Can Psychotherapy Research Serve as a Guide for Research About Executive Coaching? An Agenda for the Next Decade

Although there are important differences between psychotherapy and executive coaching, both seek to bring about behavior change and both involve a relationship between a professional (e. g., therapist, coach) and a client (e. g., patient, executive). Numerous meta-analyses conducted over the past 30 years have established the efficacy of psychotherapy, but research on the efficacy of executive coaching is scarce at best. Based on a review of meta-analyses of psychotherapy, I present eight questions to guide research concerning executive coaching. For each question, I present the results of psychotherapy meta-analyses and discuss the implications for executive coaching research and practice. The voluminous history of psychotherapy research points to important questions and methodological issues that should guide future research about the impact and practice of executive coaching.