International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 7 Number 3

Recourse to executive coaching: the mediating role of human resources

Steven A. Murphy
Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1S 5B6; tel: (613) 5202600 x1290; fax: (613) 5204427; email: murphy@sprott.carleton.ca

Received: 20 September 2004; Revised and accepted 25 November 2004.

Steven A Murphy is an assistant professor at Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

ABSTRACT

This paper views the proliferation of executive coaching for developmental purposes as a sign of organisational decits in the areas of leadership, mentoring, and formal training. Key coaching concepts are described in terms of their links to counselling psychology and are compared with foundational development activities to argue that coaching may be a facile response to more serious underlying deciencies. A police organisation provides an interesting context to illustrate how coaching is uncritically embraced to bridge shortcomings in areas where human resource structures and processes should play a more active mediating role.
INTRODUCTION

The proliferation of coaching articles in management and psychology literature coincides with the steady growth of coaching initiatives in private and public sector organisations. There is little debate that over the last fteen years it has become more and more popular to hire executive coaches. Former executives, consultants, sports gures, motivational speakers, and psychologists are delivering coaching, all of them looking to satisfy the appetite of hungry

organisations. Despite its apparent popularity, coaching for development purposes lacks conceptual clarity, remains ill-dened, and reveals a paucity of efcacy studies (Brotman, Liberi & Wasylyshyn, 1998; Kilburg, 1996). The conceptual and practical difculties associated with coaching have not inhibited companies from spending considerable amounts of money with very little examination of cost effectiveness. Police organisations have also succumbed to the allure of coaching. With the expected exodus of senior police leaders as baby boomers retire en masse, a sense of urgency surrounds police succession management systems and policies. In this atmosphere, coaching future senior executives is viewed as a necessary developmental process to prepare police organisations for the looming demographic crunch. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) provides an interesting organisational context for a critical examination of executive coaching. While our comments regarding coaching in the RCMP may be considered unique to that organisation, we1 believe that the fundamental tenets hold true in traditional public and private sector organisations, where lateral entry at the executive level is much more common. All organisations need to clarify the parameters of executive coaching including such fundamental questions as: Who is the client?

International Journal of Police Science and Management, Vol. 7 No. 3, 2005, pp. 175186. Vathek Publishing, 14613557

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What are the objectives? What activities constitute coaching vis--vis other developmental approaches? In the case of the RCMP, like many large organisations, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding what coaching entails. This lack of conceptual clarity contributes to an array of well-intentioned initiatives for coaching that lack a sense of cohesion. Interestingly, coaching in the male-dominated culture of the RCMP is uncritically embraced as something worthwhile and universally important. Yet, there is limited understanding about the objectives, constraints, or dangers associated with coaching. For example, there are unanswered questions regarding whether to use coaching for hard skills (eg, police operations) or soft skill development (eg, managing relationships), and whether to focus on executives (the dominant view of coaching in the literature), middle managers, supervisors or all employees. We argue that a thorough examination of coaching initiatives, including the potentially harmful effects on organisations, has been displaced by the pressing demand for immediate action. We contend that police

organisations are no different from other organisations searching for quick solutions to human resource (HR) problems that are inherently complex. Providing some conceptual clarity regarding executive coaching could unify efforts and resources, and provide a common understanding from which to enhance HR developmental programmes. Specically, HR should play an active role in developing the organisational capacity for leadership, performing and assessing the various practices around leadership development, and conducting a robust diagnostic test of shortcomings in those practices before engaging in executive coaching (See Figure 1). Furthermore, as we shall describe in the remainder of the paper, executive coaching is a complex package of actions belying its pejorative understanding and adoption in many organisations. We rst dene and differentiate executive coaching from other developmental activities with similar goals. The psychological underpinnings of coaching are then explored to expose some of the potential dangers associated with an uninformed undertaking of coaching activities.

