Towards co-constructed coaching: Exploring the integration of coaching and co-constructed autoethnography in leadership development

Abstract

This article introduces a new method for leadership development: co-constructed coaching. The terrain of executive coaching is outlined and contrasted with co-constructed coaching that draws on the research method of co-constructed autoethnography. In particular the relative merits of directive versus non-directive leadership development interventions are examined, along with the issue of multiple agendas in coaching/research relationships in this context, and the implications, both positive and negative, of having a highly informed active partner in the leadership learning process. The paper makes a contribution to management learning by presenting co-constructed coaching as a credible and potentially beneficial alternative to executive coaching by enabling a critically reflexive dialogue.

Keywords

Autoethnography co-constructed coaching executive coaching leadership development practice

To coach or to co-construct?

Co-constructed autoethnography has recently been examined for its usefulness in leadership learning research (Kempster and Stewart, 2010). Associated with this research approach was the significant occurrence of reflexive leadership learning. The authors suggested that through co-constructed autoethnography ‘we have shown how an individual manager has learnt about their relational practice and the underpinning aspects of communication shaping such relational knowing and practice (Cunliffe, 2008)’ (p. 217). This article proposes to take up the discussion by juxtaposing this approach with that of executive coaching. In the field of leadership development, executive coaching is currently riding a wave of popularity (e.g. Jarvis et al., 2006; Lee, 2003; West and Milan, 2001) as a central mechanism within organisational programmes and as a stand-alone intervention. We seek to connect notions of executive coaching to co-constructed autoethnography: in essence our suggested notion of ‘co-constructed coaching’. In particular we suggest that co-constructed coaching may be a most suitable approach to enable reflexive dialogue within leadership development.

Early in this discussion we wish to outline the nature of co-constructed autoethnography in order to make explicit the link with leadership development. Autoethnography moves from the breadth of the social lens that is the focus of ethnography to the narrative perspective of the situated individual. The auto is the self where discovery is centred; the ethno is the self shaped by her/his social milieu; and the graphy is the writing of self as the primary mechanism of revelation. Co-constructed autoethnography (CCAE) requires the researcher – the situated individual – to write about themselves and then be open to interrogation by their co-author, creating a co-constructed narrative ‘sandwich’ (Ellis, 2004: 198). Through this ‘dynamic process’ (Saldana, 2003: 224) the CCAE sandwich is formed: the situated individual researcher becoming highly reflexive of their social experiences – the ‘tasty filling’. The co-researcher probes the emerging narrative, often with related theory, to generate interpretive observations of social practice – the ‘bread’ (Kempster and Stewart 2010: 210).

CCAE is explicit in terms of being directive, and clearly draws on (or contributes to the development of) the expertise of the researcher/co-producer. The agenda here is one of mutual learning and knowledge co-construction (drawing on Antonacopoulou, 2010). Through guided reflexive dialogical practice (reflecting Cunliffe’s 2002 work) the manager derives a critical perspective of their situated practice – rather than more circumscribed performance outcomes common in coaching – and the researcher gains deeper understanding of the situated practice under investigation. Whereas a coach helps a coachee become better at whatever is perceived as the issue, and receives commercial reward in return, for CCAE the issue is understood and examined by both parties in exacting detail in order to arrive at a shared understanding and explanation from which is derived shared benefit. Coaching is said to require process skills, but can be conducted without expert business knowledge, whereas CCAE requires the researcher to be or to become a highly informed active partner.

Based on the very different dynamics within these approaches, and the different outcomes likely to result, this article raises what we believe to be some important questions for the status of coaching as the ‘mechanism of choice’ for leadership development. We present the notion of co-constructed coaching that draws on CCAE as a credible and potentially beneficial alternative. In doing so, we address the relative merits of directive versus non-directive leadership development interventions, the issue of multiple agendas in coaching/research relationships in this context, and the implications, both positive and negative, of having a highly informed active partner in the leadership learning process. We also suggest that co-constructed coaching may have an important role to play in enabling a critically reflexive approach to emerge beyond the confines of critical management studies commentaries (Tatli, 2011). The notion of ‘researcher’ in this article is seen as an active participant in the research process. As such it reflects a fundamental assumption of enabling knowledge construction rather than objectively retrieving or ‘excavating’ from the respondent what is known (Kvale, 1995: 3). In this way the researcher is seeking to enable the partner (the respondent) to come to know their experience – a research journey of critical reflexivity. The researcher then could be an executive coach, a PhD researcher or a co-student within a cohort.

At this point we wish to make salient the emphasis on ‘reflexivity’ rather than ‘reflection’. We find most helpful to our discussion in this article the definitions of reflection and reflexivity provided by Cunliffe and Easterby-Smith (2004: 31): reflection is learning from experience – a cognitive process that seeks to give structure and order to sense-making of events, while reflexivity is an essentially dialogic and relational activity that explores taken-for-granted aspects of conventional practices. Our argument for co-constructed coaching orientates toward reflexivity, so defined, by focusing on ‘inside-out reflexive dialogic practice’ (Cunliffe, 2002: 39) by enabling a manager to ‘make sense of a situation from within the activity’ (p. 40) – a sense of self-referent reflexivity. In this way co-constructed coaching can help to address Cunliffe’s important question: ‘How can management educators and students, as practical co-constructors of the learning process, develop new forms of reflexive talk and practice?’ (p. 36).

