Behind the Mask Coaching Through Deep Interpersonal Communication

Executive coaching can focus on personal behavior change, enhancing leadership effectiveness, fostering stronger relationships, personal development, and/or work–family integration or specific performance issues on the job. K. M. Wasylyshyn (2003a) and H. Levinson (personal communication, 2003) suggested that executive coaching reaches for a deeper level of clinical and therapeutic intervention. The authors propose a health-enhancing, developmental model of coaching anchored in a process of deep interpersonal communication. This approach is neither a surface approach nor a therapeutic approach. It is an interpersonal approach focused on safe, secure communication in which difficult, complicated issues are addressed and where crucial conversations occur. In this process, the executive is approached as a person, one who stands behind the executive mask or facade.