Abstract
Coaches need to expand their repertoires for developing leaders in turbulent contexts. From the leader-client perspective, this interpretive qualitative study investigated how executive coaching facilitated leaders' identity work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings indicated that leaders faced identity uncertainty in transitioning to virtual leadership - and how coaching supported leaders with their identity work. While the outcomes of the coaching were shifts in leader identity, it seemed that coaches did not work explicitly with an identity lens. This finding suggests identity and identity work be adopted as a theoretical lens to enhance the coaching of leaders in changing contexts.
Keywords
Introduction
In times of increasing global turbulence, executive coaches are required to meet the changing needs of leaders as they adapt to volatility in their organisational contexts (Schermuly, Graßmann, Ackermann & Wegener, 2022). The recent global Covid-19 pandemic catalysed sudden, large-scale organisational changes that leaders had to navigate, with loss of leader identity experienced when transitioning to virtual leadership of remote teams (Terblanche, 2021a). Understanding how executive coaching assisted leaders during the pandemic, from the perspective of leaders who received coaching, can therefore yield insights as to how executive coaches can support leaders’ identity work required in changing organisational contexts.
The onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic was disruptive to businesses (Contreras, Baykal, & Abid, 2020) and pushed them to implement digital transformation swiftly (Ahmad, Alshurideh, Kurdi & Salloum, 2021). While remote working gave some employees greater flexibility and responsibility, conversely, leaders did not enjoy normal control and oversight (Galanti, Guidetti, Mazzei, Zappalà, & Toscano, 2021). Many leaders battled to sustain the productivity and creativity of their teams because of logistical and communication challenges (Kirchner, Ipsen & Hansen, 2021). Consequently, many leaders faced ambiguity in their identity as leaders (Terblanche, 2021a).
A leader identity is a role identity relating to how leaders think of themselves and how others perceive them as leaders in their work context (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). Thus, work-related identity loss or ambiguity can arise because of changes in work affiliations, linkages, and positions (Akkermans, Collings, da Motta Veiga, Post & Seibert, 2021). Leaders might suffer personal doubt or identity uncertainty (Epitropaki, Kark, Mainemelis & Lord, 2017) about themselves and who they are becoming, due to a disruption in their environment (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld, 2005). To resolve their identity uncertainty in changing contexts, leaders need to engage in identity work to adapt their identities (Dutton, Roberts & Bednar, 2010). Such identity work is a complex intra-personal and social process (DeRue & Ashford, 2010), involving activities that individuals engage in within their work contexts to create, repair, maintain and revise their identities (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).
Executive coaching, being a leadership development intervention, is projected to play a meaningful role in clients’ changing contexts by supporting their identity work (Skinner, 2020a). However, while the theoretical lens of leader identity development has been more widely adopted in the leadership development literature and practice (Kragt & Day, 2020), it has not been explicitly used in the coaching profession (Skinner, 2020a; Snape, 2021), with leader identity work outcomes not being focused on in executive coaching meta-studies (Szekely, Whiley, Pontes & McDowall, 2023). Thus, research is required on how identity work is facilitated during executive coaching to encourage the adoption of an identity lens in coaching education and practice (Snape, 2021), which this research study contributes to.
The aim of this research therefore was to understand, from the perspective of leader clients, how executive coaching supported their leader identity work in a disrupted, changing organisational context. Using the Covid-19 pandemic as the context, this study sought to answer the following questions: (1) What identity issues did leaders experience during the pandemic? (2) How did executive coaching support leaders' identity work during the pandemic? and (3) What were the identity work outcomes of executive coaching for leaders during the pandemic?
Literature review
An overview of the key concepts of leader identity and identity work is given, followed by three sections on coaching – executive coaching and leader identity work, coaching outcomes related to leader identity work, and the benefits of coaching to leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Leader identity and identity work
Leader identity is defined as how one thinks of oneself and how others view one as a leader (Haslam, Reicher & Platow, 2020), or as believing in one’s competence to engage in deliberate leadership (London & Sherman, 2021). Leader identity is both an internal and social construct because it is based on the way an individual thinks of themself and how others view them as a leader (Haslam et al., 2020). Having a positive leader identity therefore is about the individual believing in their competence to engage in deliberate leadership and having credibility in the eyes of others (London & Sherman, 2021). The construct of leader identity involves three levels: personal, relational, and communal (Zheng & Muir, 2015). The personal level refers to individual leadership traits and mental frames, while at the relational level, ties with significant stakeholders are built through dyadic and team interactions. At the communal level, the leader’s group or organizational membership is considered (Miscenko & Day, 2016).
