Accelerated development of organizational talent and executive coaching: a knowledge management perspective

This chapter explores the practice of executive coaching as an instrument of accelerated talent development in organizations. With ever-changing organizational needs, employees need to embrace new job requirements and master new types of responses to external stimuli much quicker than before. Executive coaching has become a popular stand-alone developmental intervention or an enhancer in other efforts to develop employees. This chapter considers coaching as an intervention guiding an individual executive’s efforts in obtaining tacit knowledge, turning implicit organizational knowledge into explicit for the executive concerned, and developing insights into reasons for things happening in the organization. The chapter also touches upon coaching as a means for executives to obtain knowledge about themselves. The chapter provides an opportunity to look at a particular coaching intervention example by exploring coaching notes from an accelerated development intervention. It further elaborates on how coaching helps an executive develop knowledge about job expectations, stakeholder landscape, organizational culture, self and identity, and group functioning.