Business psychologist and executive coach Dr Amanda Maclean shares findings from her recent research into how internal coaches support organisational change through their work at the individual level of the coachee. Amanda outlines a model known as ‘Coach as Change Mediator©’ that emerged from the findings and includes suggestions for how it might be applied.
‘Accidental change agent’ was a phrase that stuck in my mind when interviewing internal coaches in higher education (HE) for my doctoral research (Maclean, 2024). Despite assertions about being neither advocate for the change nor an ambassador for the organisation, the coaches consistently outlined activities regularly ascribed to change agents (Gerwing, 2016):
Importantly, they seemed able to maintain a broadly positive commitment to the rationale for the organisational change, despite it often falling short in actuality, citing examples of poor communications and hasty decision-making. I had embarked on my research with Simon Western’s (2012) notion of internal coaching as an ‘unsung hero’ ringing in my ears. He recognised that coaching has huge potential to effect positive change for an organisation, positioning internal coaching as part of an ecosystem that embraces the interconnections and interdependencies of working life.
Having transitioned from being an external organisational development consultant and coach to becoming an internal one, I had found myself enmeshed in the web of interconnectivity that Western referred to, navigating the impact of organisational change from the inside, rather than from the dispassionate bystander role of an external consultant and coach. Western highlighted the under-utilised potential for coaching to support organisational change; and the prospect of an untapped resource in the cash-strapped HE sector prompted me to explore further, interviewing 18 internal coaches across 15 universities.
I quickly discovered that coaching is rarely referenced explicitly in change models (Hughes, 2010), whether internal or external. Despite some recognition that coaches have a role in ensuring people have the capacity and motivation to adapt to change (Boyatzis, 2006), organisational change models which include a focus on the people dimension (and many do not) tend mainly to reference ‘overcoming resistance to change’. Few change models are founded on academic research and most confer a linearity and controllability that contradict the real-life experience of those impacted by large-scale change projects.
Hughes (2016) makes the point that a fear of change is not the same as resistance to change, offering the terminology of ‘response to change’ rather than resistance. Similarly, the coaches I interviewed rarely spoke of resistance to change and mentioned instead the need to build the coachee’s psychological capital, facilitating them to regain autonomy and self-efficacy when responding to the impact of organisational change.
They made frequent references to ‘nudging’ the coachee proactively towards a position of greater agency, and to challenging cognitive distortions about the organisation’s aims and motives. They described how the distortions resulted in the coachee expressing feelings of ‘stuckness’, and they sought to steer the coachee towards a more positive, productive mindset. ‘You as the coach are holding that positive space for them because they're not really able to do it in that moment for themselves,’ said Alyx, an internal coach.
The coaches described their intentional nudges as ‘offering a compass and a map, but not suggesting what the final destination should be’. They became an instrument for enacting steering behaviours, providing the thinking space and asking the questions that enabled the coachee to discover an appropriate path for their situation.
This has echoes of the nudge theory expounded by Thaler and Sunstein (2009) which seeks to avoid ‘telling people what to do’, but instead devises a series of cues to encourage choices of constructive behaviours and actions, a position of gently steering rather than overtly directing. From a position of ‘stuckness’, any route forward was considered a beneficial outcome, although the ideal outcome, certainly from the sponsor’s perspective, was one that benefited both the individual and the organisation.
Some of the coaches overtly recognised the three-way relationship of coach, coachee and organisation, and were comfortable acknowledging they were not just in service of their coachee but were expected to balance the individual’s goals and values with those of the organisation. One coach described this as ‘the empty chair at the table’, with the invisible third party requiring them to use their knowledge of the organisational context wisely, and to tread a conscientious line between supporting the individual and supporting the organisation. They described this as a careful balancing act and referenced ‘holding threads in tension’ to give their coachee the thinking space to figure things out.
Hayley, an internal coach and senior university leader summed it up as: ‘You just bring it front and centre and put it out there. This is the role. This is what we're trying to do here. It’s not just in service of the client, we're both here together actually because there's an organisational element of some sort that we’re working towards, for the good of the university.’
Not all coaches were as comfortable at acknowledging they potentially have the agency, knowledge and mandate to use their coaching practice to support organisational change. Despite recognising the overlapping skills they share with change agents – active listening, skilful questioning, a high level of integrity, and the ability to earn trust (Gerwing, 2016) – they tended to focus on the coaching dyad of coach and coachee, rather than a triad relationship where the organisational context holds equal weight. Many of the coaches held fast to the concept that ‘whatever is good for the coachee, is good for the organisation’, rather than seeking to bring these into equilibrium.