The article first contextualises the discussion by briefly reviewing why coaching appears to resonate in terms of efficacy within leadership development. We outline the role of coaching within leadership development, exploring its popularity and various methodological manifestations that all share a strong similarity of process-based expertise and an avoidance or down-playing of content expertise. The aim here is to set up the debate around the value of learning interventions of this type, the roles played by participants within such a learning relationship and, in particular, the location of expertise in this relationship. We subsequently outline the nature of CCAE and its focus on content and the role of the researcher as ‘expert’ in developing reflexive insight for the manager. We argue for the intended and unintended opportunities of CCAE in the context of leadership development. We conclude the article by exploring the practice implications of developing autoethnography within the realm of leadership development: in essence, extending the lexicon within leadership development to include co-constructed coaching.

Coaching and leadership learning: More accident than design

Over the last 25 years a significant shift has occurred: a movement from formal to informal leadership development (Day, 2001); a movement from prescribed, theoretical, one-off and lecture-based supplier-led provision, to customised and contextualised provision, such an approach being characterised as a supported, participative, and experiential journey led through facilitation and coaching (West and Jackson, 2002). The shift is practice led through leadership development orientations – away from the classroom and towards situated activity – captured in mentoring, coaching and action learning. This shift is recognised by James and Burgoyne in their examination of best practice leadership development, where they suggest an emphasis on action learning, coaching and mentoring with an accent on ‘anywhere any time’ organisationally based learning (2002: 9; similarly echoed by Fulmer et al., 2000).

In parallel to this movement away from formal leadership development has been a coherent research commentary confirming the prominence of informal learning shaping how managers learn to lead (Bennis and Thomas, 2002; Conger, 2004; Cox and Cooper, 1989; Davies and Easterby-Smith, 1984; Janson, 2008; Kempster and Stewart, 2010; McCall, 2004; McCall et al., 1988; Marserick, 1988). For example Janson’s (2008: 91) empirical research identified that ‘only 5 out of 198 LFE [leadership formative experiences] concerned formal leadership development courses or workshops’. The dominant aspects are relational and contextual. The learning dynamic here predominantly occurs in a naturalistic manner, often unnoticed by an individual during the milieu of lived experience.

It is with regard to addressing the naturalistic leadership learning that coaching has, perhaps more by accident than design, been most successful. There are no commentaries we have been able to discover that seek to connect coaching with the research on leadership learning. As a consequence we comment that processes of coaching (to be outlined shortly) seek to engage with the relational and situated aspects of organisational leadership learning. In particular coaching can enable a manager to understand her/his phenomenological relationship with leadership.

So our central foundational argument is that a reflexive pedagogy provides the basis for greater emphasis on learning how to lead through making sense of self, related to situated experience. Certainly there has been a firm acceptance of the need to raise consciousness in corporate development programmes (Mirvis, 2008), placing importance on enabling an individual to surface and make sense of their taken-for-grated assumptions and situate this reflexivity in their practical circumstances (Cunliffe, 2001). Such a reflexive capability may greatly increase individual recognition of developmental environments and developmental experiences (Davies and Easterby-Smith, 1984). In this way a key development issue appears to be helping people to learn how to learn from experience (Conger, 2004; Day, 2001; McCall, 1998; Velsor and Guthrie, 1998). McCall (1998) drew attention to the axiom that just because someone goes through an experience, it does not mean that they have learnt from that experience. The point is amplified by Velsor and Guthrie (1998: 242): ‘To learn, managers needed to let go of their current strengths long enough to acquire new ones. They must be strong and secure enough to make themselves vulnerable to the stresses and setbacks in the learning process’.

In this context coaching or similar organised processes can provide the necessary support to enable the changes Velsor and Guthrie describe. ‘It [organised process] means helping people to learn from their work rather than taking them away from their work to learn’ (Day, 2001: 586). The role of coaching then can enable an individual to view the daily routines of ‘their work’ and gain perspective and insight (Conger and Toegel, 2003) that would otherwise have been unnoticed. The unnoticed and imperceptible tacit nature that occurs in terms of situated leadership learning requires a specific process or lens to reveal what has occurred/is occurring (Kempster and Stewart, 2010). It is in this context that we suggest co-constructed coaching is a most useful process. Prior to exploring this we outline the role of coaching within leadership development.