Leader identity has been observed to change over time (Miscenko, Guenter & Day, 2017) necessitating that leaders embark on identity work, as a means for adapting (Gjerde & Alvesson, 2020). Leader identity is therefore developed through identity work in the workplace (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). Identity work entails a variety of actions such as generating, presenting, sustaining, constructing, restoring, or updating identities (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Thus, identity work is similarly regarded as a continuous process (Lucas, 2011; Miscenko & Day, 2016) towards achieving a positive identity (Dutton et al., 2010). Such identity work is triggered by identity tensions or identity uncertainty (Epitropaki et al., 2017) experienced due to events such as role changes, conflicts between multiple identities (Ramarajan, 2014), transitions and difficult work situations (Petriglieri, 2015).
During organisational change or transitions, identity work is therefore energised by experienced identity tensions to develop a more positive and agentic leader identity (Dutton et al., 2010). This identity work involves sensemaking (Weick et al., 2005) to develop identity narratives (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010) that will resolve the identity tensions or uncertainty. However, strong negative emotions (Conroy & O’Leary, 2014) and limiting mental frames (Weick et al., 2005) may hinder the quality of a leader’s sensemaking and ability to develop a plausible identity narrative. Therefore, executive coaching is suggested for facilitating leaders' identity work (Skinner (2020b), even though identity theory is still not explicitly included in executive coaching practice in the literature. Hammond, Clapp-Smith and Palanski (2017) propose that coaching can improve sensemaking by revealing and reinterpreting an individual's restrictive viewpoints. Once a leader has a plausible narrative, it fosters experimenting through actions aligned with provisional identities of how to be (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010). The results of their identity work experimentation are monitored by the leader, and through feedback from others, leading to further adaptation of their identity work (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016).
Identity work takes place at the interplay of the individual and the organisational context (Lanka et al., 2020). This means that, while individuals have some authority over the identities they select (Frandsen, 2015), their identity claims are also relationally brokered (Lucas, 2011) and may be restricted or enabled by stakeholders in their social context (Dy, Marlow & Martin, 2017; Lanka Topakas & Patterson, 2020). Through relational processes of assertions and reciprocated grants, the identities of the leader are jointly acknowledged and co-constructed over time (DeRue & Ashford, 2010; Marchiondo, Myers & Kopelman, 2015).
In sum, leader identity work is a complex process, with research required on how identity work is facilitated during executive coaching to encourage the adoption of an identity lens in the coaching profession (Snape, 2021; Szekely et al., 2023). This study adds to the literature, as it focuses on understanding, from the perspective of leader-clients, how coaching supported their leader identity work during the pandemic when they needed to transition swiftly to virtual leadership.
Executive coaching and leader identity work
Effective leadership development is rooted in identity work (Kragt & Day, 2020). Yet, while coaching is promoted to support leader identity work in the leadership development literature (Hammond et al., 2017), the use of leader identity work as a lens is not well-established in coaching literature (Skinner, 2020a; Szekely et al., 2023). Butcher (2012) drew attention to the use of identity in coaching practice, finding that executive coaches acknowledged identity issues were prevalent in coaching, but they perceived identity to be a ‘sub-text’ to their coaching practice. Thus, the coaches seemed to work implicitly with leaders’ identity issues, with no reference to influences from identity theory on their coaching practice. Butcher (2012) therefore suggested research be conducted on the value of including an identity lens explicitly in coaching practice.
