An Introduction to Coaching

Janice Dexter,Graham Dexter,Judy Irving

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781446241257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Asesoramiento psicoterapéutico

This is an excellent, no-nonsense introduction to the field of coaching for developing practitioners. Using a rich array of examples from both life and business coaching, the book covers:

ofoundations of coaching

o coaching processes

othe range of coaching models, skills, attitudes and methods

othe psychological underpinnings to the main theoretical approaches to coaching, e.g. cognitive, TA, NLP

odifferent applications of coaching e.g in life-, executive-, or career-coaching

okey professional issues such as ethics, evidence-based practice and contracts.

ohow to present and market your coaching identity and skills.

Blending theory and practice, with examples and exercises, the book is aimed at professionals from a range of backgrounds, whether therapeutic, educational or business in orientation, who want to expand and transfer their skills to the coaching profession. It is essential reading on all coaching & mentoring courses.

1

Coaching: The Foundations

Introduction

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In this chapter, we will introduce discussions that inform a clearer understanding of coaching, and the theoretical and practical foundations on which it stands. To do this, we highlight the qualities of the activity that make it distinctive, namely that it relies on the learning of the client, is goal focused, is didactic and performance-oriented. We identify differing arenas in which coaches work, i.e. life coaching, corporate coaching, executive coaching, career coaching, sports coaching. We acknowledge the ontological roots of coaching and that it is to some extent a discursive practice, drawing on sets of practices and ideas from different backgrounds. We also differentiate coaching from activities which depend on cross-over principles and skills, namely counselling, mentoring, supervision, managing and consulting.

In the second part of the chapter, we look at the question of ‘who can be a coach’, in order to highlight some of the qualities and skills that are identified as necessary to the endeavour. Finally, we summarise when coaching may be appropriate, and when it may not, introducing the concept of assessment as an integral part of the ethical coaching process.

What is coaching?

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What is a coach? Traditionally, the word ‘coach’ indicates a tangible object, a vehicle. Vehicles travel, they propel people in directions that they want to go; they are the vessels in which people make their chosen journeys. At one point in European history, young men and women of the gentry in England were taken on a coach journey, the ‘grand tour’, with an elder in charge, to chaperone, to educate and to inspire. The idea was that the coachee returned more skilled, a little more knowledgeable, and with more wisdom in terms of how they applied their skills to the path they wished or were required to follow in life.

How did a coach become a description of a person? There seems a general consensus that this originated in its modern sense with the concept of the sports coach. It has been seen as good practice for a considerable while that professional athletes receive coaching, for tennis, football, and so on, and awareness of these practices has been propagated through various media. It was sports coaches who first began to equate the process of fine-tuning the mind to ensure maximum mental and physical performance from the person, with Tim Gallway’s classic book The Inner Game of Tennis (1974) heralding the principles of the coaching movement to come.

Today, ‘coaching’ has developed into a professional role, and a coach is someone who is equipped to aid individuals, groups and organisations to maximise their performance in pursuit of their desired goals. So while modern coaches are not the first to assist people on their journey through life, what is specific about us is that we break our profession down into a skilled activity, with its concomitant principles, techniques, attitudes, models and professional codes. Essentially, though, coaches are still a means to enable individuals and groups to travel more successfully on their chosen paths. As Julie Starr (2008) comments, the commonality in all forms of coaching is that people use it in a future-focused way to enhance life and create change.

Our description of coaching is that it is a dynamic and self-generating process in which the coachee works to harness and develop their skills, approaches and capabilities in order to achieve their personal and/or professional goals and to reach and maintain their optimum performance. Our understanding of coaching is that it is a discursive practice founded on a number of underpinnings from the disciplines of psychology, education, learning, motivation, mentoring and management. So, it may involve the learning of new aptitudes to create a shift in activity, or it may involve the application of prior or existing knowledge to achieve maintenance of current optimum activity. In other words, coaching is not only developmental, it is also about maximising existing capability towards desired ends.

Professional definitions vary around these concepts. The Association for Coaching, for example, uses the following definition:

A collaborative solution-focused, results-orientated and systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of work performance, life experience, self-directed learning and personal growth of the coachee. (Grant, 2000, cited by Association for Coaching, http://www.associationforcoaching.com/
about/about03.htm)

This is clear and succinct, and lends itself to slight amendment for the different contexts of coaching. Does it, however, differentiate it clearly enough from other activities? Cox et al. (2009: 8) acknowledge the perceived difficulties of defining coaching specifically and suggest that:

… it is perhaps better for us to explain coaching as one of a close family of helping strategies and not to try to provide a succinct, all distinguishing definition. Instead we will outline some of the attempts made to try and set a boundary around coaching by explaining how it differs from its near relatives.

This is an honest and realistic approach, yet problematic. If we can only define coaching in terms of what it is not, then how can we ethically promote it to clients?

To some extent, this perceived difficulty with defining coaching has ominous echoes of the debate once so prevalent in the profession of counselling, where a major professional body, the former British Association for Counselling, failed spectacularly to differentiate between counselling and psychotherapy after years of debate. In that circumstance, some professionals were left to lament, ‘what about the client?’ Should they not have some clear inkling of what they will be getting into before signing their contract (Russell and Dexter, 2008)? In other words, it is surely key to know precisely what we offer to someone and to be able to explain it before they consent to buy it.