Coaching for leadership development: Mapping the terrain

Coaching could be seen as conflated with mentoring and therapy. It is beyond the scope of this article to explore the full nuances of the distinctions and similarities between mentoring, coaching and therapy as alternative interventions. However, for purposes of clarity we see mentoring as being about ‘guiding others in their personal quests for growth and learning’ (Luecke, 2004: xi). The mentor acts as a trusted guide to their protégé, guiding them through the political and practical obstacles to success in an organisational environment, based on their own wisdom, experience and position. In contrast, coaching can be seen as ‘unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance [by] helping them to learn rather than teaching them’ (Gallwey, 2000: 177). The emphasis here is on providing space and resources to help the coachee think through their own issues and arrive at their own solutions, rather than doing this for them. Therapy has been defined as including ‘work with individuals and with relationships which may be developmental, crisis support, psychotherapeutic, guiding or problem solving … To give the “client” an opportunity to explore, discover and clarify ways of living more satisfyingly and resourcefully’(British Association for Counselling 1984, cited in McLeod, 2003: 7). Many approaches to coaching draw on the discipline of therapy and there is an understandable interconnectivity between the two. The main difference can, perhaps, be framed in terms of the mental arena in which they tend to take place: coaching is likely to be based around capacity building and skills development within a largely work-based context whereas therapy often deals with more fundamental issues relating to the person themselves. Thus the expectations and intentions of each party – the ‘psychological contract’ (Guest, 1998; Rousseau 1990, 1998) into which they feel they are entering – will be different for these different disciplines, as will the expected contributions of the parties concerned.

In exploring the role of coaching in leadership development there are, we would suggest, four pivotal dimensions which collectively constitute the ‘psychological contract’ (Rousseau, 1990) between coach and coachee: first, the scope and purpose with which coaching is initiated as an intervention; second, the contribution required from the coach (and, implicitly, the coachee); third, the model of coaching under which the intervention is conducted (and the degree of directiveness which this implies); and fourth, the consequent power relations which exist between the two parties. It is inherent in the relative newness of the coaching discipline that all four of these dimensions exhibit significant variety in their practical application. However, it is still possible to draw out some themes which characterise the core territory of coaching, at least as it may be contrasted with the alternative approach to leadership development of CCAE. We have captured the above dimensions in Figure 1 with, for our purposes, the core territory being the right-hand side of the continuum, which we will refer to as executive coaching.

Figure 1.

The coaching conundrum.

In the following sections we examine each of the dimensions within the coaching psychological contract in turn. We suggest how they draw on coaching’s origins in counselling interventions and how they relate to the facilitation of leadership learning.

Scope and purpose

Executive coaching began life with the stigma of a ‘deficit model’: an intervention made to ‘fix toxic behaviours’ in otherwise promising senior managers or to head off those en route to derailment (e.g. Kets de Vries, 1989; Lombardo and Eichinger, 1989; Prince, 2005; Walton, 2007). It is now recognised as a positive intervention and one much sought after by senior executives. Yet the scope and purpose of a ‘typical’ coaching intervention remains difficult to define. At its broadest, West and Milan (2001: 7–8) suggest that ‘development coaching’s task is to create the conditions for reflective learning’. For Downey (2003: 21) ‘coaching is the art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of another’. More narrowly, it has been suggested (Megginson and Clutterbuck, 2005: 4) that ‘coaching relates primarily to performance improvement (often over the short term) in a specific skills area’ and (Passmore, 2007: 69) that its purpose is to ‘facilitate performance enhancing behavioural change within the workplace’. Somewhere in the middle, Carter (2001: 15) defines executive coaching as ‘a form of tailored work-related development for senior and professional managers which spans business, functional and personal skills’. In these relatively bounded contexts, (which we have placed on the left hand side of Figure 1), Ely et al. (2010) suggest that the core elements of a successful coaching process are assessment, challenge and support. They suggest assessment provides insight into current and future developmental needs, and challenge and support operate in balance to facilitate the meeting of these needs. Interestingly notions of assessment, challenge and support echo the key elements suggested by McCauley et al. (1998) to more broadly guide leadership development designs.

To these purposes, Fillery-Travis and Lane (2006) make the addition of coaching of a senior executive to their own agenda, (referred to in Figure 1 as ‘not bounded by work’ or, more generally, as ‘non-bounded’), which may include acting as a sounding board, a confidant, and a ‘critical friend’. At this level of engagement, the agenda may not be constrained by the work role of the coachee. However, it is likely to combine both a blurring of the boundaries between personal and performance issues and a technically wide remit oriented towards capacity building rather than the addressing of specific, known challenges (Day, 2001). In a recent survey of 140 executive coaches, Coutu and Kauffman (2009: 3) found that all but eight respondents regularly saw the focus of their coaching relationships shift from what they were originally brought in to do – relating to issues with a ‘business bias – to “bigger issues” such as life purpose, work/life balance, and becoming a better leader’.

