
Introduction
When coaches meet, the discussion often turns to the practice of coaching: the things they are learning, what they are trying, and what is currently challenging them. Similarly, when coaches teach or supervise, they often learn from the insights and innovations of relative novice. And when coaches write about their practice, often their practice changes. These phenomena suggest a multi-faceted, socially interactive process driving and facilitating coaches’ professional development. However, the dominant frames for thinking about coach development are competence frameworks that feel abstract rather than human. In parallel, most CPD promotes new models or approaches that focus on process and skill, rather than connecting with the diverse variety of ways in which coaches learn.
These, and similar observations, brought together a group of 8 coaches and coaching academics who interviewed 32 coaches, spread across much of the world in pursuit of the research question: “how do experienced coaches make sense of their development?” This article is derived from the findings and implications of our research (Rajasinghe, Garvey, Smith, Burt, Barosa-Pereira, Clutterbuck, & Csigas, 2022).
We collected coaches’ personal narratives of growth and development. Then analysed the data to find the key commonalities and draw out their implications. We used an innovative form of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, guided by three key principles:
- We sought to stay close to our subjects’ experience – the phenomenology.
- We looked to capture individuals’ accounts and the sense they made of their individual paths of development – the ideography and the first hermeneutic.
- We added our own collation and interpretation of the diverse narratives – a second hermeneutic.
Our intent was to mine the diversity of coaches’ experience of growth and, through that, create a rich resource for both coaches and those who guide or provide for their development.
Our analysis of what enables coaches to develop coalesced around three main questions:
- Why do coaches invest in professional development?
- What activities and practices enable coaches to grow?
- What are the implications for coach development?
1. Why do coaches invest in professional development?
Individual coaches’ stories were widely variable but all placed learning and growth at the heart of being and becoming a coach. In many cases, their motivation for further growth echoed the concerns or aspirations that led them initially to become a coach.
This impetus towards growth brought together character traits, individual needs, personal purpose or values and external drivers which were often mutually reinforcing.
We were struck by how a commitment to self-development reflected the character traits of the coaches we interviewed. They were curious, they enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge, they had a learning orientation or were looking for greater self-actualisation rather than simple competence.
Specific needs gave more specificity and individuality to the desire to learn. They revealed a drive to understand human behaviour, or what impacts a specific client and why; an interest in human change and enjoyment of the deep connection found in coaching or, occasionally, a ‘dissatisfaction with myself’, drove a coach to learn and develop.
Those traits and needs were often captured or reflected in a coach’s sense of purpose. These seemed all to involve a desire to add value and to have a real-world impact. Our interviewees spoke of wanting to help people acquire useful skills and knowledge, develop others, meet a social and spiritual need for connection, or simply provide the gift of reflective space.
Many values are involved here: For example, intimacy and connection, authenticity, growth and honouring social and spiritual needs. Indeed, needs, values and purpose often seem inextricably linked.
Alongside their individual drivers, various coaches explained how changes in the externalworld that they and their clients lived in had impacted their coaching. One interviewee explained how, in the early 2000s, he thought of coaching as a way to change the world one conversation at a time. After the 2007 crash, his work and his purpose became helping people get through life. Beyond such macro events and turning points, others simply recognised that to stay fresh and ‘relevant’ in a changing world, their practice had to develop.
2. What activities and practices enable coaches to grow?
The coaches that we spoke to developed through a wide range of activities and practices which they combined in diverse ways. Some were intentional, others more accidental, and often their value and impact became clearer looking back. We grouped them into six broader sources of development:
- From practical experience in coaching
- From courses, CPD and other formal learning
- From working with a supervisor
- From teaching coaching or supervising other coaches
- From their coaching community
- From resourcing themselves
Practical Experience
Many of our coaches explained how they learnt from clients and the challenges they bring. They particularly valued working with a range of different clients, in diverse settings – including different national settings.
