What do leaders really want to learn in a workplace? A study of the shifting agendas of leadership coaching

Multiple theories of leadership postulate specific capability requirements with an expectation that leaders recognize the need for such capabilities and become motivated to develop them. In the workplace, leaders’ development is also expected to respond to the immediate demands of the organizational context. However, what leaders end up learning in the workplace remains largely unexplored. Hence our inquiry is into what leaders choose to learn, when they are in role and face the realities and demands of their immediate and wider environment. In line with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and concept of ‘perezhivanie’ we explore what actually becomes important for leaders to learn when they receive developmental support from a coach. We do this by identifying the content of coaching conversations: what is demonstrably discussed in coaching - the main themes of the actual coaching conversations and how the predominance of different themes changes over the coaching engagement. Based on the analysis of the sequencing of coaching themes in 153 organizational coaching engagements we discuss the dynamic interplay of the personal and the organizational agendas in the changing foci of leader learning. We propose a novel and theoretically-grounded explanation of leaders’ choices for learning in real complex environments. The results of uniquely gathered data and analysis challenge some current trends in the scholarship and praxis of leader development.