Coaching is increasingly being used within the classroom context where we suggest it can be seen as a form of ‘experiential liberalism’ (Holman, 2000: 121) with an epistemological and pedagogical approach which recognises and attends to relational knowing and praxis (Antonacopoulou, 2010). This context is one of a three-way contract between the learner, the teaching institution and the sponsoring employer. Here the learner is required to shift from being a reflective practitioner, concerned with improving their own practice skills, to undertaking the kind of critical reflexivity required to generate organisational learning and change. As noted by Gray (2007) this shift seldom occurs without the support of such processes as coaching and/or action learning.

Coach’s contribution

Whilst the scope and purpose of the coaching intervention will vary with context, the desired outcomes are inherently skewed. Notwithstanding that ‘cooperation occurs between client and coach that permits and requires both to contribute in directing the development experience’ (Ely et al., 2010: 587), it is the client’s or coachee’s development that is contemplated here. Underlying the coaching relationship is a commercial exchange involving the explicit intended outcomes of learning for the coachee and financial reward for the coach. The coach is likely to learn from the encounter, either in terms of developing their own coaching skills or in relation to a better understanding of business contexts for subsequent coaching interventions. However, this learning is an adjunct to their raison d’être rather than an explicit goal of the intervention.

As a corollary to the question of ‘who learns’ from a coaching intervention, there is the question of what each party brings. In particular, this debate forms itself into the question: are coaches ‘process experts’ or ‘content experts’? Some authors have emphasised the importance of coaches being knowledgeable in the business context in which the coachee operates (illustrated in Diedrich and Kilburg, 2001) – i.e. ‘content experts’. This perspective would view an understanding of management principles and business issues, together with issues of leadership and organisational politics, as core competencies for effective executive coaches (Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson, 2001; Levinson, 1996). As already noted, the use of coaching interventions in executive education contexts, and particularly MBAs, would tend to reinforce this perspective (see, for example, Blackler and Kennedy, 2004). Others view psychological training and an understanding of adult learning – i.e. process skills – as being more important (Kilburg, 1996). Levinson (1996: 115) holds that a coach must be ‘[a]uthoritative with respect to the psychological and coaching processes and also authoritative in his or her knowledge of the business world’. The emphasis on process skills is, perhaps, also reflective of the heritage of coaching being derived from the therapeutic disciplines, and the tendency for those seeking to establish coaching as a professional discipline to draw on approaches derived from this heritage as the basis for accreditation.

In the aforementioned review of executives coaching (Coutu and Kauffman, 2009) 65% of the executives surveyed rated ‘experience coaching in a similar setting’ as their most important criterion for selecting a coach, whilst only 27% felt that it was important for coaches to have experience of actually working in a similar role. Clear methodology (61%) and a quality client list (50%) were also clear indicators of credibility, whilst experience in a psychological discipline such as therapy (13%) was not viewed as essential. In essence the contribution anticipated by both sides does not place emphasis on business knowledge or personal business experience, i.e. content expertise, but rather experience and credibility of past coaching cases with clear methodology. This focus on process begs a question: can the tacit leadership learning that shapes leadership practice be revealed without content understanding?

Models of coaching

There is also considerable debate surrounding the manner in which coaching interventions tend to be conducted. For example, as we have already noted, Gallwey (2000: 177) viewed the coach’s role as being to ‘[unlock] a person’s potential to maximise their own performance by helping them to learn rather than teaching them’. Feldman (2001) more prescriptively framed the anticipated format of coaching interventions in terms of work related counselling relying on specific feedback to generate improvements in performance. Gray (2006: 476) suggested that, ‘in terms of relationship, the coach is not necessarily an “expert” or “authority”, but someone who relates to the client in a spirit of partnership and collaboration’. He also saw the coach as fostering in the coachee that deeper critical awareness of personal and organisational assumptions which is required for transformative learning. Inherent in these differing models of coaching are varying degrees of directiveness exercised by the coach, from the behaviourist-centred approach where the coachee may be given specific tasks to perform or frameworks to work within, to the person-centred approach where there is almost no direct intervention by the coach and the coachee is merely supported in arriving at their own self-understanding.

Peltier (2001) identified five major sources of theoretical underpinning to executive coaching interventions, namely: psychodynamic (Kilburg, 2004; Rotenberg, 2000); behaviourist; person centred; cognitive (Neenan and Dryden, 2001); and systems oriented. To this list we add solution-focused coaching (Grant and Cavanagh, 2002). All are drawn from coaching’s therapeutic forebears, and have differing implications for the resultant coach-coachee relationship. Interestingly, as Passmore (2007) notes, no coaching models have emerged from popular and seemingly relevant management theories, such as transitional change (Bridges, 2003) or developmental leadership models. For example, a relevant contender to inform coaching might have been emotionally intelligent leadership (Goleman et al., 2002). Of the models that have emerged, the behaviourist and systems-oriented approaches are most directly focused on changing behaviours and creating measurable improvements in performance (the left hand side of Figure 1). The other approaches predominantly focus on inner thoughts and feelings, either conscious or unconscious, and the ways in which they impact on behavioural choices. In doing so, they tend to support the wider organisational remit which executive coaches are often called upon to address (the right hand side of Figure 1 or ‘non-bounded’ interventions).