These experiences fuelled coaches’ own critical reflection, perhaps a mistake or critical moment, or some feedback from clients. Indeed, some interviewees identified specific critical incidents, which prompted important changes or learning.
More also noticed patterns or changes either in themselves or the conversations they were having with clients. Overall, their experience gave reflection its raw material and, as understanding and awareness grew, provided the impetus for experimentation, and change.
Alongside our interviewees’ coaching experience, some also referred to significant life experiences. They impacted both who they are and what they become as coaches. These experiences include:
- Marriage
- Divorce
- Having children
- Living in a foreign country
- Death of a relative or close friend
- Serious Illness
- Redundancy
Obviously, these life experiences would not be sought out as development opportunities, but it is fundamental to the understanding of coach development to reflect and learn from them.
Courses, CPD and other formal learning
This group of activities – courses on coaching, shorter workshops, related academic programmes, self-directed reading – clearly provides skills, models, processes and knowledge that can have a direct impact on practice. But more than that, our coaches seemed to use it as a source of sense-making as they reflected on their practice, helping them to ground what they did and critically evaluate it.
Many of our interviewees had followed a formal programme of coach training, particularly early in their coaching careers, and some had done advanced programmes. This study was not restricted to coaching programmes. Other areas of study helped to deepen and broaden the coaches’ understanding of what clients bring.
We were struck by how our coaches developed their practice as they brought their theoretical and conceptual learning into dialogue with their client experience, facilitated by their reflection on both.
Working with a supervisor
Supervision emerged as an essential component for almost all our interviewees. They said that supervision provides a focused opportunity to reflect on both individual coaching sessions and emerging themes or concerns. The core value lies in the exploratory and reflexive nature of the dialogue, generating insights and awareness, and ideas for the coach and for how they could be carried through into the coach’s practice.
Teaching and supervising
Many of our interviewees were involved in using their experience to guide another coach’s development. That could involve supervising other coaches, teaching coaching as part of a formal programme, and researching and writing about coaching and related subjects.
When our interviewees talked about teaching coaching, they showed this required them to reflect on their own practice. It was necessary for them to:
- Describe what they regard as good practice and manage their biases.
- Respond to inquiries or challenges from their ‘trainees’.
- Observe and learn from those trainees’ practices.
Being a teacher of coaching spurred reflexivity. As teacher or supervisor, they may also learn from another’s excellence or invention. So, the teacher becomes the student.
Coaches who write and research find themselves engaged in reflexive practices. As they write, they re-evaluate what they do, and both practice and theory can change as a result.
The coach in their community
Coaches who were active in a coaching community reported that they learn through dialogue with colleagues and peers. Learning can take place at events such as coaching conferences or more via any ad hoc conversations with other experienced coaches and others working in related fields.
Some interviewees also referred to being a member of a coaching team or collaborating with other more experienced coaches as a source of learning. Several coaches also highlighted what they learn from leading a coaching organisation.
The power of conversation was reinforced when various interviewees commented on how their conversations with us helped clarify and stimulate their thinking.
Coaches resourcing themselves
Many coaches explained how certain activities and practices provided an essential resource for who and how they are as coaches. This investment in themselves is over and above technical skill development. In particular, they referred to practices such as mindfulness or meditation as a foundation for being present, fresh, and ready to coach.
Through these practices, they invest in their personal well-being, physical health and fitness, and being fresh, grounded, and well-rested. This enabled them to have the energy, emotional resources, resilience, mind-set, and self-management needed both to develop as coaches and show up as they wished to.
In parallel to practices like mindfulness, others argued that they stay fresh by having a wide professional portfolio or simply by ensuring that they are not bored with themselves.
This idea of resourcing oneself emerges as a foundation for growth as well as an enabler of readiness or presence. All who mentioned this regarded resourcing oneself as both necessary and worthwhile however experienced they were as coaches. It seems an essential part of the process of becoming an experienced and resourceful coach.
