World-renowned counselling and coaching psychologist, founder of the Centre for Stress Management, Centre for Coaching and the Coaching Psychology Unit, Professor Stephen Palmer’s boundless energy has helped add many strings to his bow – just don’t put him in a box, he tells Liz Hall
As we talk, Stephen Palmer watches tanker ships on the horizon, waves crashing against the walls on the beach below his house in Cornwall. Other times he might see dolphins. But “always there’s the sound of the sea, which I love”.
Palmer is well-known globally for contributions to coaching psychology, stress management and Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC). He’s known for his involvement in many projects and professional bodies, and for his high energy levels. The artistic, reflective and nature-loving side is less well-known.
Palmer does have fingers in many pies. Even in Cornwall, where he comes to reflect and to write, he is very productive. He has written and edited more than 40 books and more than 225 articles. He also produces seascape-inspired semi-abstract paintings and often explores the coastline.
Mind and body
Biology is one of many recurring and long-standing interests in Palmer’s life and work. Psychology is another. He’s been interested in human behaviour since childhood. When he was 10 years old, he hypnotised his sister, after reading about hypnosis in a medical book of his father’s. By his late teens, he was trying out primal therapy with friends.
“We were doing lots of shouting and screaming and reliving events as a child.”
He was always observing others: “I was trying to work out why they act in certain ways… What really got me interested was that I became convinced that if I had ‘good’ therapy and managed my stress, I’d get rid of my hay fever and other allergies. I was interested at the time in the body-mind connection.”
Palmer and one of his friends dreamed about setting up a therapy institute. Years later, Palmer became a world-renowned award-winning counselling and coaching psychologist, an expert on stress and co-founder of CBC. In 1987, he set up the Centre for Stress Management with the support of Peter Ruddell, and the Centre for Coaching in 2001, both of which are still going.
When Palmer was 14 or 15 years old, he set up a mail order electronics company with a friend, aimed at other radio hams. Thus was born Palmer’s entrepreneurial streak. When he was 19, “I went into business running a leaflet distribution company and I’ve been in business ever since.
“I’m interested in business at a macro and micro level… I’m interested in how people make money and run profitable businesses.
“When I reflect back, as a youngster again, I would be staying at my grandparents and my grandfather would be running his own business. It never occurred to me that people had ‘real’ jobs, I just thought that was what people did so there wasn’t anything holding me back. He was a great role model. Going into business is like a hobby for me.”
Businesses have included a finance brokerage company (Palmer is a fellow of various accountancy bodies), an estate agency and an estate maintenance company in south east London. Currently, he runs the two centres, the International Academy for Professional Development (which manages the external accreditation and recognition for the centres’ programmes), the Stephen Palmer Partnership (the consultancy arm for the centres) as well as co-running and co-owning Coaching at Work with editor Liz Hall and psychologist Kate Thomas. He is also a director and shareholder of coach training and counselling provider adSapiens in Sweden.
The great and good
To work towards his aim of setting up an institute/centre, Palmer did a part-time degree through the Open University which included psychology, biology, management and art & environment. Of the latter, he says: “I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t done that course, which was fantastic.”
One of his assignments was to develop a community street newspaper. Running what “became a proper monthly paper in Blackheath and Greenwich, an area of London, a bit like Private Eye, a satirical UK paper, in parts, with adverts” was “excellent training” for his involvement in a number of publications in future years, including Coaching at Work.
He was among those supporting the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s launch of the magazine in 2005. So, when the recession bit, and he heard about plans to close the magazine in 2009, “I thought it would leave a big hole in the field of coaching if it weren’t to continue.”
He joined forces with Hall and Thomas to continue the magazine. Today, he says: “It was much harder work and more time-consuming than I’d envisaged, but we have a successful product and Coaching at Work serves a very good purpose by being independent, acting as a conduit between and actively engaging the professional bodies, for example. I’m very pleased I’ve become involved. It’s great working with Liz, Kate and the rest of the team, and I’m honoured to be in this position.”
Cut to the chase
Awarded his ordinary degree in psychology in 1986, he was prompted to open the Centre for Stress Management the following year, predicting that interest in managing stress would rise. It did, but not straight away.
“My colleagues and I were wrong about the timing – there was no incentive for companies to take it seriously. It was only in the mid-90s with court cases becoming more common that interest rose.”
He gained his BA Hons in Psychology in 1991 and in 1997 completed his PhD thesis: ‘Stress: theoretical and applied perspectives.’ His interests in biology and psychology dovetail beautifully in the study of stress and he is a chartered biologist as well as a chartered psychologist, and a BPS member with chartered scientist status.
Palmer had trained in Personal Construct Psychology and Psychodynamic Therapy, but when he trained in Behaviour Therapy at the Institute of Psychiatry, he discovered an approach “much more successful in managing stress, as long as people faced their fears”. But they didn’t always, of course. “In those days, the drop-out rate was high and I started to realise that what was needed was a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach.
“Organisations were becoming more interested in people helping themselves. Gladeana McMahon, Michael Neenan and I started running programmes for organisations. The approach was very effective, but it still sounded like psychobabble. In cognitive therapy, we talked about cognitive distortions, for example, which doesn’t go down well. So I talked instead about ‘thinking errors’ and ‘thinking skills’.”
Inspired by people such as Albert Ellis, with whom he co-authored a book, (A Ellis et al, Stress Counselling: A Rational Emotive Behaviour Approach, London, Sage, 1997), and attracted by the idea of “cut-to-the-chase coaching”, he joined with colleagues, including Neenan and McMahon, to develop CBC, synthesising bits of CBT and Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy.