Power relations

As Peltier (2001: 66) notes, the close association between the ‘core conditions’ (congruence, unconditional positive regard and accurate empathetic understanding) of the Rogerian person-centred approach and personal change in high-functioning individuals tends to make this a strong contender for executive coaches seeking a theoretical framework within which to work. Derived from Rogers’ (1957) early work on necessary and sufficient conditions for successful therapeutic interventions, they establish the coaching relationship as one of equal partners, each respecting the skills and knowledge of the other. Ely et al. (2010), referring specifically to ‘leadership coaching’, stress the importance of this collaborative partnership between coach and coachee in facilitating the latter in becoming a more effective leader.

Along with the degree of directiveness experienced by the coachee, the dynamic of the relationship will also be experienced differently depending upon the approach taken: the psychodynamic coach will present as an ‘expert’ (McLeod, 2003: 299); the cognitive behaviourist as a ‘teacher’; the person-centred coach as a ‘trusted friend’. Most notably, in the performance-led context of executive coaching, there is an inherent tension between the fundamentally non-directive position of a person-centred approach and the psychological (and actual) contract which exists around the meeting of organisational and personal goals.

Arguably even more problematic is the likely existence of a three-way contract in which HR and/or the coachee’s line manager have played a role in instigating the coaching intervention. At a minimum, there is likely to be an expectation of some form of feedback on progress achieved, with all the consequences this has for such issues as confidentiality and choice of coaching agenda. A stronger interpretation can be made drawing on Townley’s (1993) reframing of Human Resource Management in Foucauldian terms. In this context the commissioning of coaching interventions by HR takes on the nature of a ‘disciplinary practice’ through which managers are rendered more governable. Far from being a merely ‘functionalist’ participant in the three-way contract, their involvement is to be seen as an operation of power. In a similar vein, Fairhurst (2007) views coaching as one expression of the ‘surrogate gaze’ of senior management in shaping and making manageable senior leaders through what she describes as ‘confessional technology’ (p. 85); disciplinary power is exercised to bring coachees in line with organisational discourses. Even without this reading, the power relations inherent in organisationally instigated coaching interventions must be viewed as problematic and less clear-cut than Figure 1 suggests.

The executive coaching conundrum

The above four dimensions collectively form a continuum of potential coaching interventions as depicted in Figure 1. Drawing from this continuum we argue it is the non-bounded end of the continuum which reflects the learning approach of executive coaching and with which we are concerned in this article.

The learning responsibility of the executive coach is for holding the process and creating a safe environment for exploration and development. They can also be expected to bring an understanding of the business environment, though not to provide explicit input and advice. In return, they can expect active engagement and participation in the process from the coachee and financial remuneration (usually) from their employing organisation. The coachee is responsible for her or his own learning and for engaging with the process in a constructive and committed fashion. The coachee is also recognised as having considerable existing knowledge in relation to her or his own business context and organisational role, though requiring support in processing this expertise in order to learn.

Our concerns with this process-led model of leadership learning orientate around the one-sided assumption of where business knowledge and expertise reside, and the implications of this imbalance for the quality of the learning and insights achieved. Some questions give voice to our issues:

How can a manager make sense of her/his tacit knowledge and leadership practice if it is only partially recognised and problematic to articulate? How do you come to recognise that which you do not know is happening or relevant?

How can tacit knowledge of the manager’s leadership practice be examined without insight into the nature of leader-follower relationships both generally and specifically in her/his context?

The process-led expertise of the coach seeks to make visible the deficits drawn from the manager’s reflexive insights and create a frame to guide learning and development. The meta-competence of the executive coach then is to accelerate and guide the coachee’s own reflexive learning processes in regard to their implicit situated knowledge and experience – enabling the implicit to be articulated and its significance explored. Since much of this work takes place in the coachee’s head, it could be argued that the coach does not need to hold all the contextual ‘cards’ but only to recognise coherence – a ‘full hand’ – when this is presented to them by the coachee.

However, the reliance on the expertise of the manager to bring the content to the table is fundamentally restricted. The essence of this conundrum was captured most memorably by Rumsfeld (cited in Sherman, 2005):

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Or perhaps described as an epistemological conundrum: ‘What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so’ (Mark Twain, cited in Gelatt, 1989). We identify two issues that are most significant to the effective use of coaching in leadership development:

Limited critical reflexivity without theory: The coaching model has a process orientation that could enable deep reflexivity to surface and make sense of the tacit relational knowing that has occurred through situated learning which shapes everyday leadership practice – the practice that coaching is seeking to explore. But how can coaching explore these depths without both a body of knowledge on how leaders learn to lead and associated intrusive focus applying such theory to help illuminate such learning? Kempster and Stewart (2010) have shown it is highly problematic to surface such tacit insights without a set of content based tools. This being the case, we argue that coaching can only really fulfil its potential to open up such deep reflexivity if it modifies its ‘process only’ stance and draws explicitly on content expertise.

