Maximising female leader development through simultaneous individual and group coaching

ABSTRACT

Female leadership development has become a key issue in organisations' strategy to ensure equal representation of male and female leaders throughout organisations, including top management. This article investigates the deployment of a combined programme of executive and group coaching to support female leader development in a multinational. Drawing on the experiences of key stakeholders: clients, coaches and the programme team using a case study approach, it offers a rich depiction of this novel use of dual forms of coaching. The findings and discussion identify the personal value of individual executive coaching, the collective value of group coaching and the synergies achieved from the interplay of the simultaneous use of both forms of coaching within the organisation, and beyond. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of coaching as a social process, the effect of combining coaching approaches, and female leader development, emphasising the need for further research on coaching as a social process as part of leadership development.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• executive coaching
• group coaching
• social process
• female leaders
• social capital

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Bonneywell

Dr Sally Bonneywell is an Executive Coach, Consultant and Researcher, who works with client and client organisations across the globe. She is a highly experienced practitioner specialising in coaching executives and executive teams in large, complex organisations, both commercial and public. She has over 20 years of experience working in a large organisation within the pharmaceutical industry, coupled with over 10 years of consulting and work with world class international business schools. Her key area of research concerns coaching, executive development and building social capital and she has published several peer reviewed articles in this arena. In 2016, under her leadership, GSK won the ICF Global Prism Award and in the same year Sally was awarded `Internal Coach of the Year’.

Judie Gannon

Dr Judie Gannon is a Senior lecturer in the International Centre for Coaching & Mentoring Studies, at Oxford Brookes University where she leads the Doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring. Her research focuses on coaching and mentoring as interventions and their impact on individuals, groups and communities across a range of sectors. She divides her time between research, teaching and supporting those who run coaching and mentoring initiatives. She is also Deputy Head of Doctoral programmes in Oxford Brookes Business School. She reviews and writes for several journals across the topics of coaching, mentoring, human resource development and international human resource management. In 2019 she was the winner of an EMCC Global Mentoring Award.