The Influence of Three Aspects of Adaptation 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 three aspects, adaptive behaviour/ performance, adaptive cognition and adaptive affect in two studies. In study 1, we explored adaptive behavior and adaptive affect (i.e., job-related feelings of anxiety) as mediators of the relationships between two coaching styles and work outcomes (i.e., creativity and emotional exhaustion) in a 4-wave longitudinal field study with 304 experienced employees and 49 immediate supervisors. The results of multilevel structural equation modelling (ML-SEM) showed that two coaching styles (guidance and facilitation coaching) were significantly related to creativity and emotional exhaustion, mediated by both adaptive behavior and job-related feelings of anxiety, but in opposite directions. In study 2, we examined the contextual effects of coaching on adaptive performance, as well as the moderating effect of task-related expertise and the mediating effects of adaptive cognition, namely learning self-efficacy, and adaptive affect (i.e., cheerfulness and dejection). In an experiment with two conditions (i.e., guidance versus facilitation coaching), 209 participants who were first coached to use a spreadsheet program to perform data searching and analysis work and then asked to perform an adaptive task. We found that learning self-efficacy and two types of specific emotions (cheerfulness and dejection) mediated these relationships and task-related expertise was found to moderate the mediating effects. Implications for theory and managerial practice are discussed.