Surfacing deep reflexivity through the rigour of research: The theoretical underpinning and academic rigour of a research approach can be used to facilitate surfacing deep reflexivity. For example, it has been shown that a content focus does stimulate critical reflexivity of the lived experience of leadership learning (Janson, 2008, Kempster and Stewart, 2010). Further, CCAE has been shown to enable situated learning to be revealed (Kempster and Stewart, 2010).

To address these questions we have looked at a content driven reflexive process within the methodology of CCAE. Such a focus on content is in contrast to the essentially process-driven coaching model. It is also in sharp contrast with regards to the focus and scope of exploration of most coaching interventions, as well as the degree of directiveness. We will suggest how this method has a meta-competence of being critically reflexive through co-constructed knowing where the researcher and the researched become co-partners as ‘empathetic provocateurs’.

Co-constructed autoethnography

CCAE is an emerging approach to qualitative research (Parry and Bryman, 2006). Kempster and Stewart (2010) argue that it has significant potential in revealing contextualised, in-depth insights into situated leadership practice. Further, the method has an unintended process opportunity – the potential to become a mechanism within leadership development. It is this perspective that we outline here. Prior to exploring CCAE we wish to first situate the discussion within the broader methodology of autoethnography.

The autoethnographical approach

Autoethnographic narratives begin with an exploration of the reflections of an individual’s situated experience of a particular phenomenon. Emerging through the development of the narrative is a critically reflexive understanding. An autoethnographic contribution can provide a sense of verisimilitude to an experience and give insight to the complex background of social processes, practices and assumptions underlying the manifestation of the phenomenon under investigation. It achieves this through evoking a high level of plausibility by virtue of the story’s connectedness to life (Ellis and Bochner, 2000). In autoethnography emphasis is placed on generating a creative aesthetic narrative (Boyle and Parry, 2007; similarly expressed by Richardson, 2000). As with art, good autoethnography will enable the emergence of ‘rich material and depth of knowledge … on aspects of organizational life’ (Watson, 2011: 209) through the ethnographer’s narrative craft.

The emergence of autoethnography as a potential method for exploring situated leadership learning has been outlined by Kempster and Stewart (2010) in their examination of leader becoming. A detailed review of the epistemological and methodological aspects of autoethnography, and in particular co-constructed autoethnography, is not within the scope of this article. However a brief discussion of the approach provides useful insights that we will draw on when exploring the application of CCAE within processes of leadership development.

‘Autoethnography does not merely require us to explore the interface between culture and self; it requires us to examine ourselves in this context’ (Kempster and Stewart, 2010: 211). It seeks to make ‘conscious an experiencing of the self as both inquirer and respondent, as teacher and learner’ (p. 211). The notion of ‘teacher and learner’ is significant to the arguments of this article in terms of the opportunity to use autoethnography within leadership development. Kempster and Stewart (2010) made salient the difficulty of reflecting on situated learning associated with the development of situated leadership practice. In particular they examined the problematic process of a sole auto researcher being critically reflexive of taken-for-granted aspects within social practice and the underlying influences within a particular context. To be both ‘teacher and learner’ is greatly assisted with a partner in the autoethnographic process: co-constructing or co-producing knowledge. This connected partnership in teaching and learning, using a content-oriented approach that draws on theory, is the essence of our suggested notion of ‘co-coaching’: coming to know the situated and relational self through the process of research.

Returning to our earlier definition of CCAE, Reed-Danahay (1997) used the term ‘co-produced’ autoethnography to capture a process of the researcher writing about her/himself, with such writing subsequently being interrogated by a co-author to enhance and deepen reflexivity through a two-way process that generates a co-constructed narrative ‘sandwich’ (Ellis, 2004; Ellis and Bochner, 2000). The co-author selects theory to help the graphy focus on reflections and critical reflexivity of the autoethno. Saldana (2003: 224) suggests that this partnered process has the potential to ‘reveal a discovery’ about self. Hence our suggested opportunity that co-constructing autoethno-graphy can potentially bring to leadership development. We encapsulate the dynamics of co-constructed coaching in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Comparing executive coaching and co-constructed coaching.

Co-constructed coaching: A very different approach to coaching

The framework in Figure 2 illustrates a significantly different dynamic from that of an executive coaching intervention. We suggest a more even partnership between the researcher and the respondent associated with respective inputs, process and outputs for both the researcher and the manager. We believe this offers added value to both parties across most of the previously discussed dimensions. It is through this mutuality of inputs and outputs that knowledge may be said to be co-constructed, in a relationship which exhibits very different characteristics from that of executive coaching – particularly in terms of the distribution of power and expertise .