Figure 1 Diagnostic model for HR mediation in executive coaching

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Finally, the main research avenues derived from our arguments are presented.
Executive Coaching Dened

Despite the intuitive links between coaching and counselling, and a strong psychological basis for coaching, management literature has distanced itself from counselling. Coaching in the management domain is described as an intervention that can help organisations to reach their full potential by intervening at the executive level to elevate their overall functionality, either through improved interpersonal skills or enhanced business knowledge and savvy. Much of the management literature on coaching consists of articles exhorting managers to exert themselves to add coaching to their roles and empower subordinates, solve organisational problems, and push their enterprise to peak performance (Kilburg, 1996, p.135). Coaching, or any developmental activity for that matter, would have trouble living up to such high expectations. While these lofty goals predominate, one is left wondering how to measure the efcacy of a coaching relationship in helping an organisation achieve peak performance. Thus, we begin to see some of the conceptual and practical weaknesses of executive coaching. In an early article (Evered & Selman, 1989), coaching was explicitly differentiated from counselling on the basis that coaching attempts to improve job skills, while counselling examines interpersonal issues that may affect job performance. The notion of engaging in a highly personal effort aimed at improving job skills without also examining the inseparable interpersonal issues and social exchanges within the workplace simplies and compartmentalises the complexities of work environments and human functioning. It was not until the 1990s, culminating in the special issue on executive coaching in the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (1996), that psychologists argued

that for coaching to be effective, it must take counselling psychology principles into account. Since that issue, the literature remains fragmented, examining various approaches to develop employees without adequate differentiation, theoretical development, or scientic examination of their efcacy. For example, the organisational literature also discusses coaching as a developmental tool for employees other than executives. With the aim of providing some conceptual clarity, and consistent with the dominant view of coaching, we dene coaching as a formal activity performed by individuals outside the organisation to improve identied developmental needs of executives.
Coaching for management development

Developing employees, the organisations human capital (Day, 2001), has understandably captured the attention of organisations and has permeated management literature since the decline of Taylorism. Today entire journals are devoted to the topic of HR development, and organisations are seeking new, faster, and more effective ways to develop employees (Berglas, 2002). As Evered and Selman (1989) suggest, when reduced to its barest essentials, management is essentially a people-based art. A key component of the management portrait is the development of employees for the purposes of attaining organisational goals more effectively. To provide consistent and intentional implementation of executive coaching it is important to understand how coaching differs from other developmental practices, such as leadership training, mentoring and formal learning. Similarly, it is important to understand that there is some conceptual overlap in development practices: this has, at least partially, contributed to the lack of conceptual clarity in coaching literature.

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While it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a comprehensive review of the approaches to employee development, it is necessary to differentiate coaching from other strategies. In particular, how does coaching differ from mentoring, leadership, and formal training activities?
Mentoring

Mentoring continues to captivate organisations and permeates the management literature (eg, Godshalk & Sosik, 2000; Young & Perrewe, 2000). Mentoring usually involves hierarchical relationships designed to develop a protg for a particular organisational outcome (eg, skill development), often related to succession planning. The mentor has a wealth of tacit knowledge about the work and working conditions associated with a particular job, but also shares socio-political processes (Gibb, 1999) with the protg (the notion being that individuals with advanced experience and knowledge can support and facilitate the upward mobility of junior organisational members) (Allen, Russell, & Maetzke, 1997; Ragins, & Scandura; 1997). Of all of the development practices, mentoring is most similar to coaching to the extent that some authors use the terms interchangeably (eg, Nykodym, Freedman, Simonetti, Nielsen, & Battles, 1995; Young, & Perrewe, 2000). Successful mentoring and coaching require relationships of mutual trust and respect (Nykodym et al., 1995), and include elements such as goaldening and fostering psychological intimacy (Rotenberg, 2000). Allen and Poteet (1999) provide a list of mentoring attributes that are also critical to coaching, including: listening and communicating; patience; knowledge of the organisation and industry (credibility); ability to read and understand others; and honesty and trustworthiness. Confusion surrounding the practices results from the conceptual overlap between the two activities. Despite this, mentoring

