Executive coaching and meeting effectiveness. Poor executive leadership during business meetings can result in counterproductive outcomes (e.g., negative employee attitudes, ambiguous objectives). Can executive coaching help improve business meeting effectiveness? This was the question of interest in an article published in Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (Vol. 61, 2009).

Certain behaviors by leaders during meetings were categorized as content behaviors (e.g., seeking information, disagreeing/attacking) or process behaviors (e.g., asking clarifying questions, summarizing). The goal of executive coaching was to reduce content behaviors in favor of process behaviors. The study reported that prior to receiving executive coaching, the percentage of observed content behaviors of leaders has a mean of 75% with a standard deviation of 8.5%. In contrast, after receiving executive coaching, the percentage of observed content behaviors of leaders has a mean of 52% with a standard deviation of 7.5%. Assume that the percentage of observed content behaviors is approximately normally distributed for both leaders with and without executive coaching. Suppose you observe 70% content behaviors by the leader of a business meeting. Give your opinion on whether the leader has received executive coaching.