Coaching within organisations: examining the influence of goal orientation on leaders' professional development

Abstract

Goal-orientation research exists in a variety of academic, athletic, and organisational settings. Previous research within organisations focused on the impact of goal orientation on diverse constructs such as goal setting, sales performance, and training. This paper describes a study that addressed a gap in the research by examining the relationship between goal orientation and leaders' professional development during coaching engagements. It was hypothesised that the degree and type of goal orientation would influence the level of leaders' professional development. The study's participants were 110 leaders from a US-based corporation who represented diverse professional specialties including human resources, information technology, operations, finance, sales, legal, and client services. Results revealed that learning goal orientation was associated with the level of professional development. Conversely, performance goal orientation was not associated with the level of professional development. Most of the leaders were identified as predominantly learning goal-oriented; none were identified as predominantly performance goal-oriented.