should be conceptually and practically differentiated from coaching on a number of grounds. First, mentoring can occur either formally or informally at any level of an organisation, in contrast with the dominant view of coaching as an activity performed by outside consultants for the improvement of mutually constructed development needs of executives. Mentors are almost exclusively assumed to be internal to the organisation (Godshalk & Sosik, 2000), and there is some debate (particularly in management literature) as to whether executive coaches should be internal or external to the organisation. Second, the goals of both interventions may be quite different with mentoring focused primarily on upward mobility and executive coaching aimed at improving executives ability to relate to their environments. Coaching, particularly as described in the special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (1996), encompasses the executives entire psychosocial world, and offers the opportunity for selfreection and insight development. By contrast, mentoring more often focuses on specic skill acquisition and developing political savvy. In the case of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), like most large organisations, formal and informal mentoring takes place everyday at every level of the organisation. Protgs (cadets) are groomed from their entry into the centralised training academy to prepare them for their rst operational posting. Mentoring continues throughout a police ofcers career through formal and informal alliances that provide knowledge and insight required for the challenges associated with their current and future roles. Mutual trust and respect are essential for a protg to benet from a mentoring relationship. Additionally, in the case of police work, mentoring relationships are more likely to be valued if they are

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consonant with the strong cultural norms of the organisation. Unlike executive coaching where some form of self-reection is encouraged and required for sustained change, mentoring in police organisations appears to be an emotionally detached process (Drodge and Murphy, 2002) with the focus on skill and knowledge development. We suggest that one of the greatest challenges faced by executive coaches in a policing context involves creating an atmosphere where emotional expression is encouraged and valued. Further study is needed to shed light on the practices employed by executive coaches to foster emotional expression with police executives. For example, what coaching approach would be effective with a senior police manager who unwittingly dominates meetings thereby shutting down team members diverse perspectives?
Leadership development

valued, and actively seek out the developmental desires of their subordinates. For these leaders, providing individualised consideration (one of the four Is of transformational leadership), described as the relational aspect of leading, including the level of support that individuals feel from their formal leaders (Bass, 1985), should be a fundamental component of everyday management. One is left to wonder why the term coach needs to be superimposed over leadership (or even effective management). We contend that much, if not all, of the coaching activity directed by supervisors toward their subordinates, could more accurately and effectively be described using existing leadership theories.
Formal learning

We suggest that coaching, especially internal coaching between a manager and subordinate should more precisely be referred to as leadership development (or effective management). Popular contemporary leadership theories (eg, leader-memberexchange (LMX) and transformational leadership) focus on the relational elements of leading, and emphasise actions that inspire and motivate followers. Similarly, two mainstays of coaching are teaching effective communication skills and helping the executive develop greater interpersonal awareness, activities that are key to successful leadership. The need for a coaching intervention with an executive may point to deeper problems that fall under the category of leadership, and may signal more fundamental developmental gaps in the leader selection and development process. Coaching behaviour has become synonymous with good management practices in some organisations. Effective leaders engage in activities that make their employees feel

The nal development activity that overlaps with coaching is formal learning. In todays knowledge-based economy providing developmental opportunities, including but not limited to formal learning, is an expectation of employment. In the RCMP, police ofcers have a variety of formal courses and modes of delivery to choose from. However, police ofcers in the RCMP are often restricted in terms of the time they can afford to spend on learning and the budget allocation for training in their unit of work. Such conditions inevitably leave gaps in interpersonal relations training, management skills training, and leadership development activities. Coaching is viewed as a convenient means of bridging these gaps. There are important distinctions between coaching and formal learning activities in a large, complex police organisation such as the RCMP. In formal learning environments police ofcers may learn something about themselves, but this learning is ancillary to skill or knowledge development. While coaching shares the similarity of developing skills and knowledge, it does so through a much more intimate exploration

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of the interpersonal dynamics that surround the executives world of work. The police culture, including the powerful norms shaping the expression of emotion (Drodge and Murphy, 2002), poses a considerable challenge for the type of highly personal selfreection that is the cornerstone of many coaching initiatives. This concern raises the issue explored in the next section: When does coaching become counselling?
Coaching or counselling?

The objective of executive coaching is often the type of personal change that is targeted in counselling or therapy. Specically, some form of sustained behavioural change on the part of the executive is usually the goal, and we argue that this requires psychologically based interventions. This point has been raised by Hogan and Warrenfeltz (2003, p. 82) who note that: much of what goes on under the rubric of executive training is in essence psychotherapy. The counselling process is centrally concerned with enhancing self-awareness that can lead to renewed goal setting or personal change (Rogers, 1980) through improved decisionmaking, social adjustment, or career development. In the case of executives, coaching can be employed to explore what might be limiting executives in these areas. However, to bring about lasting change requires nuanced psychological skills. As Tobias (1996) pointed out: while some change is possible in the absence of an explicitly intrapsychic focus. . . in its complete absence the consultant [coach] will just walk blindly through a mine-eld of psychological resistance (p. 88). There is a large body of psychological literature that expressly discusses coaching as an activity performed by a mental health professional, typically a psychologist, working with client executives (eg, Kilburg,