More recently, some approaches that are rooted in research have been proposed for including an identity lens in executive coaching practice (Bennett, 2021; Skinner, 2020a, 2020b; Snape, 2021). Although these authors recommend models and guidelines for identity coaching, they do not yet have empirical support for them in coaching practice, except for the application of Skinner’s (2020a) Leader Identity Formation Theory (LIFT) - based on the notion of leader identity forming through a series of stages. Initial research on LIFT (Skinner, 2020b) highlighted that leader identity developed over the life span, due to enablers and derailers encountered in leaders’ contexts, requiring ongoing identity work. Of relevance to the current study’s focus on changing contexts, the coaching approach suggested by Bennett (2021), recommends supporting adaptive and ongoing leader identity work in changing contexts, primarily through facilitating leader clients’ sensemaking - as a core component of identity work. Thus, Szekely et al. (2023) argue that, given the continuous nature of leader identity work, it may be assumed that supporting leaders’ identity work is a key part of executive coaching interventions, albeit implicitly (Butcher, 2012). More research is therefore required to understand how leader identity work is facilitated in coaching, an objective of this research.
Taken together, the above authors (Bennett, 2021; Skinner, 2020a, 2020b; Snape, 2021; Szekely et al., 2023) advocate for the lens of leader identity and identity work to be explicitly adopted in coaching practice. This current research on how coaching supported leader identity work in the changing context of the Covid-19 pandemic will therefore contribute to their argument.
Coaching outcomes related to leader identity work
Several meta-studies have revealed evidence of the effectiveness of coaching. For example, the review by Athanasopoulou and Dopson (2018), one of the most extensive, found three categories of coaching outcomes for leader clients’ personal development, behavioural changes towards others, and improved performance in the leader client’s role (based on outcomes such as improved self-awareness and the development of leadership qualities). However, due to the theoretical lens of leader identity and identity work not being used explicitly in the coaching profession (Skinner 2020a, 2020b), the coaching outcomes identified did not focus on leader identity work outcomes, nor in other coaching review studies, as found by Szekely et al. (2023). However, there is one exception, that being McInerney, Giga, and Morris (2021), who highlighted leadership identity change as an outcome found in three primary qualitative coaching studies.
Szekely et al. (2023) therefore re-analysed the leader-client outcome themes in their meta-analysis of coaching outcome reviews – including using an identity work lens. Their findings identified a category of transforming outcomes related to the transformation of the leader clients’ mindset, theír ability to adapt to change, and their leader role identity. Furthermore, based on analysis of the primary studies emphasised by McInereney, Giga and Morris (2021), the changes in leader role identity were found to be: an internalised leadership identity, the authenticity of identity work, the pivotal moment for the identity transformation, and strengthened leadership presence. Of note, the pivotal transformation moment seemed to align with a perspective transformation. While these findings therefore show some initial support for leader identity work outcomes; more research is clearly required on leader identity work outcomes from executive coaching. An objective of this research study was to articulate the identity work outcomes achieved by leaders from coaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Benefits of coaching to leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic
Some research has indicated how executive coaching supported leaders during the Covid-19 pandemic. Especially at the early stages of the pandemic, coaching was instrumental in providing a safe environment for their clients to reflect on themselves, their people management, and their inventiveness (Jarosz, 2021).
During the pandemic, managers needed assistance on how to think through and address pressing challenges due to the pandemic (Terblanche, 2021a). Coaches acted as thinking partners and sounding boards for their clients, assisting them in solving difficult challenges (Jarosz, 2021). While many managers were simply attempting to get by during the early phases of the pandemic, several coaches assisted their clients in seeing the possibilities that the pandemic could present (Terblanche, 2021a). However, while Terblanche (2021a) found that executive coaches observed that leaders experienced a loss of their identity in transitioning to remote work, the findings did not highlight how the coaches supported leaders’ identity work within the context of the pandemic – the key focus of the current study.
Method
This exploratory research focused on the lived experiences and perceptions of senior leaders that received executive coaching to explore the role of executive coaching in facilitating leaders’ identity development during the Covid-19 pandemic. An interpretive qualitative research approach was therefore employed to explore how these leaders adapted their leader identity during the pandemic - and what role coaching played in facilitating the process from their first-hand perspective (Gephart, 2018). The study falls within an interpretivism paradigm (Creswell, 2007), meaning that the researcher interprets the participants’ perspectives of the phenomenon being studied, yet stays close to the participants’ experiences.
