how consulting psychologists can best serve clients and client organizations that are experiencing mobbing and bullying. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive coaching: A continuum of roles.

Some executives use coaching to learn specific skills, others to improve performance on the job or to prepare for advancement in business or professional life. Still others see coaching as a way to support broader purposes, such as an executive's agenda for major organizational change. To an outsider, these coaching situations may look similar. All are based on an ongoing, confidential, one-on-one relationship between coach and executive. Yet each coaching situation is different and some of these distinctions are important to recognize, if only to foster informed choice by everyone involved. This article defines and explores key distinguishing features among coaching situations encountered in daily practice. Taking account of these factors, the authors suggest 4 distinctly different coaching roles. Case examples explore how these roles apply to common coaching issues facing executives and their organizations today. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitating intervention adherence in executive coaching: A model and methods.

A review of the recent literature demonstrated that there are virtually no articles or research papers on the subject of intervention adherence or compliance in executive coaching. This article begins to address that deficit by presenting an 8-component model of coaching effectiveness that includes such elements as the coach--and client--commitment to the path of progressive development, characteristics of client problems, structure of the coaching containment, quality of coaching interventions, and the intervention adherence protocol the coach develops with the client. These elements of coaching effectiveness are explored in more depth in the context of considering the outcome pathways of coaching assignments. Components of a possible adherence protocol for coaching executives are described along with major client and coach problems that contribute to nonadherence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's not me, it's you: A multilevel examination of variables that impact employee coaching relationships.

Employee coaching, which we consider to be a critical part of the performance management process, is coaching done by a manager or supervisor with his or her direct reports. The current article builds on recent research on the importance of the employee coaching relationship by investigating individual difference and contextual variables that contribute to the quality of employee coaching relationships. The study uses a multilevel modeling approach to test the effects of such variables as supervisor leadership style, emotional intelligence, empathy, implicit person theory, trust, and feedback environment on employees' perceptions of the coaching relationships they share with their supervisors. Overall, supervisors' individual consideration, empathy, trust, and the feedback environment all accounted for significant variance in employees' evaluations of coaching relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organization of information in memory and the performance appraisal process: Evidence from the field.

No studies dealing with cognitive processes in performance appraisal have been conducted in field settings, raising questions about the usefulness of this research for practice. The field experiments described here, conducted in 2 organizations, were designed to evaluate interventions that laboratory research has suggested enable raters to better organize performance information in memory: structured diary keeping and structured recall. After these interventions, raters had more positive reactions to the appraisal process, were better able to recall performance information, and produced ratings that were less elevated and better able to discriminate between and within ratees. The implications of these results for practice and for cognitive research in performance appraisal are discussed, along with the limitations of these studies and the problems with criteria for evaluating ratings in the field. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Building a framework for two internal organizational approaches to resolving and preventing workplace bullying: Alternative dispute resolution and training.

Workplace bullying is behavior that threatens, intimidates, humiliates, or isolates people at work, or undermines their reputation or job performance. Moving beyond research, academics and employment practitioners are beginning to address the need to design and implement organizational antibullying policies, training, conflict management programs and systems, and possibly, antibullying public policy and legislation. Consultants will play a key role in helping organizations develop and implement internal organizational programs. In this paper the authors describe alternative dispute resolution systems and workplace training. Key objectives include arriving at a clear definition of workplace bullying, fostering individual, organizational, and societal awareness of the prevalence and consequences of workplace bullying; and providing specific guidance and mechanisms for individuals, managers, human resource departments, corporate leadership, union representatives, attorneys, physicians, counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, for preventing and handling bullying incidents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a conceptual understanding and definition of executive coaching.

A review of the literature on coaching reveals that very little empirical research has focused on the executive coaching methods used by consultants with managers and leaders in organizations. Within the framework of a 17-dimensional model of systems and psychodynamic theory, the author provides an overview of a conceptual approach to coaching activities that incorporates 5 identifiable components plus an emphasis on goal setting, intervention methods, and hypothesized factors in negative consulting outcomes. A definition of executive coaching is offered as a way of summarizing the literature and differentiating these consulting activities from others for the purpose of improving conceptual clarity and encouraging specific research on the concepts, methods, and outcomes of such activities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trudging Toward Dodoville: Conceptual Approaches and Case Studies in Executive Coaching.

This article introduces the 3rd Consulting Psychology Journal special issue on executive coaching and briefly examines the current status of the scientific knowledge base in the field. It compares the emergence of the empirical literature on coaching to the historical pathway created by psychotherapy and hypothesizes that research on executive coaching may be lead in the future to the examination of "empirically validated models and methods" of coaching leaders in organizations. S. Rosenzweig's (1936) Dodoville conjecture in which he hypothesized that the major positive impacts of various psychotherapies were due to various nonspecific common factors forms the metaphoric foundation of the analysis. The article explores this controversy briefly within Jerome Bruner's (1986) concept of 2 modes of cognition--the paradigmatic and the narrative--and suggests that case studies as a narrative way of knowing and creating meaning are an extremely useful way of examining the practice and efficacy of executive coaching. The articles in the issue are briefly introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological interventions in organizations: An evolutionary perspective.

Throughout the 20th century, managers and policy makers have relied on psychological interventions to help solve organizational problems. Yet, the results of these interventions rarely meet expectations. One reason may be that some of the perspectives used in thinking about interventions are at odds with how interventions and organizations function. This article argues that applied psychologists may benefit from an evolutionary perspective. Although it holds an important place in basic psychology and organization theory, an evolutionary perspective is nearly absent in applied psychology. It views the development and use of social technologies as part of sociocultural evolution—driven by variation, selection, and retention. This article provides a framework for theory and research on an evolutionary perspective in applied psychology and suggests implications for practice. Key concepts in the design of interventions include uncertainty, variation, and conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive Coaching: The Road to Dodoville Needs Paving With More Than Good Assumptions.