1996; Rotenberg, 2000). Popper and Lipshitz (1992) discuss coaching as a way of improving executive skills through interventions aimed at the psychological growth of the targeted executive. Central to this coaching action is the notion that ineffective executive skills may be an expression of psychological immaturity or dysfunction. Sperry (1993) pointed out the increased executive stress in todays workplace and the need for coaches to be attuned to the psychological needs of their clients. Coaching actions in such contexts require that the entire psychosocial world of the executive be taken into account to improve both individual and organisational functioning. These issues are discussed in the next section of this paper.
Creating an effective working alliance

Given the complexities of executive coaching, what are the building blocks of an effective coaching relationship? The nature of the relationship between the coach and the executive client (the working alliance) requires considerable attention, as the substantial psychotherapy outcome research has demonstrated (Smith, Glass, & Miller, 1980). Goodstone and Diamante (1998) argue that the corporate euphemism of a coach disguises the psychological nature of the coaching relationship. They point out that careful attention to the interpersonal dynamics of such a relationship within a clearly dened model is a necessary precursor to intervention success. For example, the efcacy of the coaching relationship can be argued to consist of three elements: the trust within the working alliance, the motivation of the person being coached, and the extent to which the goals are mutually constructed (Drodge & Murphy, 2002). Rogers (1980) called for genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathetic understanding as important elements for positive change in any form of personcentred therapy. Certainly, a prerequisite of

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counselling efcacy is the clients motivation for change. Similarly, coaching actions should be grounded in creating and sustaining an effective working alliance. We have dened coaching as a formal activity performed by individuals outside of the organisation to improve identied developmental needs of executives. In contrast, an internal coach is typically a supervisor who makes pay and promotion decisions, a situation that impedes trustbuilding and candid discussions about work performance that could trigger personal self-reection. The conditions for coaching necessarily include an employee who is open to improvement, eager to learn from their mistakes and willing to try a new approach (Evered & Selman, 1989, p. 21). Relationships with managers are fraught with conicting emotions and demands engendered by the employees need to make a good impression and minimise damaging appraisals of work.
Trust and credibility

Coaching requires the same kind of relationship building skills as counselling and therapy with the added knowledge of contemporary management and organisational/ industry trends. If the rst principle of a coaching relationship is building trust, the second, surely, is gaining credibility with the client. The coach must be able to demonstrate credibility in the organisational context the executive nds himself or herself in. The coach must integrate business issues with the knowledge and artful counselling expertise of a professional psychologist (Goodstone & Diamante, 1998, p. 157). The importance of understanding and relating to organisational contexts was noted very early in the management literature. Glaser (1958) argued that industrial clinicians (coaches) must be concerned with the dynamics of individual personalities and work groups to which the client belongs,

but also the organisational culture and structure. The issues of trust and credibility are complex in any organisation, but especially so in the police domain. Trust can only be achieved if and when police executives, of their own volition, agree to coaching relationships and resonate with some of the values or characteristics of the coach. The executive coach, in creating and nurturing the working alliance must ensure that issues of condentiality are dealt with openly, and must create an environment of empathic understanding conducive to self-reection. One of the biggest obstacles faced by external coaches in creating an atmosphere of trust is being outside the police brotherhood. Police ofcers may be less likely than other executives to trust an external coach because shared police experiences are the unique bonds that resist outsider knowledge and help preserve the powerful sub-culture camaraderie. The issues of trust and credibility are inseparably linked and critically important in police coaching. To trust someone enough to self-reect on the stresses involved in managing police work, the coach must demonstrate that he or she understands or has lived and breathed in a police culture. While a coachs credibility regarding the industry within which their executive client works is an issue for all organisations, we contend that issues of credibility and trust are magnied in policing because of the strong acculturation process that fosters the solidarity of the thin blue line.
INDISCRIMINATE COACHING

Scant attention has been paid to the shortcomings of coaching at the individual and organisational level. However, Berglas (2002) is one critic who has identied some potential pitfalls involved in executive coaching concluding that, in an alarming number of situations, executive coaches

