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This executive summary presents the key findings and insights from the evaluation of a student coaching study designed to cultivate and enhance student leaders. The evaluation focused on assessing the effectiveness, outcomes, and areas of improvement of the coaching program.

Program Overview: The student coaching program was initiated with the primary objective of nurturing leadership skills and well-being among students. The program utilized one-on-one coaching from professional certified coaches.

Key Findings: The coaching study demonstrated a clear positive impact on the development of emotional intelligence, knowledge of strengths and weaknesses, happiness, and reduced burnout. Both qualitative feedback and quantitative data indicated positive results for the program.

Areas for Improvement: Our random assignment failed to create matched control and experimental groups and therefore we were only able to examine changes in the coached students.

Conclusion: The evaluation of the coaching program suggests success in developing leadership skills and fostering personal growth among participants. Working with a coach is effective in shaping emotionally intelligent student leaders who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of burnout. By addressing the identified areas for improvement, the program has the potential to further amplify its impact and contribute significantly to the development of well-rounded leaders for the future.

Coaching Evaluation White Paper

In the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023, 25 students from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Leadership (CFL) signed up to receive a coach through funds offered by the center. A small research study was designed to test the impact of coaching on students’ well-being and leadership outcomes.

Coaching Overview

Coaching is defined as “a one-to-one relationship in which the coach and coachee work together to identify and achieve organizationally, professionally, and personally beneficial developmental goals” (Sonesh, Coultas, Lacerenza, Marlow, Benishek, & Salas, 2015, p. 73). Coaching is widely used in organizations to develop leaders and has become an increasingly popular tool used in university settings to develop student leaders. Specifically, coaching has been linked to many outcomes valued by the Center for Leadership including improved emotional intelligence (EQ) (Halliwell, Mitchell, & Boyle, 2021), well-being (Grant, Curtayne, & Burton, 2009; Grant, Green, & Rynsaardt, 2010), happiness (Seligman et al. 2005), and leadership self-awareness (Leonard-Cross, 2010). EQ involves attributes such as self-awareness and emotional regulation (e.g., Goleman, 1998). Well-being can take many forms, but here we will measure well-being as happiness and low burnout. Finally, we will measure self-awareness by self-reported knowledge of one’s strengths and weaknesses.

The Present Study

Eighteen student participants completed coaching and 16 additional students were included as a control group (who were subsequently offered coaching). All students completed a pre-test before coaching began and then the coached students completed a post-test after the completion of coaching. The control group completed the post-test around the same time although they did not receive coaching. The coached students received up to 10 hours of coaching. Coaches were compensated with a $1,000 honorarium.

Measures

Self-awareness was measured with two items from Brown and Varghese (2019) measure. A sample item is “I have a clear understanding of my strengths as a leader.”

Emotional Intelligence was measured by the EQ-i 2.0 (Van Zyl & Caster, 2014) which examines emotional intelligence across a variety of dimensions including adaptability, general mood, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and stress management. Happiness was measured with the 16-item Oxford Happiness Scale (Hill & Argyle, 2002). Examples include “I feel that life is very rewarding” and “I am always committed and involved.”

Burnout was measured with the 16-item Oldenburg Burnout Inventory – Revised (OLBDI) (Halbesleben & Demerouti, 2005). The OLBDI measures two dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (“After my work, I usually feel worn out and wary”) and engagement (“I always find new and interesting aspects in my work”).

Results

The plan of analysis was to examine the within-person change over time from precoaching to post-coaching, expecting that those in the coaching condition would show benefits from coaching while those in the control condition would show no change. The analysis would be a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the measure (such as emotional intelligence) at baseline and after coaching as the within-person variable over time and condition (coaching condition, control condition) as the between-subjects variable. In this way, we are examining whether those in the coaching condition experience a greater change than those in the control condition. Unfortunately, large baseline differences between the coaching and control conditions violated assumptions of random assignment. For example, for the analysis of the changes in student emotional intelligence, there was a significant interaction between Time and condition (Wilks’ l = .19, F(1, 32) = 7.58, p < .01, η2p = .19). However, examining the graph shows that the control group started at a much higher emotional intelligence than the coaching group and, although the coaching group improved more than the control group, the results cannot be interpreted because of the baseline differences. As such, we only examined changes in the coaching group for all subsequent analyses.

Therefore, a repeated measures ANOVA looking at change over time for the coaching group was conducted for each outcome measure. For emotional intelligence, there was not a significant increase in the coaching condition over time. There was a significant increase in emotional intelligence (Wilks’ l = .73, F(1, 17) = 6.27, p < .05, η2p = .27), recognition of strengths (Wilks’ l = .67, F(1, 17) = 8.29, p = .01, η2p = .33), happiness (Wilks’ l = .68, F(1, 17) = 8.00, p = .01, η2p = .32), and a significant decrease in burnout (Wilks’ l = .67, F(1, 17) = 8.38, p = .01, η2p = .33).

Qualitative comments by coaches and students support our initial insights. Some examples are below:

"My client told me at the end of this session that today's conversation felt like the most impactful to him so far."

"It was a pleasure to coach X. I think she's grown significantly since October. Her confidence has increased and she recognizes her strengths as a leader, specifically her people skills and organizational capacities.:

"My coach does a great job with letting me discover my problems and being honest with me. She brings a whole new way of leading that I have never considered before."

"My coach did an excellent job understanding and helping me understand what I really want to work on and develop about myself."

"My coach is challenging me and that is not something I get a lot in my life."

Discussion

In sum, our initial examination of 18 students who received coaching suggests that the coaching program is making meaningful differences in students’ leadership and well-being. Working with a coach is effective in shaping emotionally intelligent student leaders who are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of burnout. By addressing the identified areas for improvement, the program has the potential to further amplify its impact and contribute significantly to the development of well-rounded leaders for the future. We plan to continue data collection in the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024 to add additional data to help us improve our program and make additional inferences into the effectiveness of the coaching program.

Read the full paper here

References

Brown, R. P., & Varghese, L. (2019). Holding higher education to account: measuring what matters in the development of students as leaders. The Journal of Character and Leadership Development, 6(2), 34-48.

Grant, A. M., Curtayne, L., & Burton, G. (2009). Executive coaching enhances goal attainment, resilience and workplace well-being: A randomised controlled study. The journal of positive psychology, 4(5), 396-407.

Grant, A. M., Green, L. S., & Rynsaardt, J. (2010). Developmental coaching for high school teachers: executive coaching goes to school. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 62(3), 151.

Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. Bantam.

Halbesleben, J. R. B., & Demerouti, E. (2005) Assessing the construct validity of an alternative measure of burnout: Investigating the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory. Work and Stress, 19, 208-220.

Halliwell, P., Mitchell, R., & Boyle, B. (2021). Interrelations between enhanced emotional intelligence, leadership self-efficacy and task-oriented leadership behaviour–a leadership coaching study. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 43(1), 39-56.

Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2002). The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: a compact scale for the measurement of psychological well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 33, 1073–1082.

Leonard-Cross, E. (2010). Developmental coaching: Business benefit–fact or fad? An evaluative study to explore the impact of coaching in the workplace. International Coaching Psychology Review, 5(1), 36-47.

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. American psychologist, 60(5), 410.

Sonesh, S. C., Coultas, C. W., Lacerenza, C. N., Marlow, S. L., Benishek, L. E., & Salas, E. (2015). The power of coaching: a meta-analytic investigation. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 8(2), 73-95.

Van Zyl, C. J. (2014). The psychometric properties of the emotional quotient inventory 2.0 in South Africa. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 40(1), 1-8.