The influence of coaching on employee performance: Results from two international quantitative studies.

Abstract

Coaching has been identified as a key managerial behavior that organizations must promote to develop employees and achieve higher levels of performance. Despite this agreement and an increasing interest in coaching, there is still a paucity of studies exploring the impact of coaching on individual performance. This paper presents an empirical investigation from two international field studies, one using B-to-B salespersons working in Latin America and the other one using B-to-C frontline employees from a service organization in Canada. Building on Leader-Member Exchange Theory we propose that coaching increases individual performance beyond the potential impact of sales experience and tenure. We find that coaching can explain between 2.9% and 6.2% of the variance in performance when controlling for tenure and experience. The paper makes several scientific and managerial contributions, and also opens new avenues for research.