Scope and purpose

In contrast to executive coaching, the scope and purpose of co-constructed coaching as a learning intervention are clearly defined. The leadership, or an aspect of leadership pertinent to the participants, sets the boundaries for the relationship, the purpose of which is for both parties to develop depth of understanding around this topic. The researcher seeks to obtain an enriched understanding of the phenomenon: knowledge which has intrinsic value for them in the pursuance of their personal research aims and objectives. With the manager’s permission, the output for the researcher may be in the form of published journal articles or richer teaching materials. The output for the manager is a deeply heightened understanding of their lived experience and the dynamics that have shaped their learning. A consequence is a critically reflexive appreciation of the impact of context on the development of their leadership practice.

Participant contributions

This is where the biggest difference between executive coaching and co-constructed coaching lies, both parties having or developing content knowledge and being responsible for managing the process. The result is a shared learning contract rather than the potential for dependency which we have argued can be seen to exist in executive coaching. Of significance is the emphasis on the inputs required from the researcher. Such inputs reflect a clear awareness of the phenomenon to be examined and related theory to help the respondent to explore their experiences related to the phenomenon under investigation. The researcher’s role is to seek a critical perspective by exploring in-depth leadership learning through continual and iterative questioning and probing. In particular, identifying and applying theory and metaphors to help illuminate critical dimensions and enrich the aesthetic narrative. The input from the respondent manager is the context and content that forms the narrative. Their role is to seek greater understanding of their own practice through the co-constructed knowledge that emerges through ‘reflective dialogical practice’ (Cunliffe, 2002: 36). The emerging co-constructed autoethnographic narrative developed by continual re-appraisal and interpretation through the narrative / theory ‘sandwich’ is most significant to our argument. The theory becomes the tool to help reveal the tacit knowledge of the socially learnt practice of leading. This is the most notable difference between co-constructed coaching and exe-cutive coaching. Unlike executive coaching, we suggest co-constructed coaching explicitly pays attention to content from both sides of the relationship and uses theory as a deliberately intrusive tool of exploration.

Arguably the Foucauldian organisational control aspect identified by both Townley and Fairhurst can be usefully illuminated by the process of co-constructed coaching that draws on a reflexive dialogic (Cunliffe, 2001, 2002) approach, thus enabling participants to be proactive in choosing and constructing the power relations within which the relationship operates as well as how this is positioned in feedback to the organisation as represented by HR or the respondent’s line manager. This illumination is facilitated by co-constructed coaching’s embodied dynamic, where ‘the learning process may be seen as a discursive contextualized and on-going practice constructed in the moment’ (Cunliffe, 2002: 45). We suggest that a co-constructed autoethnographic account thus causes a dialogue to occur that focuses on illuminating and linking tacit and explicit knowledge of social and relational practice by probing, with related theory, deeper in a reflexive manner. Such a process enacts Cunliffe’s (2002: 43) conception of reflexive dialogue and helps to address her related question: ‘how do we surface the implicit knowing lying within action and articulate it in such a way that our actions can be more knowledgeable?’ (p. 132). In this way, both parties within the co-constructed coaching dyad are responsible for ‘holding the process’ rather than this being the domain of the coach alone. As such the ‘surrogate gaze’ identified by Fairhurst (2007: 85) in regard to executive coaching is perhaps restricted or even explicitly explored as part of the reflexive dialogue.

Criticisms of engaging with notions of critical theory within leadership and management development have suggested the problematic nature of surfacing complex dynamics. In a sense such an approach can create the potential for dysfunctional behaviour for the individual if the exposure to critical ideas cannot be guided and anchored to situated management and leadership practice (Reynolds, 1999). Although we acknowledge the difficulties highlighted by Reynolds, we believe an opportunity exists for co-constructed coaching to guide the embracing of critical exposure and to help situate this learning within leadership practice. In part we suggest some of the difficulties are ameliorated through addressing power in the dyadic relationship.

Model of intervention and power relations

Whilst coaching vacillates between claims of being non-directive and the need to meet organisational goals, co-constructed coaching is mutually and explicitly directive. Both parties exercise both the right and the obligation to shape the topics under discussion and how they are to be pursued. Issues of the appropriateness of theory, contextual relevance, manner of interpretation, and so on are mutually agreed, decided upon and actioned as part of the dialogic approach discussed above. It is in the explicit nature of the contract between the parties that they will operate in this way in order to achieve mutual benefit. Recent debates on the asymmetry of power relations between researchers and the researched, ‘the knower and the known’ (Tatli, 2011: 23), suggest theorising even by critical management scholars requires a deeply reflexive gaze to avoid becoming the ‘critical other’ (p. 23). This is a difficult area to avoid. Our suggested approach seeks to fully recognise the notion of the critical other within the explicitly directive nature of co-constructed coaching. So whilst acknowledging that theorising places emphasis on certain aspects and under represents others the co-constructed coaching relationship, seeking mutuality of benefits and reciprocal exchange, has a desired intent to be overt and seek power symmetry. Fundamentally we argue that the explicit desire within co-constructed coaching is for both parties to mutually learn: partners co-constructing knowledge (Antonacopoulou, 2010). In such a way the critical management principles outlined by Reynolds (1999) can be engaged with, namely: exposing taken-for-granted assumptions and ideology in management practice and theory (Tourish et al., 2010); embracing notions of uncertainty, emotion and anxiety within situated management practice (Vince, 2010); and as a consequence of the reflexivity having a critical sense of the emancipatory ideal by seeking to address notions of power embedded in discourses and structures (Sinclair, 2007: 469).