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who lack rigorous psychological training do more harm than good (p. 3). This highlights a common perception amongst critics of coaching: that its popularity may be inextricably bound to the organisational pressure for easy answers, thereby making it susceptible to unscrupulous practices. In creating the necessary conditions for an effective working (or therapeutic) alliance with a client, some coaches are creating an intensely personal forum for self-reection without having the necessary psychological tools to deal with the difculties and challenges that may emerge. Argyris (1991) argued that the most signicant impediment to new learning is defensive reasoning. A coach must have the psychological skills necessary to win over an executive, by creating an environment where blaming other people or processes is understood to accomplish very little in the way of meaningful change on the part of the executive. A coach may also have to deal with other obstacles (eg, resistance) to the psychological alliance they are striving to build, but are incapable of working through in the absence of rigorous clinical training. Berglas (2002) made the distinction between a problem executive who can be trained to function effectively, and an executive with a problem who can best be helped by psychotherapy. While we concur in this distinction, we assert that an executive in the former category may be evidence of systemic problems. That is, an executive requiring special training to function more effectively reveals a failure of the leadership identication and development systems permitting such an individual to attain an executive position before addressing issues now deemed to be worthy of outside intervention (in the form of an executive coach). In a policing context, such as the RCMP, attrition rates are quite low and senior executives have often been groomed for their entire career in one organisation. From a HR perspective,

poorly functioning police leaders should trigger some exploration of the leadership selection and development process, as well as an examination of the culture that tolerates poor leader behaviour. Retaining a coach in such a scenario might be a kneejerk reaction which neglects some of the more difcult systemic work that should occur. On the other hand, an executive coach can provide an outsiders perspective on systemic problems by pointing out, for example, that leadership development may be hindered in police organisations where rapid transfer and promotions necessitating a relocation, are the norm. Another potential pitfall associated with executive coaching concerns the inuence a coach may wield over a senior executive or senior executive team. Berglas (2002) refers to this phenomenon as the trap of inuence, where the coach gains the ear of an inuential senior executive or group of powerful decision-makers. If the power dynamics implicit in the coaching relationship are not managed effectively, executives may consciously or subconsciously become overly reliant on the coach. Hall, Otazo and Hollenbeck (1999) describe how it is lonely at the top, realising that people may not always be candid with senior executives because of power differentials and politics, and that many senior executives look for a source to conde in. The executive coach often fulls this very role and, if not properly managed, can create a rift with other executives who do not buy into the coachs notions. While this hazard of coaching is now beginning to receive its due attention, it is interesting to note an early commentary (eg, Glaser, 1958) that warned of an external coach appearing as the unofcial supermanagement because of the inuence he or she may wield with senior executives. While we concur that this situation could compromise the coaching relationship, we suggest that this form of

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unchecked power and inuence also has the power to create separate factions in the senior executive cadre, and seriously compromise organisational objectives. While coaching may appear to be a quick-x solution for succession planners and training personnel, the shortcomings of coaching, if not well understood and managed, can disrupt the executives functioning and cause chaos in the organisation. A problem executive who has been groomed internally (as is the case in the RCMP) may, indeed, benet maximally from coaching without resulting in problems for the organisation. But the larger issue in such a case concerns the conditions that led to the executives problem.
Recourse to coaching

We have argued that organisations may look to executive coaches as the quick-x solution to more fundamental HR problems, but this argument should not be misconstrued as a blanket denunciation of all executive coaching activities. In the RCMP, for example, individuals who move up the rank structure quickly may be parachuted into a new environment, or are suddenly faced with a different sociopolitical reality and may require coaching to gain the necessary skills to succeed in their new environments. Problems arise when individuals are placed in positions without adequate training or support. An interesting research question in this regard would involve an analysis of the types of issues executive coaches are most commonly called upon to address. The notion that coaches can play a timely role does not take away from our fundamental argument that retaining a coach is an admission that developmental gaps exist in an organisation. In the RCMP, career change appears to be the only constant as the geographic and business line challenges require individuals to be agile in