Sample
Senior leaders were recruited from two South African financial services organisations where the primary researcher had completed coaching assignments, and therefore gained access via the human resources persons responsible for executive coaching. Five participants were targeted from each organisation. As purposive sampling was adopted, two inclusion criteria were adopted (Stutterheim & Ratcliffe, 2021). Firstly, senior leaders were selected as they have a broad level of responsibility dealing with complexity and multiple stakeholders. Secondly, the leaders should have received a minimum of six coaching sessions during the pandemic from executive coaches on the two organisations’ coaching panels - from March 2020 to early 2021, the period in which the pandemic commenced and triggered organisational changes. Thus, leaders would have had to adapt their leadership approaches (Kaiser, 2020), fostering their leader identity work. Leaders would most likely have made use of the coaching they received to deal with their challenges; and therefore, be able to share their experiences on how coaching assisted them with identity work during this period. To avoid conflict of interest, individuals who had received coaching from the researcher, who were known to the researcher; or did not meet the inclusion criteria outlined above, were excluded from the study.
A sample of eight participants was realised, with four participants from each organisation (see Table 1). Since qualitative research uses small sample sizes (Boddy, 2016), this sample size was deemed suitable for this exploratory research.
Realised sample
The participants met the criteria of being in senior leadership positions reflecting a diversity of experience across different business operations, with only two having similar positions as regional sales managers, both in organisation R1. Furthermore, the leaders had at least six years of leadership experience, and they all had received at least six coaching sessions over the preferred pandemic period. Although gender was not part of the selection criteria, all participants were male except for one.
Data collection and analysis
An interview guide was used to collect rich data during semi-structured interviews (Magaldi & Berler, 2020). The interview guide questions focused first on asking participants about their changing contexts and leadership challenges due to the pandemic. Then the concepts of leader identity and identity issues were explained to participants – after which they were asked: how was your sense of leader identity questioned by yourself when facing these challenges? Thereafter, participants were asked how the coaching supported them with the leader identity issues they experienced - and lastly, how their leader identity shifted due to the coaching received (that is, to identify their identity work outcomes). The interview guide and method were pre-tested with a leader not included in the sample.
Before conducting interviews, ethical clearance was obtained from Stellenbosch University. Voluntary informed consent was obtained from all participants before interviews, which lasted approximately 60 minutes. Interviews were conducted digitally by the researcher through Zoom or Microsoft Teams platforms and audio recorded, with participants’ permission, and thereafter transcribed using NVivo, a software program that generates transcripts from audio recordings (Zamawe, 2016). The interview transcripts were checked, and names of participants were replaced with codes R1 to R8 to ensure anonymity, before sending to the participants to verify their accuracy.
Thematic analysis, the process of identifying, interpreting, and extracting meaningful patterns from data (Braun & Clarke 2012) was applied. Because of its expediency in searching through qualitative data sets, such as a series of interview transcripts, for recurring patterns of meaning, known as themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006), it was found to be a suitable approach for this interpretive qualitative study. The six steps suggested by Braun and Clarke (2012) were used to guide the process. After meaningful portions of data were identified and assigned initial codes using NVivo, the researcher then worked manually with these codes, to organise them into initial themes for each research question. These initial themes were further clustered into meaningful final themes. These themes were then defined and named to align with both the data supporting the themes, and the concepts used in leader identity and identity work. Hence, the thematic analysis was inductive because it was rooted in the participants' experiences and perspectives, and it was deductive as it involved the researcher’s interpretations informed by a leader identity and identity work theoretical lens (Braun & Clarke 2012).
Findings and Discussion
The findings are presented as key themes for each research question (see Table 2), which were: (1) What identity issues did leaders experience during the pandemic? (2) How did executive coaching support leaders' identity work during the pandemic? and (3) What were the identity work outcomes of executive coaching for leaders during the pandemic? These themes are supported by participant quotes and discussed in relation to the literature.
