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This paper aims to identify the key competencies managerial coaches have and examine the significant competencies that affect coaching effectiveness in the Malaysian telecommunications industry.

The unit of analysis was individual managerial coaches who were working in the Malaysian telecommunications industry. Among the 300 questionnaires distributed, a total of 140 were obtained and deemed sufficiently complete to be useable. Descriptive and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the data.

The results indicated that leadership development is the most important function of managerial coaching, followed by communication. In addition, co-creating the relationship and effective communication are the critical categories of competencies for managerial coaching. Analysis from the regression highlighted that effective communication is the influencing factor on the coaching effectiveness, followed by facilitating learning, and results. The findings also shown that all the core competencies in setting foundation are the significant influencing factors.

Analyses relied on cross-sectional data and limits the generalizability of findings to other industries. The utilization of self-reported perceptual data may suffer from response bias.

This paper highlights personal or professional coaching characteristics that might affect managerial leadership development. It also provides a list of important criteria for developing effective managerial coaching to assist Malaysian managerial coaches to build a world class workforce.

Using International Coach Foundation competency model, this study provides an insight on the important criteria to develop and select coaching managers effectively which ultimately lead to performance improvement in the organization.

The concept of managers assuming developmental roles such as coaches and learning facilitators has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, despite the growing body of expert opinion that suggests that coaching is an essential core activity of everyday management and leadership, the literature base remains largely atheoretical and devoid of empirical research. While there is some consensus about what effective coaching looks like, little if any empirical research has examined ineffective coaching behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to compare the empirical findings from three separately conducted studies to derive a comprehensive understanding of the ineffective behaviours associated with managerial coaching.

The current study adopted a cross‐national “etic” methodology based on the empirical findings generated by three previously conducted and purposefully selected “emic” studies. Drawing on Berry's and Lyons and Chryssochoous' “emic‐etic” approach and cross‐cultural comparisons, the researchers employed Guba and Lincoln's file card approach to analyze and compare the three behavioral datasets of the previously conducted studies.

The findings from this cross‐national comparative “etic” study revealed that the vast majority of ineffective coaching behaviours previously identified in the emic studies were held in common with each other. The predominant ineffective behaviours included using an autocratic, directive, controlling or dictatorial style, ineffective communication and dissemination of information, and inappropriate behaviours and approaches to working with employees. Of the 17 ineffective behaviours that were compared only three were not held in common.

Limitations associated with this cross‐national study included minor variations in the use of data collection approaches and samples of managers in the previously conducted emic studies.

The ineffective managerial coaching behaviours derived from the cross‐national comparisons can be integrated as diagnostic tools into coaching training programmes and management and leadership development programmes to improve the practice of managerial coaching. They can also be used to increase managers' awareness of the behaviours that impede their coaching interventions with their respective employees.

The literature base on coaching in general and managerial coaching in particular has been criticized for not being research‐informed and evidence‐based, but rather predominantly practice‐driven and guru‐led. The findings from the current cross‐national etic study not only add to a sparse base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also illuminate an underdeveloped area, namely that of ineffective managerial coaching practice. Furthermore, the findings provide a foundation on which to compare and contrast future empirical research that may be conducted on managerial coaching behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of team and individual reflexivity in linking managerial coaching with individual learning.

Data obtained from 506 individuals in 98 engineering teams in the automobile and electronic industries were used to investigate specific hypotheses.

The results indicated that managerial coaching directly influenced team learning and individual learning, team reflexivity acted as substantial mediator for the relationship between managerial coaching and team learning, as well as the relationship between managerial coaching and individual reflexivity and team reflexivity and individual reflexivity co-acted each other as mediators for the relationship between managerial coaching and individual learning.

As the subjects of this study were engineering teams in which tasks are interdependent, there is a possibility that the task trait may have affected the results.

Managers should recognize the importance of collectively reflective activities in promoting both individual and team learning. Facilitating coaching skills are indispensable to enhance reflexivity within teams.

