Constructing a literature from case studies: Promise and limitations of the method.

This article responds to Coaching at the Top: Assisting A Chief Executive and His Team ' (M. M. Krajl, 2001 see record 2001-01213-005) by critiquing the article. It extends the discussion by focusing on the desired characteristics of a case study and how a professional literature can be derived from well constructed case studies. Applying these principles to Krajl's article, the author notes some issues concerning the intervention and preceding assessment, including the choice of the term coaching to describe complex and multifaceted interventions. (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)     

The emerging role of the internal coach.

Growing from the demand for flexible, targeted development options and the acceptance of executive coaching emerges the role of the internal coach, a professional within an organization who, as a formal part of his or her job, coaches managers and executives. This article identifies this trend, defines the role of the internal coach, compares it with external coaching, and outlines the key issues that need to be addressed in delivering internal coaching programs. It is hoped that this material provides a foundation for future investigation and discussion as the internal coach role matures into a valuable and frequently used tool in management and executive development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive coaching from the executive's perspective.

Seven top management executives were invited to share their views and perspectives regarding executive coaching. Each CEO or president was interviewed separately by the author in a manner that was informal, conversational, and guided by 11 preconstructed questions. While a number of shared themes emerged, several distinct thoughts were raised that have implications for how consulting psychologists think about, conduct, and prepare for their professional roles as executive coaches. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When frames of reference lag perception of reality: Managing senior careers in the first ten years of the 21st century.

This article summarizes a review of the careers of 50 executives who have been outstanding in traversing the careers of their professional lives. In a world of short job tenure-elongated middle age, most executives will have to simultaneously manage two separate careers. One career is called full-time assignment work and is the traditional "job." The other career is called project assignment work, also known as interim or consulting work. Many think these two careers will occur sequentially. This typical framework sets leaders up for perceived failure because this sequential model is no longer realistic. Leaders will be traversing between full time and project based work through their professional lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women's liberation: A case study of organizations for social change.

Acase study approach was used to investigate the history and organizational structure of five women's liberation groups. The organizations were analyzed from a systems frame of reference. The most salient organizational features to emerge included: (1) a splintering effect which was related to inadequate conflict resolution; (2) a narrow range of input with membership in all groups primarily radical, well educated, professional women; (3) lack of feedback and output specifications indicating that these organizations are unable to determine the extent of their effectiveness, primarily because of insufficient resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Executive coaching: An outcome study.

While executive coaching continues to mushroom as a practice area, there has been little outcome research. This article presents the results of a study that explored factors influencing the choice of a coach, executives' reactions to working with a coach, the pros and cons of both internal and external coaches, the focus of executive coaching engagements, indications of successful coaching engagements, coaching tools executives favored, and the sustainability of coached executives' learning and behavior change. The author also raises a question about which executives are most likely to benefit from this development resource and presents a typology for gauging this issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

They saw a game; a case study.

When the Dartmouth football team played Princeton in 1951, much controversy was generated over what actually took place during the game. Basically, there was disagreement between the two schools as to what had happened during the game. A questionnaire designed to get reactions to the game and to learn something of the climate of opinion was administered at each school and the same motion picture of the game was shown to a sample of undergraduate at each school, followed by another questionnnaire. Results indicate that the "game" was actually many different games and that each version of the events that transpired was just as "real" to a particular person as other versions were to other people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Group genius: The creative power of collaboration.

Reviews the book, Group genius: The creative power of collaboration by K. Sawyer (2007). This book is written for a popular audience. It takes several themes from the author's past work on the sociocultural approach to creativity, particularly his research on improvisation and his book Explaining creativity, and develops them into an innovative analysis of improvisation and collaboration. The message of this book is that creative ideas emerge from collaborative webs, not from the minds of lone creators. Sawyer proposes that creative teams and organizations have moved beyond conventional notions of innovation--isolated Research and Development departments, for example--and instead harness collaborative webs. These webs include obvious ones, such as collaboration within the organization, as well as surprising ones, such as collaboration with consumers and with competitors. Researchers in the psychology of creativity will find a lot of food for thought in this book. The reviewer notes, however, that little attention is given to individual differences. This omission will madden many researchers. Researchers will also find a nascent integration of the sociocultural approach and the cognitive approach. Criticisms aside, he suggests that Keith Sawyer is one of psychology's finest writers: his books have a graceful tone and an understated erudition. The distinction between content and form is specious--writing unifies "what" and "how"--but creativity researchers will get as much out of this book's "how" as its "what". (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001).

Reports an error in Executive coaching: A comprehensive review of the literature by Sheila Kampa-Kokesch and Mary Z. Anderson (Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 2001[Fal], Vol 53[4], 205-228). 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. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2002-00097-001.) 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)     

Executive consulting under pressure: A case study.