Ostensibly co-constructed coaching, by drawing on the specific research approach of CCAE, has considerable potential to reveal insights into leadership practice. In particular it can assist in surfacing tacit learning from situated learning and enable critical reflexivity on leadership practice. Further, co-constructed coaching can enable in-depth contextualised understanding of the development of leadership practice for both the researcher and the respondent manager. In this way it can enable practical engagement between practicing managers and ideas of critical management studies that has thus far been severely limited (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008).

An interesting opportunity exists to use co-constructed coaching within classroom-based leadership development. Sinclair (2007: 458) argues that: ‘little attention has been given to teaching leadership critically … Particularly leadership education has been markedly uninterested in critical analysis’. Further, Antonacopoulou (2010: S7) argues that there is a need for business school critical pedagogy to focus on co-creating relational knowledge through a focus on practice in the form of phronesis. The growth of executive coaching reflects such a focus on phronesis through its (unstated) emphasis on exploring a manager’s situated practice drawn from lived experience. This same focus on lived experience is the immediate opportunity for the application of co-constructed coaching in the classroom context. It provides a classroom structure and expectation of seeking to expose the underlying influences and assumptions that have shaped an individual’s situated understanding of leadership practice. Within the classroom context theory is likely to be in abundance. Co-constructed coaching then could draw on, select and apply such theory to enable exploration of a manager’s leadership practice, with coaching pairs reciprocally acting as researcher and respon-dent to each other. In such a manner co-constructed coaching could allow managers to ‘surface the implicit knowing lying within action and articulate it in such a way that [her/his] actions can be more knowledgeable’ (Cunliffe, 2008: 132). An output of such articulation could form a reflexive narrative capable of constituting assessment.

Conclusion

We suggest that there are significant benefits for developing co-constructed coaching as a process within formal leadership development programmes as perhaps complementary to a coaching intervention or as a desirable and feasible alternative. A number of questions emerge: Can co-constructed coaching become a feasible and desirable alternative to executive coaching? Is the process of co-constructed coaching a specialist skill that requires particular training? Is co-constructed coaching open to both researchers and executive coaches?

When presenting an earlier formative paper at a conference on the opportunities of co-constructed coaching (Kempster and Iszatt-White, 2011) we received considerable engagement from colleagues relating to both the concept and these questions. Prominent in the discussion were trained executive coaches. There was a palpable dialectic of anxiety and curiosity to our fledgling argument. The anxiety related to the above questions oriented toward handling the personal and psychological matters which might arise through the proposed co-constructed coaching process. Both the curiosity and anxiety generated a collective sense of needing research to evaluate the process in terms of the depth of learning required to apply the process, the development of the individuals in terms of their critical reflexivity and impact on their practice, and understanding how researchers (or possibly students) could handle emerging issues generated by such co-constructed coaching.

The conference colleagues recognised more broadly that the opportunities for the development of coaching drawn from CCAE require explicating. A research agenda would seek to explore the role of probing using theory – the notion of adopting a contrasting approach to executive coaching – and evaluating the impact. Such a contrasting approach generates potential for much debate and re-examination of executive coaching within leadership and management development.

A related agenda is to examine the value of connecting research with development, for example working with executive coaches to develop an alternative approach in which the coach becomes a researcher. In this way many more opportunities would be developed to gain a rich, qualitative and contextualised insight into leadership and management practice, its antecedent development, its temporal and situated nature, and how through critical reflexivity the practice is developed. There is presently a dearth of leadership research that examines contextualised leadership and management practice (Watson, 2011). Watson encourages an ethnographic approach to such research to address this gap in understanding of the leadership and management practice, yet methodological challenges exist in terms of access to managers over an extended period. These challenges have been magnified by the difficulty of exploring the tacit nature of situated management practice that is hard to make explicit by respondent managers. Thus there is the need for suitable methods to assist revealing such tacit learning. Further, there is the need for high trust in exploring and exposing such reflexive insights on practice that are unlikely to have been capable of previous discussion. The executive coaching relationship and professional process expertise greatly assist in overcoming these issues. Using executive coaches as part of the research process has considerable benefits.

We suggest that co-constructed coaching has considerable potential to contribute to leadership and management research, as well as greatly advancing the development of managers through a focus on situated leadership and management practice. Through a focus on ‘learning as a dialogical process’ as a ‘means of opening possibilities for critical self-reflexivity’ (Cunliffe, 2008: 133) co-constructed coaching’s explicit embrace of a critical stance can perhaps catalyse the application of critical management into everyday situated leadership practice.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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