Effect of a Coach’s Regulatory Focus and an Individual’s Implicit Person Theory on Individual Performance

Consistent with the arguments of regulatory focus theory, an experiment revealed that a promotion coaching orientation relative to a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients following coaching. Moreover, in support of regulatory fit theory, a prevention coaching orientation had a more positive effect on the performance of recipients with implicit fixed beliefs about ability than for those with implicit incremental beliefs. The robustness of these results was supported through replication in a lagged, correlation field study of employees in the production facility of a global company. In addition, in the field study, there was a significant additive component in the effects for promotion-oriented coaching, due to better regulatory fit for employees with incremental beliefs.