Coaching Researched

A Coaching Psychology Reader for Practitioners and Researchers

Jonathan Passmore, David Tee, Jonathan Passmore, David Tee

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781119656883
• eBook ISBN: 9781119656890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

A comprehensive review of the practice and most recent research on coaching

Coaching Researched: Using Coaching Psychology to Inform Your Research and Practice brings together in one authoritative volume a collection to the most noteworthy papers from the past 15 years from the journal International Coaching Psychology Review. Firmly grounded in evidence-based practice, the writings are appropriate for the burgeoning number of coaching researchers and practitioners in business, health, and education.

The contributors offer a scientific framework to support coaching's pedagogy and they cover the sub-specialties of the practice including executive, health, and life coaching. The book provides a comparative analysis in order to differentiate coaching from other practices. Comprehensive in scope, the book covers a wide-range of topics including: the nature of coaching, coaching theory, insights from recent research, a review of various coaching methods, and thoughts on the future of coaching. This important book:

• Offers a collection of the most relevant research in the last 15 years with commentary from the International Coaching Psychology Review journal's chief editor
• Contains information on both the theory and practice of the profession
• Includes content on topics such as clients and coaching, an integrated model of coaching, evidence-based life coaching, and much more
• >Presents insights on the future of coaching research

Written for students, researchers, practitioners of coaching in all areas of practice, Coaching Researched offers an accessible volume to the most current evidenced-based practice and research.

Section III
Insights from Qualitative Coaching Psychology Research

Jonathan Passmore and David Tee

Coaching research review papers at the start of the twenty‐first century typically contrast the growth in coaching as an organizational developmental practice with the relatively low level of research and evidence accompanying that growth (see Feldman & Lankau, 2005; Kampa‐Kokesch & Anderson, 2001). Researchers called for an increase in the amount of empirical research, without which they claimed coaching psychology would remain a “protoscience” (Grant & Cavanagh, 2007; Passmore & Fillery‐Travis, 2011). Adjectives such as “solid” or “highest quality” were used to differentiate quantitative research from any other design, with Furnham (personal correspondence, cited in Grant & Cavanagh, 2007) likening coaching to “alternative medicine,” until it was able to demonstrate through empirical evidence its value.

Yet, there may have been an understandable reason for the absence of large numbers of empirical studies in the early years of coaching psychology. Passmore and Fillery‐Travis (2011) detailed a three‐phase model for new domains of inquiry, stating the maturation process that coaching psychology was undergoing typified that experienced in other research areas. The initial phase, where the phenomenon is explored and practitioner experiences shared, is followed by a second phase. Here, Passmore and Fillery‐Travis stated:

The initial part of this phase is often marked with case studies and small qualitative research. This gradually shifts towards theory building and randomised controlled trial studies with large sample sizes, and finally to meta‐analysis.

(p. 71)

In this narrative, the prevalence of qualitative research in the early years of coaching psychology was associated with, and arguably a necessary part of, the emergence of this field of knowledge, rather than an inferior research approach that needed to be replaced if coaching psychology were to be taken seriously.

The intervening years have seen Passmore and Fillery‐Travis's predicted increase in the number of empirical studies within the field take place, to the point where systematic reviews and meta‐analyses are now being produced (see the introduction to Section IV). In this same time period, voices within the coaching psychology research community have argued for the distinct contribution that qualitative studies can make to advancing our understanding: it is now recast as “other” rather than “lesser.”

For instance, Grant (2016a), in considering what should constitute evidence, suggests that qualitative designs, such as case studies, have unique and valuable characteristics that meta‐analyses and randomized controlled trials may not provide. One justification for this viewpoint may be that some legitimate areas of inquiry related to the coaching experience are not appropriate for reductivist approaches: examples include the phenomenon of peak experiences during coaching (Honsová & Jarošová, 2018) or any critical moments experienced by clients during coaching sessions (de Haan & Nieß, 2015—included in this section). Axiological assumptions of coaching as a value‐laden endeavor can also be seen in Stelter's (2007) argument that social meaning‐making is a central concept within coaching, and one that should therefore be studied from a phenomenological paradigm.

With the very early years of coaching psychology as a discipline now behind us, qualitative research is accepted as both inherently worthwhile and also complementary to positivist studies. Tooth et al. (2013), in determining the effectiveness of a coaching survey instrument, conclude that certain outcomes of coaching (they cite increases in client self‐efficacy as an example), can indeed be quantified. However, their conclusion about how the impact of coaching should be determined is more nuanced:

Coaching survey data can provide valuable insights into patterns and themes in coaching and can inform coaching practice, but there are many other aspects of the coaching experience that do not lend themselves to measurement.

(p. 149)

Kilburg (2016) goes further in asserting the relevance of quantitative research to coaching. Arguing against Furnham's call for more empirical data, Kilburg states that the biomedical approach, likening executive clients to patients with common symptoms and diagnoses, is not appropriate and that coaching operates in a much more complex and dynamic setting that does not lend itself to such research designs.

Therefore, qualitative studies have a distinct contribution to make in advancing coaching research, theory, and practice. This section features papers with a variety of qualitative research methods, from interpretative phenomenological analysis to grounded theory, and a range of topics, from coaching supervision to how coaches work with emotion. The papers also demonstrate the role that qualitative studies play, such as generating theories and conceptual frameworks, highlighting future research avenues, shedding light on processes and perceptions rather than just outcomes and informing real‐world decisions (examples in this section include scoping coaching supervisor‐specific training and indicating where university‐situated coaching might create value for students).

Hopefully, with coaching psychology's growing pains as a field of scholarly research in the past, and with the variety of benefits that qualitative studies can generate, Grant (2016b, p. 318) states the time has come to push aside “nefarious dichotomies that posit one [approach] as better than the other.” To have a full understanding of coaching as a phenomenon, and to steal from Grant's article title, “counting numbers is not enough.”

REFERENCES

1. Feldman, D. C., & Lankau, M. J. (2005). Executive coaching: A review and agenda for future research. Journal of Management, 31(6), 829–848.
2. Grant, A. M. (2016a). What constitutes evidence‐based coaching? A two‐by‐two framework for distinguishing strong from weak evidence for coaching. International Journal of Evidence‐Based Coaching and Mentoring, 14(1), 74–85.
3. Grant, A. M. (2016b). The contribution of qualitative research to coaching psychol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• About the Editors
• List of Figures and Tables
• Section I: Insights from the Nature of Coaching Psychology and Coaching Supervision
• Section II: Insights from Coaching Psychology Theory
• Section III: Insights from Qualitative Coaching Psychology Research
• Section IV: Insights from Quantitative Coaching Psychology Research
• Section V: Insights from Mixed-Methods Coaching Psychology Research
• Section VI: The Future of Coaching Research
• Index
• End User License Agreement