Increasing leaders’ self-concept-clarity in the authentic leadership coaching group

Abstract

Introduction:It is suggested that authentic leaders can be distinguished by four self-related characteristics: ‘the salience of the leadership role in their self-concept, the level of self-concept clarity, the extent to which their goals are self-concordant, and the degree to which their behaviour is consistent with their self-concept’ (Shamir & Eilam, 2005, p.399). The aim of this research was to establish if and how authentic leadership group-coaching impacts a leader’s self-concept and self-concept clarity.Design:25 senior leaders participated in one of five authentic leadership coaching groups run over a two-year period. Each group met one day a month over three months to discuss how their past/present/future domains influence their leadership practice. The Self-Concept Clarity Scale (Campbell, Trapnell, Heine, Katz, Lavalle & Lehman, 1996) was administered at the beginning of day one and at the end of day three to see if there was any difference between pre-coaching and post-coaching scores.Results:Paired sample t-tests were conducted on the questionnaire data and results showed both statistical significance (p<.001) and a large Cohen effect size (d=1.01).Conclusion:This paper considers the relevance of the self-concept in the context of authentic leadership development and the results suggest that authentic leadership group-coaching works at a sufficiently deep level to increase participant’s self-concept-clarity. It examines how group-coaching can help individual’s achieve a greater clarity of their self-concept and proposes a combination of social psychology theories to explain why this group format may be so effective.