What happens if the coach is also impacted by the organisational change?
Billie, an internal coach, explained: ‘The coaches were not clear how to position themselves when someone would come and attack from an organisational perspective.’ And because the coaches in some cases agreed with what they were hearing, they found it difficult to coach. Billie articulated the question that other internal coaches also raised: ‘How does our organisation actually support us through this process? Because we don’t know how to deal with this.’ The implicit assumption that internal coaches were equipped to handle the changes, both for their coachees and for themselves, was evidently not the case.
This raised an interesting dilemma: how do you coach someone impacted by organisational change when you are being affected by that same change? It highlighted the importance of coaches having access to peer support and regular supervision, especially where the coach was becoming implicitly drawn into the coachee’s story, was concerned that empathy was tipping into collusion, and was struggling to maintain their ethical edge.
In a few cases, the challenge of managing the change interplay affected the coaches’ personal wellbeing. They described stepping away from the coaching process, recognising that they lacked the psychological capital to support others being negatively impacted by organisational change. Mostly this led to a re-setting process, in discussion with peer coaches and/or their supervisor, to enable the coach to regain a more balanced perspective.
Coaching during periods of organisational change appeared to increase the impetus for the internal coach to offer a mentoring perspective, and this was identified as a source of ongoing conscious effort for many. A notable distinction was made between offering advice and offering context (Barber, 2018), which relates to the ‘coach or mentor’ dilemma that many of the coaches experienced, and which is viewed as a regularly occurring tension for internal coaches.
The research culminated in a conceptual framework (Maclean, 2024) consisting of three interrelated models which support coach development and practice when coaching during periods of organisational change. The central model is that of Coach as Change Mediator©, a term that had greater resonance for the coaches than ‘change agent’ (accidental or otherwise!). It placed the coachee at the centre of the conceptual framework and shifted the focus towards building the agency of the coachee, rather than on the role of the coach as agent in supporting organisational change.
Figure 1: Coach as Change Mediator© model
The Coach as Change Mediator© model is intended to support internal coaches to shift from an ‘accidental’ role in supporting organisational change, to a more intentional and considered stance, operating in the liminal space between change at the individual level and change at the organisational level. It outlines four sub-roles that a coach could attend to during periods of organisational change.
The table below aligns the model with the change cycle experienced by coachees impacted by organisational change. It includes examples, provided by the internal coaches, of coaching practices, plus tools and techniques, linked to each stage of the cycle.
The Coach as Change Mediator© model encourages coaches to connect change at an individual level with change at an organisational level, supporting coachees to navigate organisational change more effectively. However, this consideration of the internal coaches being ‘in service’ of organisational goals, not just individual goals, challenges deeply held precepts about the neutrality of the coach, and the orientation of the coaching process being positioned towards the coachee’s agenda. This will be the topic of a subsequent blog: ‘Time to join the coaching dance – can a coach truly be neutral?’
Dr Amanda Maclean is an accredited executive coach and leadership development consultant at Work Behaviour Ltd., following nine years in higher education as a senior leader and organisational development practitioner, and 25 years as a business psychologist and executive coach, working across a range of sectors. Amanda is building on her doctoral research by developing a toolkit and training support for internal coaches who are coaching during periods of organisational change. If you are interested in piloting the toolkit and workshop, please get in touch.
Barber, A. (2018) Blog post for Clutterbuck Coaching & mentoring International, posted on May 11, 2018, accessed on 11 October 2021
Boyatzis R. E. (2006) ‘An overview of intentional change from a complexity perspective’, Journal of Management Development, 25(7), pp. 607-623.
Gerwing, C. (2016) ‘Meaning of change agents within organizational change’, Journal of Applied Leadership and Management, 4, pp. 21-40.
Hughes, M. (2010) Change Management: A Critical Perspective. 2nd edn. CIPD Publication.
Hughes, M. (2016) ‘Leading changes: Why transformation explanations fail’, Leadership, 12(4), pp. 449–469.
Maclean, A. (2024) 'Change agent or neutral bystander? An exploration of how the coaching practices of internal coaches in Higher Education Institutions support organisational change', International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, (S18), pp.16-31. DOI: 10.24384/tt54-ca69
Thaler, R.H. and Sunstein, C.R. (2009) Nudge: Improvising decisions about health, wealth and happiness. London: Penguin
Western, S. (2012) Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text. London: SAGE Publications.
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