Summary of themes showing prevalence
Leadership identity issues experienced
The leaders had to transition swiftly to virtual leadership of remote teams during the pandemic. The leaders in the study experienced several challenges, concurring with Kirchner et al. (2021) and Terblanche (2021a), who found that leaders faced the battle of sustaining their team’s productivity in the face of logistical challenges, employee wellbeing issues, and the complexity of how to relate to remote team members. This transition to virtual leadership therefore triggered two types of leader identity issues - leader uncertainty and leader self-doubt.
Leader uncertainty
It was clear that all leaders faced personal uncertainty in their role as leaders, given the sudden transition to virtual leadership. The participants’ sense of leader uncertainty was conveyed in not being sure what to do or how to be as virtual leaders, as captured by participants R4, R, R8 and R1:
“I was used to going to the office. It was that shock of saying; how do I operate from home [as a manager]?” (R4).
“I mean we also had to deal with a situation [of being a remote leader] that I had not dealt with before” (R7).
“I don’t know how to lead … I had to figure things out” (R8)
“For the first time, to manage people remotely… and you do not know how” (R1)
This theme aligns with the construct of leader identity uncertainty, which refers to leaders feeling uncertain or unclear about their leader identity (Lanka et al., 2020). Bennett (2021) also found that under conditions of organisational change or transitions, leaders experienced being betwixt and between their previous way of being and the new way of being - as a leader.
Self-doubt
In becoming virtual leaders of remote teams, several participants experienced doubt in their own capabilities. For example, R1 and R3 highlighted their self-doubts about being able to adapt themselves as leaders:
“Now, all of a sudden you’re on your own, you must learn how to adapt …” (R1)
“You bring interventions to try and make things better…and hence you feel like what more can you do…, it brings that doubt … am I the right person for this job, am I tackling this right? (R3)
While other leaders, such as R8 and R5, spoke about doubting their capabilities to deal with their employees’ wellbeing and their employees’ development, as follows:
“I couldn’t give anybody a hug. I couldn’t be human …so I really struggled because I felt very useless… like I was not fulfilling my leadership role …for my people”. (R8)
“I experienced difficulty in mentoring and development of the [remote] team members” (R5)
In times of crisis, such as the pandemic, anxiety and doubt are bound to creep in for individuals (Mok, Ku, Yuda, 2021). Thus, this finding aligns with Lanka et al. (2020) who highlighted that when leaders experience leader uncertainty, they tend to question their capabilities and their ability to adapt in dealing with the challenges presented by the situation.
How coaching supported leaders’ identity work
The leaders’ identity issues, due to the onset of the pandemic and transition to virtual leadership, would have triggered identity work by the leaders to resolve their identity issues or uncertainty. The leaders received executive coaching during the pandemic, which could have facilitated their leader identity work. The findings suggest that the coaching did support them with their identity work - in three key ways: increasing their self-awareness as a leader, helping them gain different perspectives of how to be as a virtual leader, and facilitating their stakeholder engagement in the changing context. The fourth theme related to the finding that the executive coaches seemed to work more implicitly with the construct of leader identity in supporting the leaders’ identity work.
Increasing self-awareness as a leader
The findings indicate that the coaching supported the leaders’ identity work by developing their self-awareness, that is, “…helping me to understand ‘where I am’- so that I can actually be more effective as a leader” (R1). Similarly, R2 gained a better understanding of their “blind spots, areas where I am unconsciously incompetent”, while R7 stated that “the coach gave me [assessment] feedback” helping the leader to reflect on areas requiring development.
These findings seem to confirm the notion that executive coaching focuses on increasing self-awareness to enhance leadership effectiveness (De Haan, 2019). Improving self-awareness is important in leader identity work, as a leader's identity is based on how leaders see themselves - and how others perceive them as leaders in their work context (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). The findings suggest that the coaching increased the leaders’ self-awareness (Wallace et al., 2021) and highlighted blind spots to focus on for becoming effective virtual leaders. For example, R4 shared how, during coaching, self-awareness was increased about “being more cerebral, …and not always present and feeling the emotion… so we agreed I should work on this, because it will help me to connect with the team”.
