The impacts of adaptive behavior and affect on the relationships between coaching and work outcomes

Based on Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory, this paper examined the contextual effects of leaders’ coaching style on followers’ adaptation in two aspects, adaptive behaviour and adaptive affect (i.e., job-related feeling of anxiety in this study), and, in turn, their relationships with individual work outcomes. Specifically, we explored adaptive behavior and job-related feelings of anxiety as mediators of the relationships between two coaching styles and work outcomes (i.e., task performance, creativity, emotional exhaustion). A 4-wave longitudinal field study with 371 employees and 49 immediate supervisors was conducted. The results of multilevel structural equation modelling (ML-SEM) showed that two coaching styles (guidance and facilitation coaching) were significantly related to both adaptive behavior and job-related feelings of anxiety, but in opposite directions. Moreover, there were contrasting effects of adaptive behavior and job-related feelings of anxiety on emotional exhaustion, task performance and creativity. Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.