Application of a 10 week coaching program designed to facilitate volitional personality change

Allan, J., Leeson P., De Fruyt, F. & Martin, S.  (2018)

Short summary:
An interesting study that aimed to investigate whether personality change can occur on the basis of a specific, short-term coaching intervention.

There is a fairly general idea that personality remains relatively stable over the years. At the same time, there is increasing scope for the idea that personality can indeed be changed.

This research shows that a specific, relatively short coaching intervention can lead to personality change.

First of all, ‘personality’ is described in more detail in the study. Then it is briefly explained what the benefits of personality change can be. Research is cited that shows that, among other things, a decrease in ’emotional instability’ and an increase in ‘conscientiousness’ can have an effect on well-being and ‘happiness in life’.

In the study, 54 people were offered a 10-week coaching program in which possible personality change would be measured using the NEO-PI.

The components that the NEO-PI measures, being components from the Five Factor personality framework, were offered to the participants and they were allowed to decide for themselves which of these Five Factor components they wanted to work on.

They then received coaching for 10 weeks on the personality traits they had chosen and possible personality change was measured with the NEO-PI at the start, during the program and 3 months after the program.

Results:

The results showed that:

1. The participants more often chose to work on Emotional Instability, Conscientiousness and Extraversion than on Openness and Agreeableness.

2. Significant changes in personality were measured in (decrease in) Emotional Instability, (increase in) Conscientiousness and (increase in) Extraversion. No differences were measured for Openness and Agreeableness.

3. The largest changes were visible in the personality traits that the participants had most clearly ‘targeted’.

4. The changes in personality were still visible for most items after 3 months.

This research shows that a specific coaching-based intervention can lead to personality change.

At the same time, the study also has a number of methodological limitations. For example, only personality tests performed by the participants themselves were used, which can lead to bias. In addition, it was not measured longer than 3 months after the intervention whether the personality change persisted.

Link: https://bit.ly/3iMzgDc

Published in: International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 16(1), 80-94.  

Research type: Quantitative 

Number of participants: 54

Control group: No

Keywords: Personality Change, Five Factor Model, NEO-PI.

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