Gaining different perspectives of how to be as a virtual leader
The findings indicate that the coaching helped the leaders to gain different perspectives regarding their changing leader role identity in transitioning to virtual leadership. This theme was conveyed by R2 explaining that “you get a different perspective [as a leader] … that’s where it was useful for me”.
More specifically, the coaching also supported leaders to reflect on how they were working and thinking in their changing leadership roles. For instance, R6 used the coaching “to sense check what my thinking is and … to make sure that, am I doing the right thing?”. The coaching enabled participants to get a different perspective on how to be as a virtual leader in their changing context. For example: the coach challenged R1 “you still need to hold people accountable, you still need to do what you used to do, but maybe this time you need to do it differently?”; and for R2, the coaching focused on “...how I show up as a leader … to be more empathetic, because empathy is not something that you can tell people; people sense it”. Similarly, the coaching helped R8 realise “the need to lead by example, and to be more vulnerable - as previously, we thought being vulnerable was a bad thing”.
The above excerpts reflect how the coaching seemed to assist these leaders with their sensemaking of their uncertain contexts, through reframing their perspectives (Vough, Caza & Maitlis, 2020), towards building their personal narratives of who they need to be or become as virtual leaders (Christianson & Barton, 2021). Developing a leader narrative therefore became a springboard for their identity work actions, including experimentation in their work context (Weick et al., 2005). Such experimentation with their leadership approach and who they were becoming as virtual leaders was referred to by some participants. For example, R2 spoke about “being aware [of the need to be empathetic], and then working on that aspect”; and then highlighted receiving feedback from the team about the changes made - “I did get some feedback that… people felt that … there was empathising from my side”. Thus, such validation from others in the leader’s work context aligns with leader identity being shaped by how others perceive the leader’s changes made (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016).
Facilitating stakeholder engagement in the changing context
The findings indicate that coaching assisted leaders in dealing with key stakeholders within their changing organisational context of the pandemic - as part of their identity work. In some instances, coaching helped the leaders to “understand the importance of their stakeholders’ expectations” (R7), to adopt a “different way of engaging them” (R5), or to “become more deliberate” in terms of meeting with them (R3). Building relationships with key stakeholders, as the participants did, forms the basis of the relational component of a leader identity (Zheng & Muir, 2015). Because leaders’ identity work is also a social process in their work context (DeRue & Ashford, 2010), this means that it is also relationally brokered (Lucas, 2011) and may be restricted or enabled by stakeholders in their context (Lanka et al., 2020). Thus, working on stakeholder relationships is key for leaders’ identity work when adapting to changing contexts (Bennett, 2021).
For some leaders, the coaching helped them to interact with more senior leaders, as key stakeholders, in their work context. R5 spoke about how the coaching focused on “engaging with executive stakeholders …. on how my behaviour had to evolve”. For R4, coaching assisted with “fine tuning” of “my branding… with my peers - and my seniors”. Of note, such “branding” clearly relates to identity work, in terms of building leaders’ credibility within the organisation, thus strengthening their leader identity (Dutton et al., 2010) – in how they are perceived by key stakeholders in their context.
Coaches worked implicitly with leader identity
As coaches need to support leaders’ adaptive identity development in changing and uncertain contexts (Dutton et al., 2010), some authors (Skinner, 2020a; Snape, 2021) have proposed that a leader identity lens be adopted more explicitly in executive coaching. The participants were therefore asked in their interviews, whether their coach had referred to the phrase ‘leader identity’ during coaching - to gauge whether their coaches worked with ‘identity’ explicitly or not. In most cases, the leaders recalled that their coaches referred to their ‘leadership approach or style’, as opposed to leader identity. For example, R5 responded “Probably style and approach mostly”, and R3 said “…it came up a lot as leadership approach or style”.
Interestingly, while R2 did not perceive the coach to talk about leader identity, this leader noted that part of the coaching did focus on “…leadership. And then, we talked about moving from… a certain way of doing things to another way”, which relates to leader identity work. Notably, one participant, R1, was clear that the coach did talk about leader identity; yet this appeared to be in relation to feedback from the coach based on a personality profile, given that R1 said: “So, basically the feedback that I got was, I'm a driver and I get results through people”.
