The spill-over effects of postgraduate coaching studies in the resilience of women in triple roles

ABSTRACT

Working women who fulfil multiple roles face demands which test their resilience. The purpose of this research paper is to report on how postgraduate studies in executive coaching at a South African Business School, had a spill-over effect that assisted women with their resilience in their triple roles of business leaders, mothers at home and postgraduate students at university. Eight women in these triple roles were chosen from a class of postgraduate students studying towards a master’s degree in executive coaching. This qualitative study employed Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to analyse their lived experiences using a combination of individual semi-structured interviews and excerpts from their reflective journals. Studying coaching gave participants valuable external resources (techniques, tools and new competency skills), which in turn built their internal resources (self-esteem, confidence and new perspectives) that led to increased resilience. In addition, the positive spillover effects from their postgraduate coaching studies strengthened their resilience in their other roles, while negative spillover effects had the opposite effect.

KEYWORDS:

• Executive coaching
• spillover effects
• women in triple roles
• resilience
• working women
• working mothers
• postgraduate coaching studies
• coach training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Grace Jansen is a consultant in the hospitality industry with an interest in executive coaching as it applies to leaders in hotel and guesthouse businesses. She has postgraduate qualifications in management and coaching and her current research concerns the coaching of women in triple roles as business executives, mothers and postgraduate students at the same time.

Dr. Nicky Terblanche is a senior lecturer and research supervisor on the MBA, MPhil Coaching and PhD programmes at the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB), South Africa. His academic interests include both business coaching and information system. He also runs an executive and business coaching practice. He has an MPhil in Management Coaching, an MScEng in electronic engineering and a PhD in Business Management at USB. His research interests include transition coaching, transformative learning, Social Network Analysis, complexity theory and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in coaching and management. He has published in a number of academic journals and regularly presents at international conferences. LinkedIn: https://za.linkedin.com/in/dr-nicky-terblanche-phd-b004177; RESEARCH: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicky_Terblanche