their physical location and skill set. If a comprehensive developmental toolkit exists and is accessed by individuals, there should be little need for executive coaching because individuals would previously have been identied and developed for the challenges of their new positions. However, recognising that not all police ofcers avail themselves of development opportunities, and that by placing the burden of development solely on HR in an organisation as large and diverse as the RCMP, developmental gaps are almost certain to exist. Nevertheless, these gaps may reect fundamental problems in leadership, mentoring or formal training activities. Throughout this paper, the presence of an executive coach in an organisation has been characterised as a canary in a coalmine: something is awry either with leadership development, mentoring, or training programmes. However, there are situations where an executive coach serves as an expedient. Take, for instance, the common organisational practice of head hunting an executive from a rival rm. The recruited executive may arrive with laudatory credentials and an impressive performance record, but is either a poor t with the new organisation, or whose personal demeanour and interpersonal skills were overlooked and now pose a challenge. In such situations, one cannot claim that intraorganisational decits are responsible for the executives shortcomings and then work to resolve them foundationally. Problems of person-organisation t are a suitable topic for an executive coach, particularly when the coach has credible knowledge and skills to address the particular gap in question. On the other hand, when the executives inadequacy is character-based or interpersonal, then one must question whether the situation demands a coach or a counsellor. In either case, coaching cannot be precluded.

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SUMMARY

There is a large gap between the popularity of executive coaching, indicated by the number of coaches and the amount of organisational dollars spent on coaching, and evidence for its effectiveness, with the former overshadowing the latter by a wide margin. In a recent paper, Hogan and Warrenfeltz (2003, p. 82) stated we are unaware of any systematic evaluations of executive coaching. In raising concerns about the ubiquity of coaching in its variegated forms within contemporary organisational life, the test of its merit as a developmental tool rests with sound empirical study. Specically, research should focus on three broad areas: identifying the beneciary(ies) and the benets of executive coaching: the executive, the organisation, or both; doing cost-benet analyses of executive coaching versus the alternative developmental approaches; exploring the perceptions of employees, peers, customers, and other stakeholders about the use of executive coaches. Research on the benets of coaching tends to employ measures of performance such as structured 360 assessments and unstructured interviews with a range of people with knowledge of the coached executives behaviour (including in some cases, the executives spouse). However, assessing the return on investment to the organisation can be problematic because productivity, employee motivation, and reduction in workplace stress can be triggered or mediated by a wide range of factors, both proximal and distal from the coached executive. The methodological challenges of making the causal link between coaching and subsequent improvement in performance are substantial, though not insurmountable.

Similarly, comparing the efcacy and cost of coaching with other developmental actions such as mentoring, leadership programs, and formal management training procedures can be difcult, but are necessary comparisons if organisations want to make a serious attempt at streamlining development costs. One of the difculties with such research is standardising the approaches so that it makes comparison possible. These are the types of methodological difculties that make outcome research in psychotherapy so challenging; there are few differences in effectiveness between therapeutic models, and change is ascribed to the common factors (eg, Goodstone & Diamante, 1998). An effective cost-benet analysis of coaching would entail utilising the same coach (or coaching approach) with a specic executive issue (eg, interpersonal communication) across a range of executives. The outcomes (eg, 360) could then be compared with a closely matched sample of executives and organisations that have used another development strategy (eg, transformational leadership training). There are many openings for confounding factors to creep into such studies, though this is the kind of activity that is so absent from the coaching literature where rhetoric outstrips research. Finally, the attempt by some to distance coaching from counselling or psychotherapy must be seen as a not-so-subtle manoeuvre to avoid turf battles, and to minimise any potentially negative associations between mental health and executive performance that might be aroused in the minds of shareholders, stakeholders, or clients. Therapists in the boardroom can be linked with bats in the belfry, something too risky for most image-conscious organisations. Research that explores such perceptions would make for an interesting contribution to the coaching literature. In summary, for many CEOs and HR

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professionals grappling with an under-performing or derailed executive retaining an executive coach is an automatic solution. At the very least, such a consultation warrants further thinking about whether the organisation has systemic weaknesses in the areas of leadership development, mentoring, or formal training around management. Deeper, more fundamental diagnostics should be undertaken before glibly anointing an executive coach as the cure for organisational ailments.
NOTES

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not reect those of the RCMP. (1) The use of the pronoun we throughout this paper reects the valuable, but ultimately unidentiable contribution made by the authors graduate students and RCMP sources.
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