Coaching with the Heart in Mind: Transforming Leaders’ Emotional and Relational Dynamics at Work

This study explores the influence of coaching on leaders’ emotions and organizational relationships. Emotionally charged workplace relationships are a significant source of leadership stress and commonly presented in coaching, yet they remain underexplored in coaching literature. Guided by social constructionism utilizing constructivist grounded theory, the study draws on semistructured interviews with 22 participants, revealing insights into 31 different coaching experiences. Findings show how coaching surfaces, contextualizes, and transforms emotional and relational dynamics. The study introduces the See It, Own It, Shift It™ framework, advancing coaching and leadership theory and positions coaching as an emotional and relational intervention.