Maktens påverkan i en coachingrelation

Sammanfattning

The use of coaching is fairly up to date in the business world although it’s relatively new.

Despite this, there’s a lack of clarity about what coaching is and what it signifies. Our point is

however not to define coaching. Based on the normative coaching literature, the purpose is,

from a critical discourse analysis to explore the power relations that affect the coach and

coached in their relation to each other, so as to be able to criticize managerial coaching

relationship as presented in the literature. This will contribute to enabling for a more open

discourse.

The theoretical image of managerial coaching described by the literature as a democratic

exercised leadership by a certain type of behavior and attitudes, will lead to improved

organizational performance. For this to be possible, the relationship between coach/manager and

coached/co-workers need to be characterized by safety, trust and equality. This is considered to

be complex, given the power and dependency relationship prevailed between manager and

employee. The empirical data on which the analysis is partly based on, have been collected

through semi-structured interviews with a group within the National Insurance Office in

Karlskoga, consisting of managers and employees where a coaching leadership is applied.

Coaching relationship has been explored with the aid of Faircloughs analytical model and

therefore conclusions could be obtained, which is that the coaching relationship is characterized

by a variety of power conditions affecting coach and coached in their relation to each other.

Among other things, it has emerged that the coach is governing the coached thoughts and thus

indirectly also the coached acting. Managerial coaching is therefore considered according to us

not to be a democratic exercised leadership but may instead implying to be more controlling in

comparison with the ”traditional” leadership.