This study extends prior research by demonstrating the mediating role of team and individual reflexivity as mediators in linking managerial coaching to team and individual learning, which has never been investigated in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this Special Issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that “leaders mentor and coach those they lead” is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ©) that is most highly correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that “future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization.” In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed.

This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ© instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts.

Existing literature suggests that “provide strategic leadership for learning”, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, “leaders who mentor and coach” has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning.

The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to test the influence of managerial coaching on frontline employee customer orientation, sales orientation and performance in a Chinese context. Further to this first goal, the authors also aim to compare these results with those obtained with a sample of Canadian bank employees in order to understand to what extent differences between Eastern and Western cultures affect business practices and employee responses in both environments.

This paper replicates a study from 2014 that used a sample of Canadian financial advisors to test the impact of managerial coaching on customer orientation, sales orientation and performance. In this new study, 185 frontline employees from a large insurance company in Chongqing (China) answered a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in Mandarin providing information about the coaching received from their managers, their own customer and sales orientation, as well as performance. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling in AMOS as well as multigroup confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate cross-cultural differences.

The authors found that for the Chinese respondents managerial coaching is positively related to employee performance both directly and through the mediation effect of customer orientation. The authors found no support for the mediation of sales orientation between coaching and performance. These results suggest that managerial coaching might be a good strategy to promote relational behaviors in frontline employees, but not to reduce manipulative behaviors. The authors also found that these results are statistically equivalent for Chinese and Canadian respondents, suggesting that cultural differences are less prevalent than expected in this business sector.

The study makes several contributions to research. First, it suggests that managerial coaching can help employees develop their customer orientation–a central construct for commercial organizations working under a relational marketing approach. Second, it presents one of the first studies that evaluate the efficiency of managerial coaching in an Eastern country. And finally, results underline the equivalence of results for Eastern (China) and Western (Canada) respondents suggesting that in a global environment (like the financial industry) the business logic guiding the development of good customer relationships and employee customer-oriented behaviors prevails over potential cultural differences and makes leader and employee behaviors more similar and comparable across different regions in the world.

First, the use of managerial coaching seems to increase frontline employee relational behaviors, like customer orientation. Accordingly, managerial coaching seems to be a link that can help financial institutions bridge the formulation of a marketing relational strategy in the boardroom and the implementation of such a strategy at the customer interface between frontline employees and customers. Second, given the equivalence of results between the Canadian and the Chinese sample, it seems that the similarities between business models and business logics within the financial services sector are more important—and supersede—the potential cross-cultural differences between Eastern and Western countries.

The study makes a contribution to the limited literature on the use of managerial coaching in financial institutions to increase frontline employee relational behaviors. At the same time, it presents one of the few cross-cultural studies comparing results obtained from Chinese and Canadian respondents.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of managerial coaching, as well as interactive and diagnostic uses of management control systems (MCS), on reflection and critical reflection, which are important for team learning.

Data were collected using a questionnaire survey. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to test hypotheses using data from 235 employees in 50 teams from a Japanese automotive supplier.

The results indicated that: MCS used interactively have a positive influence on critical reflection in teams; MCS used diagnostically have no significant effect on reflection or critical reflection in teams; and managerial coaching has a positive influence on team reflection.

These findings suggest that the interactive use of MCS should be combined with managerial coaching in promoting reflection and critical reflection within teams. Because this study used data from employees of a Japanese automotive supplier, the results may have been influenced by the Japanese management style.

Organizations need to implement interactive MCS at the team level, while coaching programs should be provided for managers to enhance team learning.

This study extends the existing literature by examining the effect of MCS at the team level, and identifying that managerial coaching plays a complementary role, supporting the interactive use of MCS in promoting reflection within a team.

The impact of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance has received initial support in literature in recent years. However, no studies have explored if this impact should vary according to the career stage that the employee is in. If an interaction effect exists, then managers should expect different results when coaching people in different stages of their careers. Otherwise, all employees (independently of their career stage) can benefit from the positive impact of coaching and, thus, the manager can expect a continuous positive outcome on employee performance throughout their careers. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderation effect of an employee’s career stage on the relationship between managerial coaching and performance.

