Communication quality and relational self‐expansion: The path to leadership coaching effectiveness
研究将教练过程中的关系性过程重新概念化为关系性自我扩展，通过现场实验发现沟通质量和关系性自我扩展正向预测教练有效性，但沟通质量在不同沟通渠道间无差异。
Abstract Leadership coaching—a relational process by which a professional coach works with a leader to support their development—is a common component of learning and development portfolios in organizations. Despite broad agreement about the importance of the coaching relationship, relational processes remain undertheorized, failing to account for the growth and intertwining of coach‐leader self‐concepts as they engage in a generative and co‐creative coaching process. To address these shortcomings, we reconceptualize the relational process within coaching as one of relational self‐expansion and theorize that the communication channel and communication quality impact relational self‐expansion which, in turn, influences coaching effectiveness. Our hypotheses are tested in a field experiment featuring random assignment to experimental conditions (communication channels) in which a coaching intervention was deployed in five organizations. Using structural equation modeling, we demonstrated that communication quality and relational self‐expansion during the coaching process positively predicted coaching effectiveness. Contrary to expectations, communication quality did not differ by channel (phone, videoconference, face‐to‐face) nor did it predict relational self‐expansion.