How can organizations help their employees cope more effectively with stress, change, and crises? And is organisational coaching an effective tool for developing psychological resilience, or is there still insufficient research evidence to understand how it works?
This study is a scoping review, and the researchers aimed to map the existing research knowledge on coaching for developing resilience in organizations, identify the coaching approaches that have been used, examine the key processes leading to the development of resilience, and evaluate the existing knowledge regarding the effectiveness of these interventions. The review included 17 articles that examined resilience coaching interventions in workplace settings. In addition, the researchers sought to identify gaps in the existing knowledge and propose directions for future research.
The review found that all 17 studies included in the review reported improvements in resilience following participation in coaching, and in seven of them, the coaching group demonstrated greater improvements in resilience compared with the control group. However, the field was found to still be in its early stages, with a relatively limited number of empirical studies directly examining resilience coaching.
The researchers found that there is no single coaching approach that dominates the field. A variety of approaches were used, with the combined cognitive-behavioural and solution-focused framework being the most common among the approaches reported. In addition, several key components were identified in the coaching processes examined: setting clear goals, developing the coachee’s resilience resources, establishing a supportive relationship between the coach and coachee, supporting the coachee’s self-regulation process, and independent work between coaching sessions.
The researchers conclude that organisational coaching is a beneficial intervention for developing resilience and supporting individuals who are coping with challenging situations. The study’s main contribution is that it provides an integrated mapping of the existing research knowledge on resilience coaching in organizations, while identifying the coaching approaches, processes, and key components that contribute to the development of resilience and presenting directions for future research. However, the limited number of studies and the variation between them indicate a need for further empirical research to examine how change occurs within the resilience coaching process and to strengthen the evidence base in this field.
Chicago Citation
Sipondo, Abongile, and Nicky Terblanche. 2024. “Organisational Coaching to Improve Workplace Resilience: A Scoping Review and Agenda for Future Research.” Frontiers in Psychology 15: 1484222.