Does coaching create a virtuous cycle of positive behavior change? For most of us, this concept makes sense because it fits with our own experience of learning and growing. We know that meaningful relationships and experiences shape who we are and how we show up in the world. But how exactly does one leader’s positive growth impact those around them?
Until now, there’s not been much more than anecdotal evidence to substantiate this notion that coaching’s benefits extend beyond the coached manager alone. At last, we have some data to indicate what we used to assume was the case—that if a manager’s capabilities get extended and they get the right constructive feedback and testing, it’s not just these individuals that benefit long-term, their direct reports do, too.
If your manager gets better at communication, then so do you.
To illustrate what I mean here, let’s take a leader at a major U.S. organization. On the edge of burnout, coaching was introduced to this individual by concerned and supportive senior management. Her coach asked some big questions about values and alignment. This helped the individual see that their core values centered on wanting to help, support, and positively impact the team around them.
That insight eventually led this leader to flip their whole management style from How can I always guide my direct reports? to How can I foster deeper connections with the people who work for me? As a direct result of this intervention, this leader was leading with intimacy rather than defaulting to her old-style declarations of expertise (“I am the expert here”). As a result, she stayed present, and actively listened to her reports with curiosity. These coaching-inspired changes to her mindset and communication revitalized her workplace experience.
As a result, this leader started getting better feedback from her managers. This led to deeper and more trusting relationships with them and greater team engagement overall. Her reports realized they were “seen,” heard, valued, and recognized. In turn, they became more confident, sharing questions or ideas that made everyone’s workday better and even advanced the organization’s wider goals. A virtuous cycle emerged.
We have always assumed that coaching has these cascading impacts, and recent research carried out by Torch has solidified our understanding of its effectiveness. In a study involving 85 American workers whose managers had gone through coaching, Torch sought insights into their own coaching experiences by asking, “What changes did you observe and encounter after your manager received leadership assistance?”
The research yielded resounding confirmation—94% of employees observed positive transformations in their coached managers, particularly strengthened communication. Of the ten most commonly cited improvements, six centered on enhanced communicative abilities.
The benefits cascade further still—an equally high number, 91%, report positive improvements in their own skills, mindsets, and work experience as a result of their manager being coached. Just over half (51%) shared that their manager has helped them to learn continuously, in some cases by encouraging a growth mindset. 67% of respondents agreed they’re more likely to seek out opportunities to develop new skills, 61% of respondents reported that they are now more likely to see mistakes or failures as opportunities for growth, and more than 2 in 3 said they’d also strengthened their sense of self-efficacy—that’s to say, the belief in one’s ability to accomplish a task, based on their perception of their competence and effectiveness.
Strategies to harness the Ripple Effect
This is partly explained by a basic psychological process called “emotional contagion,” where emotions, whether positive or negative, spread among people. With the confirmation that this phenomenon is indeed real, there is now an opportunity to implement specific and meaningful changes.
The data suggests that the longer a manager spends in coaching, the stronger The Coaching Ripple Effect is on their direct reports. Specifically, that coaching for more than 7 months has the most significant impact on behavior change. This informs the tempting “drop-in” coaching model, in which managers can “drop in” and ask questions to coaches as things pop up. While this model may be helpful in solving one particular issue, it does not lead to sustainable behavior change.
The findings that retention, promotion, and performance of direct reports are the measures most likely to be positively influenced by The Coaching Ripple Effect is also noteworthy. This insight could provide the framework for some KPI setting in your own coaching initiative, especially in the current very competitive hiring market.
It’s also striking that our evidence points to The Coaching Ripple Effect working best when coaching happens in environments whose senior leaders are committed to building a supportive culture that rewards positive leadership behaviors such as active listening, asking questions, promoting inclusivity, and a stress on encouraging the giving of actionable, but also empathetic, feedback.
So, our initial intuition on this was right. Coaching one person leads to benefits to many. The opportunity now is to leverage that conclusion into positive HR-led change.
Amy Lavoie, Chief People Officer at coaching platform leader Torch.io. For more on this topic, please the full Coaching Ripple Effect Research report here.