This article reviews the 10-article, two-part special issue on executive coaching (R. R. Kilburg, 2004a, 2005). It identifies common themes and areas needing development. It identifies needed next steps in creating a psychology of coaching that is more than a collection of advice and techniques. The author argues that practice has greatly exceeded research in this area and that, whatever the findings in related fields such as psychotherapy, there is no substitute for empirical evaluation and restructuring of theories and practice on the basis of that research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality-focused coaching for leadership development.

The science of personality measurement in the workplace has developed a great deal in the past 2 decades, and the five-factor model (FFM) is generally recognized as the most notable taxonomy of "normal" personality. Meanwhile, coaching has become a well-established method of one-on-one leadership development in many organizations. Given the research investigating the relationship between the FFM and work-related behavior and performance, including leadership, the authors' aim is to advocate the profiling of personality against the FFM to provide a useful framework for behavioral change in executive coaching. Coaching typically deals with skill deficits, performance problems, change challenges, and issues raised by the executive himself or herself, and a research-based understanding of personality--behavior linkages can provide valuable insights for the coach and coachee and a path forward to a wide range of coaching challenges. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coaching at the top: Assisting a chief executive and his team.

Coaching at the executive level of organizations most often includes a blend of individual, team, and organizational interventions. As psychologists, traditions lead us to rely heavily on our unique expertise in individual assessment and treatment in working for organizational change. To explore the limits of this tradition, this case study reports on an action research experiment in which strategy-driven group-level interventions were used exclusively to drive both individual and team change. It is proposed that the definition of coaching be expanded to include actions taken to enable a team to be self-correcting and self-learning without direct counseling from the coach. The article reviews the step-by-step process that enabled the executive team to self-design the new global organization in alignment with their strategy. Attention is drawn to the organizational assessment and feedback processes used at multiple points in the engagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive coaching: A comprehensive review of the literature.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 60(1) of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (see record 2009-06606-001). The author would like to indicate that unfortunately, Peterson’s (1993) dissertation on executive coaching outcomes was excluded from the original literature review conducted by Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001). Later, Kampa and White (2002) stated that Peterson’s (1993) dissertation was excluded due to the programmatic nature of the coaching conducted in the study. Specifically, it was written, “this research did not investigate executive coaching as practiced by consultants in the field,” (p. 145). However, all of the coaches in Peterson’s study were field-based PDI consultants and the individuals being coached did receive individual coaching from those consultants. In the future, Peterson’s research, which was a well-designed long-term outcome study of 370 coaching participants, should be reviewed when considering executive coaching outcomes.] Executive coaching as a consultation intervention has received increased attention in the literature within the past decade. Executive coaching has been proposed as an intervention aimed toward helping executives improve their performance and consequently the performance of the overall organization (R. R. Kilburg, 1996c). Whether or not it does what it proposes, however, remains largely unknown because of the lack of empirical studies. Some also question whether executive coaching is just another fad in the long list of fads that have occurred in consultation and business. To explore these issues and the place of executive coaching in consulting practice, this article critically examines the literature on executive coaching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence-based treatment and practice: New opportunities to bridge clinical research and practice, enhance the knowledge base, and improve patient care.

The long-standing divide between research and practice in clinical psychology has received increased attention in view of the development of evidence-based interventions and practice and public interest, oversight, and management of psychological services. The gap has been reflected in concerns from those in practice about the applicability of findings from psychotherapy research as a guide to clinical work and concerns from those in research about how clinical work is conducted. Research and practice are united in their commitment to providing the best of psychological knowledge and methods to improve the quality of patient care. This article highlights issues in the research- practice debate as a backdrop for rapprochement. Suggestions are made for changes and shifts in emphases in psychotherapy research and clinical practice. The changes are designed to ensure that both research and practice contribute to our knowledge base and provide information that can be used more readily to improve patient care and, in the process, reduce the perceived and real hiatus between research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The External Leadership of Self-Managing Teams: Intervening in the Context of Novel and Disruptive Events.

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on external leaders of self-managing teams. The integration of functional leadership theory with research on team routines suggests that leaders can intervene in teams in several different ways, and the effectiveness of this intervention depends on the nature of the events the team encounters. External team leaders from 3 organizations first described a series of events (N=117), and leaders and team members then completed surveys to quantitatively describe the events. Results indicated that leader preparation and supportive coaching were positively related to team perceptions of leader effectiveness, with preparation becoming more strongly related to effectiveness as event novelty increased. More active leader intervention activities (active coaching and sense making) were negatively related to satisfaction with leadership yet were positively related to effectiveness as events became more disruptive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interviewee coaching, preparation strategies, and response strategies in relation to performance in situational employment interviews: An extension of Maurer, Solamon, and Troxtel (1998).

Voluntary attendance at an interview coaching session was positively related to situational interview performance, controlling for job knowledge, motivation to do well, race, and sex of 213 candidates applying for promotion into several police and fire department jobs in a large city. Discrete preparation strategies (e.g., participation in study groups, participation in role-playing) were related to participation in coaching and also were related to interview performance beyond what could be accounted for by coaching participation, shedding some light on the potential efficacy of specific preparation strategies for enhancing success in situational interviews. Most notably, coaching attendance and preparation by interviewees were positively associated with a tendency to use strategies in the interview that enhanced the organization of interviewees' answers, and this organization was positively associated with performance in the interview. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)