This consulting psychology case study describes how an initially nonvoluntary consulting engagement with an executive client in a highly complex nuclear industry organization evolved from suspicion to trust, enabling the client to achieve work-related goals. Methods used by the consultant, and reactions to those efforts by the client, are presented and discussed. The intervention evolved from executive coaching to team development opportunities, intergroup conflict management assignments, behavioral skills training, special fact-finding assignments, and, ultimately, to a long-term, system-wide organization development and change. The paper presents the case from the perspectives of both the consultant (the senior author) and the initial client (the junior author). Factors that seemed to contribute to the success of the coaching process are also described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The continuing presence of psychoanalysis: A reply to Robert F. Bornstein (2001).

R. F. Bornstein (2001) implies in "The Impending Death of Psychoanalysis" that he holds the only truth about psychoanalysis. However, his reasoning seems to be based on 2 inaccurate hypotheses or prejudices: (a) that there is a division between psychoanalysis and the rest of the world and science and psychology and (b) that the rest of the world is hostile to psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is imbedded in the same values as are evidenced in any humanistic-democratic society, and hostility expressed toward psychoanalysis comes from a variety of sources including disillusionment in the unconscious fantasy or wish that psychoanalysis can prevent the eventual death of the individual. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Requiem or reveille: A response to Robert F. Bornstein (2001).

The most common error in debating psychoanalysis is confusion between method and theory. From the perspective of operationalism, the touchstone of science, any science should be defined by its method first and theories second. This is the thrust of the author's response to R. F. Bornstein's (2001) condemnation of psychoanalysis as nonscientific. Empirically, psychoanalysis is a method and a technique of observation--of the analysand and analyst's interactions, both verbal and nonverbal, in the psychoanalytic situation; of reciprocal free association; of the dynamics of dream psychology and unconscious intrapsychic and interpersonal processes; of transference--and this results in the special nature of psychoanalytic interpretation. A further source of confusion is the politics of the psychoanalytic movement and its component organizations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond status: Relating status inequality to performance and health in teams.

Status structures in organizations are ubiquitous yet largely ignored in organizational research. We offer a conceptualization of team status inequality, or the extent to which status positions on a team are dispersed. Status inequality is hypothesized to be negatively related to individual performance and physical health for low-status individuals when uncooperative behavior is high. Trajectories of the outcomes across time are also explored. Analyses using multilevel modeling largely support our hypotheses in a sample of National Basketball Association players across six time points from 2000 to 2005. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings.

Reviews the book, Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings by Leslie S. Greenberg (see record 2002-00066-000). This book was written for both novice therapists who have had little experience working with emotions in treatment, as well as for experienced therapists looking to systematize their understanding of how emotional change works. The book is divided into four parts. Part I examines the nature and function of emotions. Part II examines the first part of emotional coaching--arriving at emotion. Part III examines the second part of emotional coaching--leaving emotion. Finally, Part IV examines the application of emotion-focused therapy to the problems of living, in the context of individuals, couples therapy, and parenting. This book offers a wealth of therapeutic techniques and theoretical principles about the process of change. As such, it is an important and natural companion to seminal works in cognitive behaviour therapy and interpersonal therapy. (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)     

How executive coaching can change leader behavior and improve meeting effectiveness: An exploratory study.

Business meetings are the focus of extensive executive time and effort. Research has shown that poor leadership during meetings results in negative outcomes; however, few studies have explored effective leader behaviors during team meetings. From “expert leader” observations, the author hypothesized that more effective meeting leaders ask questions, summarize, and test for consensus more frequently, and they disagree, attack, and give information less frequently. Executive behaviors were observed and tallied into these categories during team meetings before and after executive coaching. Three cases illustrate how coaching was done using these measures of meeting leadership behaviors. After coaching, study participants (20 men, 1 woman) exhibited significant behavioral changes. Implications for practice include the utility of new methodological tools and the efficacy of coaching on meeting leadership effectiveness. Research seems warranted on the measures themselves and on team and organizational outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training industrial executives in reading: A methodology study.

A controlled-method study of gains achieved and retained by industrial executives as a result of reading improvement training. 4 groups consisting of 56 executives were equated on reading-ability score and related criteria. 1 group served as a control, while 3 experimental groups were trained with different methods. Each group received 16 hours of training. Progress and permanence were evaluated by equated forms of a reading test. Results were analyzed by t tests between and within groups. No significant differences were found between methods. Very significant progress and retention was found within all groups. Industrial executives can be trained to read more efficiently, and do retain that efficiency. Mechanical aids are not required for reading training of executives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consulting psychology as creative problem solving: Lessons from my first 3 decades.

The behavioral sciences offer time-tested principles that can help consulting psychologists and their clients design and implement effective change strategies, using a creative problem-solving approach. Over the past 30 years, the author has learned some lessons about how to do this: (a) Never throw anything away--anything observed may help the work of change; (b) problem solving starts with people connecting, to mobilize the resources needed for change; (c) what's learned from consulting with for-profit organizations can be applied to nonprofit organizations with surprisingly little translation; (d) creative problem-solving often begins by building bridges between psychology and other parts of the world; (e) the work of change in the nonprofit world involves looking for leverage opportunities; and (f) the work of change is enhanced by using personal experience in defining change strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)