The purpose of this associational quantitative study is to explore leadership coaching and ascertain its importance to human resource business partners (HRBP). By determining if leadership coaching is a critical aspect in the role of HRBPs, critical data may also be identified to influence HRBP practices in the 21^st century.  This paper will provide a discussion on the proposed research method and design and its implications in relation to internal and external validity.

The Research Problem

The field of Human Resources continues to be criticized for its shortcomings in becoming a strategic partner (Simpson, 2005). In organizations today, coaching is offered in many forms and has been noted as effective. HRBPs view coaching as advising managers regarding employee relations challenges and ultimately telling them how to respond.

The role of a coach as described by MacPherson (2009) is to “facilitate growth and change by connecting the deeper meaning of the change for the coachee so the change is sustained outside of the interaction” (p. 47). This definition establishes the difference between advising and coaching. Since coaching is found to be much different from advising, this study also explores if HRBPs are qualified to coach and provide leadership development coaching and if HRBPs believe that coaching is a part of their role.

Research Design

In designing this study, A validated survey instrument is selected based on its particular relevance to measuring coaching skills amongst human resources professionals with five or more years of experience.

Sample, population and participants

The focus of this study will be on HRBP professionals who have at least five years of experience as human resources business partners or senior human resources generalists. The study will be conducted across different business fields, organizations, and geographic locations. The survey will be distributed to over 100 human resources professionals and the goal is to receive at least a 75% response rate.

Internal Validity

The two key factors impacting the evaluation of internal validity are equivalence of the groups and control of extraneous experienced and environmental variables (Gliner, Morgan & Leech, 2009, pg 101). This study will not select respondents at random so equivalence of participant characteristics will need to be acknowledged. To offset the population validity threats, a pretest will be administered to capture the key characteristics needed for this study. These include the overall experience that the participants have as a human resources business partner or senior human resources generalists and their skill level in each of the key areas of the human resources role. Experience level as a human resources business partner or senior human resources generalist is imperative to the validity of this study.  Junior human resources professionals tend to be more administrative in nature and will not have enough experience to understand the role and importance of leadership coaching in organizations. In addition, junior human resources professionals typically do not have access to leaders who may request coaching versus advising nor will such leaders feel that they have the adequate background to provide coaching. Other characteristics such as age, education and gender will not be included in this study.