Therefore, from the perspective of the leader clients, these findings suggest that their coaches seemed to work more implicitly with the construct of leader identity when coaching. The findings therefore concur with Butcher (2012) that, while executive coaches agreed that identity issues came up often during coaching, they saw identity as a ‘sub-text’ to their coaching work. Given that leader identity work is continuous in changing contexts, it therefore seemed that the coaches were supporting the leaders’ identity work that had been triggered by the pandemic and the transition to virtual leadership (Szekely et al., 2023), albeit not explicitly through the theory of leader identity work.
Identity work outcomes of coaching for leaders
The findings suggested that an outcome of the coaching they received was a shift in their leader identity, manifesting in two ways: a stronger sense of leader identity, and being more people-centric.
Stronger sense of leader identity
While the participants did not use the term ‘leader identity’, a shift that they made in their leadership approach, supported by the coaching they received, aligned with a stronger sense of leader identity attained in their virtual leadership role. This stronger sense of identity aligns with the notion of developing a more positive sense of identity, which is a key motive for identity work when experiencing identity uncertainty (Dutton et al., 2010). The leaders’ stronger sense of their leader identities was reflected in an increased sense of confidence and being more empowered as a virtual leader, reflecting leadership presence (Szekely et al.,2023). For example, R3 indicated that coaching assisted with being “more effective as a leader and … finding my voice”, and R5 said that “as a leader, it’s important how you show up. …it [coaching] helped me to be more effective”. Two other leaders emphasised their increased empowerment as virtual leaders:
“I felt more empowered as a leader” (R2).
“It’s definitely empowered me [as a leader] to navigate these challenging times” (R7).
In the case of the pandemic, the major issue was loss of face-to-face connection when becoming virtual leaders of remote teams (Terblanche, 2021a). As most leaders experienced identity uncertainty, these findings therefore demonstrate that the coaching played a role in supporting the leaders’ identity work to resolve their identity uncertainty; that is, by revising their leadership approach as ‘virtual leaders’, the leaders renewed their leader identity to be more effective in the changed business context (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).
Being people-centric
The findings indicated that leaders developed a people-centric leadership approach facilitated by the coaching they received. Two leaders explained how they adopted a coaching leadership style with their team members, due to observing and learning from their coaches’ approach (during their coaching), as follows:
“from observing the coach …to be able to coach other people …staff, direct reports” (R2).
“…from the coaching… was to help me to become a better coach… for coaching people” (R4).
This finding, of learning from the coach as a role model, concurs with Lanka et al. (2020) on the value of role models in leader identity work.
Participants also highlighted other ways in which their leadership approach became more people-centric. R1 spoke about consciously shifting from being more results-orientated to “appreciating… and investing more in people”, and R4 focused on increasing an understanding of “people’s dynamics … to lead them better”, using an approach that is “not one size fits all”. Similarly, R6 became more “present” to team members to “connect with the team”, and R7 became “more collaborative” with employees.
The coaching in the current study therefore seemed to assist leaders to become more people-centric, by adopting a mindset and approach to deal with the virtual leadership challenges, particularly in the context of the pandemic and its effect on peoples’ wellbeing (Terblanche, 2021a). Becoming more people-centric, appeared to be a perspective transformation (Szekely et al., 2023), adding to the shift experienced in their leader identity (Skinner, 2020b). Of interest, while the coaching clearly added value in supporting these leaders to become more people-centric, they also shared that their organisational cultures and executive leadership had supported this shift - due to the focus on wellness or wellbeing of employees during the pandemic. This organisational support was therefore an enabler to the leaders’ identity work (Lanka et al., 2020), while also being facilitated by their coaching. It begs the question as to whether the shift to a people-centric approach may have been more difficult in a different context, as the organisational context may hinder or support coaching effectiveness (Athanasopouloua & Dopson, 2018).