A sample of 318 financial advisors from two Canadian banks was used to collect data on the amount, and quality, of managerial coaching received by the employees, as well as their performance. multigroup confirmatory factor analysis ran in AMOS was used to test the moderation effect of experience.

Results confirmed the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee behavioral and sales performance, but no moderation effect was found. The measuring and causal models showed invariance for employees in their early (one to seven years of selling experience), middle (8-15 years), and late (more than 15 years) career stages, suggesting that managerial coaching will make a consistent contribution to performance throughout all the stages of the employee’s career.

The study makes two main contributions to the scientific literature. First, it offers an original study examining the effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector. Second, it examines the role of selling experience as a moderator in coaching processes, thus contributing to the limited literature on career stages.

The study suggests that managers should equally devote their coaching efforts to all employees, independently of their selling experience. Contrary to the belief that rookies will benefit more from coaching, and that “you cannot teach an old dog new tricks,” results suggest that managerial coaching makes a continuous contribution to performance throughout all the stages of an employee’s career.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the moderation effect of selling experience on coaching consequences, and one of the few to present evidence of the positive effect of managerial coaching on frontline employee performance in the banking sector.

This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how managers' coaching skills can affect individual performance through the mediating role of affective commitment.

The sample included 198 employees from diverse organizations. Based on an online survey, respondents assessed their managers' coaching skills and reported their own individual performance and affective commitment to their organization.

The findings show that managers' coaching skills have a positive impact on individual performance and affective commitment, with the latter mediating the relationship between the first two variables.

Additional studies with larger samples are needed to understand more fully not only the impact of managers' coaching skills on individual performance but also other psychosocial variables affecting that relationship.

Organizations can increase employees' affective commitment and individual performance by encouraging managers to integrate more coaching skills into their leadership styles.

This study is the first to integrate managers' coaching skills, affective commitment and individual performance into a single research model, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

The present study aims to conduct a critical review of an existing set of practices within the Maltese public sector.

This study is based on interpretivism (people-centred approach) embedded in a pragmatic research paradigm (the use of mixed methods).

Misconceptions about the role and practice of executive coaching in Malta relates to the similar roles ascribed to mentoring, supervision, therapy, consultation, coaching, audit and watchdog under the misnomer of “coaching”.

The main contribution of this research is to the community of professional practitioners as well as to the Maltese central government to improve managerial effectiveness in the Maltese public sector with several endorsed policy-level recommendations presented in the study.

The results suggest a restructuring of a well-defined, structures, systems and dynamics within the Maltese public administration, the ability by senior management including senior public officers (SPOs) to recognise high-potential talents, the need to expand leadership capacity, the establishment of a professional coaching body and a national coaching network framework.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the role and impact of executive coaching in the Maltese public sector using quantitative and qualitative empirical data.

To examine warehouse worker development associated with managerial coaching in the logistics industry.

Examine the efficacy of this developmental approach in a logistics context, a survey method was used to provide an overview of supervisors' coaching behavior at 18 distribution centers in the United States. Warehouse workers answered questions about their interactions with their supervisors and their own job satisfaction while supervisors answered questions pertaining to the job‐related performance of warehouse workers for whom they were directly responsible.

The study findings indicate that warehouse workers at these distribution centers encounter low levels of supervisory coaching behavior. However, despite these low levels, significant positive associations were found between supervisory coaching behavior, warehouse worker job satisfaction and supervisors' perceptions of their subordinates' job‐related performance.

The findings are based on the perceptions of respondents at the specific distribution centers in our study and therefore should not be interpreted as being generalizable. However, we hope that they will stimulate further empirical research on the growth, development and retention of front‐line logistics workers – an important, but relatively under‐researched, area of supply chain management.

The logistics industry is becoming progressively more service‐oriented and technologically‐driven and greater front‐line worker competence in these areas will be required for many firms to survive.

As the greatest aggregation of labor in the supply chain is in distribution center operations, our findings may encourage logistics organizations to evaluate the feasibility of adopting more people‐oriented supervisory approaches like coaching that focus on personnel development and the provision of more intrinsically‐rewarding work environments.