3. Discussion: implications for coaches and ‘educators’ of coaches
We explained how coaches seek development because of individual character traits, needs, purpose, or values. These come together as an orientation, which means that coaches are looking for the learning in their experience. There is a broad intentionality to find learning, as well as the specific intentionality that led them to pursue particular development activities. So, their learning is both planned and opportunistic.
This learning orientation is both a mindset and a set of behaviours or practices that support reflection and reflexive practice.
To be impactful or useful, reflection needs to be more than simply noticing or pondering experience, it needs to come with a critical edge. Such critical reflection questions assumptions and social perspectives and “encourages learning at a deeper transformational level” (Mezirow, 1990).
We also noticed that reflection, even critical reflection, was not enough to generate growth – some sort of action or experimentation was necessary. That may be an obvious point, but it makes the distinction between reflection and reflexivity. Growth requires reflexive practice. It is this that enables Coaches to harness their learning.
As part of that reflexive practice, our findings place coaches’ experience at the heart of their development. In some ways this should be no surprise: how else could you learn a practical art like coaching without experience? We identified three key aspects of this that have profound implications for how coaches and others plan and support their development.
First, coaches arrive with experience and learning. They have:
- Diverse, relevant skills
- Personal qualities
- Knowledge across the hierarchy of competencies
- Motivation to continue to learn and grow from their coaching experience and from what is presented to them in life.
These suggest the learner, the coach, should be genuinely at the heart of any development programme, whether public or personal and bespoke.
Secondly, experience is not enough. It needs to be part of a reflexive practice. Many different development activities can support, inspire, and inform that practice. Supervision emerges as a strong way of achieving this. It can enable reflection, awareness, and action or change. This suggests that other forms of development, including CPD and formal programmes, are at their strongest when they include reflexive practice rather than just specific skills, theories, or models.
Thirdly, the skills of reflexive practice need to be taught or purposefully acquired. This takes us back to Dewey (1933) who argued the case for learning by doing.
The first of these points suggests that we need to change how we think of coach development. It is not solely professional development, separate from growth and change as an individual. It may sound hackneyed or cliched, but our research suggests that becoming a coach is a life’s journey as follows:
- The coach is never done – reflexive practice does not stop
- The journey of becoming a coach is inextricably bound to the life of the coach
- It is about who the person of the coach is
Reflexive learning requires some skill, supported by good habits. But the contribution of ‘intentionality’ suggests that the mindset and personal qualities of the coach are just as important. Curiosity, openness, courage, energy, perspective, and resilience – they are what drive and fuel the desire fully to become a coach and move beyond their original accreditation.
Our research also suggests that we should reappraise the types of activities that we expect to support learning and reflexive practice. Community has an impact, so does leading the profession in some way. Teachers learn from their students, supervisors from their supervisees. Those who want to elevate the quality of coaching and advocate for it as a profession should encourage such engagement.
To be clear, we are not arguing that courses and programmes, CPD and model-based workshops have no place in coach development. However, the experiential basis of coach development suggests that the value of such activities should be understood via their contribution to reflexive practice. They can provide an opportunity to reflect and engage in reflective dialogue. The models and theories they offer can help with the ‘sense-making’ stage of reflexive practice – the stage between noticing and experimentation. And the skills they teach can enable coaches to act on what they have noticed through reflection. But they do not define coaching nor what a coach does – they are a set of maps and ways of progressing; they are not the territory.
References
Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process, Boston MA, D.C. Heath & Co Publishers
Mezirow, J. (1990) How Critical Thinking Activates Transformative Learning. In: Mezirow, J. Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass
Rajasinghe, D, Garvey, B. Smith, W-A., Burt, S., Barosa-Pereira, A., Clutterbuck, D., & Csigas, Z. (2022), On becoming a coach: Narratives of learning and development, Coaching psychologist, 18(2), 4-19.