Implications
Coaches are expected to meet the changing needs of leaders in times of increasing volatility in organisations (Schermuly et al., 2021). The purpose of this research was to explore, from the perspective of leader clients, how executive coaching supported their leader identity work in a disrupted organisational context, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings highlighted how coaches facilitated the leaders’ identity work triggered by their identity uncertainty or self-doubt in a changing context. How the coaching seemed to do this, was through: (1) helping the leaders to increase their self-awareness as leaders (Ashforth & Schinoff, 2016); (2) facilitating their sensemaking to adopt new perspectives on how to be as virtual leaders (Vough et al., 2020) which fostered experimentation to adapt (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010); and (3) building their relationships with stakeholders in their changing context (Zheng & Muir, 2015). This study therefore extends coaching practice by suggesting how executive coaching can support leaders with their identity work towards adapting their leader identities in contexts of change or transitions.
While this study found that the coaches supported the leaders’ identity work in their changing context, it seemed that it was not through explicitly adopting a leader identity lens in their practice – given that their leader clients did not remember an explicit reference to “leader identity’ during their coaching. Therefore, if coaches were to explicitly use a leader identity and identity work lens in facilitating leader identity work, this would most likely add even more value to their leader clients, particularly in changing contexts when leaders need to adapt their identities, concurring with Skinner (2020a). Interestingly, Terblanche (2021b) found that transitioning leaders, after receiving transition coaching, valued their coaches’ sharing of theories and frameworks relevant to the challenges they faced in their changing contexts. Such ‘seeding’ of theoretical frameworks by coaches can facilitate client learning and meaning (Wood, 2015). Thus, coaches could use an identity and identity work theoretical lens explicitly to support leader identity work in their coaching practice - and to provide a meaningful framework for leaders being coached in changing contexts or transitions. This study therefore adds to those authors (Skinner, 2020a, 2020b, Snape, 2021) advocating for the explicit use of leader identity and identity work as a theoretical lens in executive coaching, and to also include this lens in the education curricula for developing coaches.
This study also contributes to the coaching outcomes literature by articulating leader identity work outcomes achieved from executive coaching, as perceived by the leader clients. The leaders identified shifts they made in their leader identity as virtual leaders – achieving a stronger sense of leader identity and becoming more people-centric. While outcomes, such as increased confidence (Athanasopoulou & Dopson, 2018), which relate to aspects of leader identity have been noted, there is a paucity of literature on leader identity work outcomes (Szekely et al., 2023), attesting to the lens of identity and identity work not being explicitly used in the coaching profession.
Limitations and further research
The research aimed to interview ten participants but an overall sample of eight was realised. As such, a larger sample might paint a different picture. Furthermore, although gender was not an inclusion criterion, seven of the eight leaders were male, which does not represent the perspective of a diverse sample, particularly as female leaders may have had different leadership challenges and identity issues during the pandemic. Future similar research could therefore include more female leaders and be extended across different sectors.
In addition, this study only considered the perspective of the leaders who were coached during the pandemic – and not the coaches. Future research is recommended to explore how executive coaches support leaders’ identity work that is energised in changing contexts, including understanding whether they are informed by a theoretical lens of leader identity or not, and what training on identity theory for coaching practice would be beneficial. To advocate for the adoption of an identity lens in executive coaching, further research is required to demonstrate the efficacy of using a more explicit leader identity approach in coaching, through action research involving coaches who are coaching leaders in a changing organisational context or going through a leadership transition.
Conclusion
This study explored the role of executive coaching in supporting leaders’ identity work, from the perspective of leader clients who received coaching during the pandemic - a time of disruptive organisational change when leaders transitioned to virtual leadership. The leaders experienced issues of identity, being identity uncertainty and self-doubt, which triggered their identity work. The coaching therefore supported the leaders’ identity work through assisting them to increase their self-awareness as a leader, gaining different perspectives of how to be as a virtual leader, and facilitating more effective engagement with stakeholders in their changing context. The leader identity shift, being the primary outcome of the coaching, manifested in strengthening their sense of leader identity as virtual leaders and in becoming more people-centric. From the perspective of the leaders that received coaching, it was concluded in line with what Butcher (2012) discovered, that the coaches seemed to work more implicitly with leader identity. Nonetheless, this study indicated that the leaders’ identity work for adapting and becoming effective virtual leaders was supported by the coaching that the leaders received during the pandemic.