Executive Coaching

A Comprehensive Review of the Literature

Kampa-Kokesch, Sheila
Anderson, Mary Z.

¹RHR International
²Western Michigan University.

³Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sheila Kampa-Kokesch, RHR International, 780 Third Avenue, Suite 1902, New York, New York 10017-7057.

Sheila Kampa-Kokesch is a consultant with RHR International in their New York City office. She recently completed her education in counseling psychology with an emphasis in consultation and industrial organizational psychology at Western Michigan University and a dissertation on executive coaching and leadership. She is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), Divisions 13, 14, and 17.

Mary Z. Anderson is an assistant professor in the Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology at Western Michigan University. She is a member of the APA, Division 17, and the Society for Vocational Psychology, and she regularly conducts vocational psychology research.

We would like to extend a special thank you to Randy White for his edits on an earlier version of this article and to Otto Laske for his edits on an earlier summary of his thesis.

Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 53(4):p 205-228, Fall 2001.

Executive coaching as a consultation intervention has received increased attention in the literature within the past decade. Executive coaching has been proposed as an intervention aimed toward helping executives improve their performance and consequently the performance of the overall organization (). Whether or not it does what it proposes, however, remains largely unknown because of the lack of empirical studies. Some also question whether executive coaching is just another fad in the long list of fads that have occurred in consultation and business. To explore these issues and the place of executive coaching in consulting practice, this article critically examines the literature on executive coaching.