One of the words in Cox et al.’s explication may hold a key as to how we need cleanly to conceive what we are doing in coaching, language being a powerful discursive tool. The word ‘helping’ is curiously philanthropic. Recently, one of us was at a business network lunch where a member of the network was approached by an officer of the networking association to see how they could ‘help’. The association member was affronted. ‘I don’t need your help’, she replied: ‘Help is not a word I associate with a business transition. I may need information, advice and professional skills, assistance even, but I really don’t need your help.’ She experienced the use of the word ‘help’ as having some kind of superior connotation, a therapeutic connotation, the helper as someone who assumed knowledge of answers to questions that she had yet to ask. While this may seem a small point, it might hold a clue to how we might look to define coaching as a business contract between two or more people that is distinct in its activity and ethos. Coaching may undoubtedly be a helpful activity; so is teaching, so is nursing. But the helpfulness is an attribute of the process, not its core defining feature. This understanding may inform us as to how we might boldly position coaching as an activity unto itself in terms of its purpose and achievement.

McLeod (2003) takes a refreshing approach to the question of definition. Acknowledging diverse definitions, he suggests that the three key instruments of coaching are the use of silence, the use of questions and the use of challenges. These three represent the cornerstones of McLeod’s practice and are based on principled fundamental approaches to the work in hand. Based on this understanding, McLeod’s definition of coaching is that it is:

The use of silence, questions and challenge to assist a coachee toward a defined work-based target. These are often present issues or ones that relate to the future. (2003: 9)

While we might hold different cornerstones in our own practice, we acknowledge that McLeod has produced a tight definition of his practice, which is succinct and informative. Within it, the client knows already common aspects of the focus (current and future), and the kind of interventions to which they will be subject.

One of the realities of coaching, which is by no means exclusive to the profession, is that within the activity of coaching exist many different approaches, and indeed paradigms. Ives (2008: 109) makes an informative summary of ‘conflicting’ paradigms, and concludes that, currently, there is an increasing tendency to emphasise the ‘therapeutic’ nature of coaching. Perhaps this is unsurprising as the increase in numbers of professional coaches draws heavily from those who have practised therapeutic activities in former careers.

For us, the conflict in paradigms could become a red herring to the question of defining coaching. To use previous examples, there are different paradigms in teaching, and in nursing approaches and protocol, but the professions remain distinct. We return, therefore, for the purposes of this book, to the need to have a discernible definition for the activity of coaching before presuming to offer it as a commercial activity. We don’t suggest that every person has to use the same words, just as in the examples above, but, ethically and practically, we need to be clear about what we do. Perhaps the knack to this is to define coaching in terms of process and outcome so that a client might know what to expect.

EXERCISE

Take some time out to think. A potential client asks you what is coaching. How would you describe to them in one sentence the kernel of the activity that interests them?

However you answered the above, the key objective is to know what you are offering to clients and that your understanding is concomitant with the parameters of the coaching profession.

Coaching contexts

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It remains the case that ‘coaching’ is an over-arching term for an activity that has a number of sub-categories: life coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, sports coaching and career coaching – and more are coming into use as the profession develops. One way of exploring the difference in contexts is to look at what kind of events or issues might provoke a person to sign up for coaching, to undertake to improve their understanding, knowledge and skills so that they can ‘do’ things better in life and work – increase performance and maximise dividends. It can be helpful to elucidate the reasons that people might choose to engage in coaching within the various sub-categories.

Life coaching

Life coaching is presented as an activity to aid individuals to fulfil their potential, to feel more directional, and to reach a higher ‘performance’ level in their everyday life. This may mean something as simple as developing a more effective routine in terms of time management, health and fitting in the activities that have value for you. It may mean getting over the procrastination list. Or it may mean making life-altering decisions at transitional points and finding the resources to fuel them.

There are a number of possible events or reasons that influence people to engage in life coaching:

• When an individual is motivated to make changes in their life but is not quite sure of what direction would help most.
• When someone knows what direction they want to take, but is not sure how to do it or where to learn skills or find appropriate resources.
• When unforeseen circumstances, such as redundancy, financial loss, force a re-evaluation of life.
• When transitional events of any kind, including redundancy, relocation, divorce, bereavement, have created a crossroads for the individual.
• When stress levels indicate that an individual is not achieving a healthy life–work balance.

In these circumstances, life coaching becomes a great asset to assist the individual to identify what they would like for their life to be more balanced, purposeful and fulfilled. Part of the process of coaching is to aid the coachee to identify resources and gaps, and to learn how to make appropriate changes in thinking and behaviour which will sustain change in their preferred direction. For example, see Vignettes 1.1 and 1.2.

VIGNETTE 1.1

Maria is a 32 year-old woman who runs her own clothes shop. She is competent in and passionate about her business. She has known what she wanted to do for many years, and, business wise, she has now achieved it. However, since the death of her father four years ago, she has noticed herself become more apprehensive about taking risks in her business. She feels responsible for her mother, and is fearful of going away for too long and leaving her mother alone. She stays closer and closer to her home and her shop, and is now wary about driving. She is beginning to suffer with anxiety. She would like to explore these issues and free herself up to be able to develop her business more widely.

VIGNETTE 1.2

Tom is a 26 year-old male who left home at an early age, after major disputes with his father. He qualified in hotel management, and has always worked, although he has moved frequently from post to post. At one time he developed a drinking dependency problem, and received a great deal of counselling to help him to resolve his personal issues. Tom is now at a stage in his life where he feels he wants to begin to develop a more stable career and lifestyle but is not sure where he wants to go.

Both Maria and Tom could benefit at this point from life coaching. A life coaching programme is driven by the individual coachee’s agenda and needs. The coaching is focused on what the individual wants to achieve, and how they can clarify their objectives. The coach is there as a thinking partner, to help their client to gain insights, identify what they want (their goals, visions, desired state), their current reality, their options, their obstacles and the actions they can take.

The coach facilitates the individual’s learning, particularly around increasing knowledge, widening cognitive options and acquiring new skills and behaviours, enabling the coachee to develop long-term improvements in performance. Performance simply means what they ‘do’, how they ...