Palmer has an enquiring mind, one that likes to solve mysteries. One of the things he likes about CBC is the idea that you can modify thinking to help people achieve their goals. “It’s an interesting challenge, looking at how people’s thinking can enhance or hinder their achievements. It’s like a puzzle. Lots of executives are effective, but want to perform better and they’re not sure what’s holding them back.”
He is also keen on the solution-focused approach.
Informed writing
A significant turning point, that would contribute to Palmer become more well-known and to editing and writing books, came when he helped the (then) British Association for Counselling (now ‘and Psychotherapy’) to revamp its journal and attract advertising revenue. He went on to offer the same service to other professional bodies, changing one of the British Psychological Society (BPS)’s section’s newsletters to a peer-reviewed journal, for example.
In some ways, he says, he does everything else to inform his educational work. “I have clients to keep up my experience so it can inform my writing and teaching. I’m not doing it just to be a coach or therapist, or for me.”
One of his earliest books, co-authored with Tim Burton, was Dealing with People Problems at Work (McGraw-Hill, 1996). It was about problem-solving one-to-one. The words ‘counselling’ or ‘coaching’ weren’t used, but it was really coaching in the workplace.
It was an important book, says Palmer, because “at that time, the cognitive behavioural approach hadn’t yet been properly adapted for the workplace.”
A holistic approach
Palmer’s prime interest lay in finding a comprehensive holistic stress management approach, which did look at changing organisations, but also at helping individuals build and develop their own skills and strategies, as well as recognising and working with the fact that some people get stressed more easily.
“Sometimes, it’s not down to the environment. For example, the person may be a perfectionist and want to perform at 110 per cent, creating stress for themselves and others. It’s important individuals look at themselves.”
Given his emphasis on stress management as a primary intervention and his belief that one-to-one work was helpful here, it was inevitable that he would see the link with coaching. Already recommending one-to-one stress counselling for individuals,
“I started seeing coaching as a primary preventative measure.”
Self-efficacy is a term that is often missed out in coaching yet it is a fundamental aspect and key to resilience, says Palmer. And imagery is a very important technique to build self-efficacy.
“I was asked by a PhD student, ‘if I could use just one technique, what would it be?’ I reflected on it over the weekend and decided it would be coping imagery. It can be applied to almost any situation.”
An early sticking point was the lack of research and he has helped to change that with numerous research projects. “There is so much more research now, but the beauty is that you can never keep up to date with it all, it’s a nice challenge to do so. It’s great that there are journals covering research, including Coaching at Work.”
Another obstacle in stress management and coaching beyond was a lack of direction and opportunities for those wanting to train. This was why in 2001, with colleagues, Palmer set up the Centre for Coaching, a training provider of coaching, psychological coaching and coaching psychology courses. Over the past decade it has trained more than 1,500 national and international students/delegates.
Key player
In May 2002, he became a key player in the establishment of the Association for Coaching (AC), drawing up its constitution and submitting it to Companies House. With McMahon, Cary Cooper and others, he set up the first accreditation system, advocating supervision right from the start. He was also instrumental in the AC launching, with Routledge, Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, of which he is still the executive editor.
When the BPS Division of Counselling Psychology couldn’t agree to Palmer’s request for a special interest group (SIG) to be set up, he was undeterred, setting up with colleagues an internet-based coaching psychology forum. Eventually, in December 2004, with BPS approval, the Special Group in Coaching Psychology (SGCP) was launched. At one point, the SGCP was the third largest BPS membership network.
“The best thing that’s happened for coaching psychology in the UK was that the Division of Counselling Psychology decided we couldn’t set up an SIG within the division. Making us do it independently allowed us to attract psychologists from other backgrounds such as clinical and occupational, allowing for a more integrated approach.”
With colleagues, he also set up the Society for Coaching Psychology, now the International Society for Coaching Psychology, which offers international accreditation/certification for qualified coaching psychologists.
Palmer was also involved in launching the International Coaching Psychology Review with the SGCP and the Australian equivalent, the IGCP. In 2005, he set up the UK’s first university-based Coaching Psychology Unit (CPU) at City University and has played a starring role in helping to get coaching psychology established globally. With Peter Zarris, the idea to have a series of international congresses was born. To date, a number have gone ahead.
He takes issue that so much is inferred from research in therapy – he doesn’t believe the therapeutic relationship is quite the same as the coach-client relationship.
“One difference is that the coaching client, for example, may be better functioning than a therapy client, so maybe how the practitioner interacts with coachees can be more flexible.”
Accredited with the Association for Professional Coaching and Supervision as an executive coach and coach supervisor, Palmer was an early advocate of coaching supervision, lobbying for its take-up at a time when many coaches were adamant it wasn’t necessary. “I remember at one AC AGM, I was talking to one member about supervision and they reacted as if they were insulted by the suggestion, saying their clients tell them how good they are.”
He is opposed to there being only one professional body.
“It’s a nonsense. There must be a number of different bodies for the different aspects and niches, so practitioners can enhance their interests in one area because the body is focusing on their needs, while at the same time enhancing the whole profession.”
An existential thing
Palmer says that sometimes “people put me in a box – coaching and stress, for example. But my books reflect my interests. I’ve co-edited a local history book with my wife.” He has also written about suicide, death and bereavement after seeing a stranger commit suicide one Christmas. His father dying recently had an impact.
“Something happened when I turned 55. It was an existential thing. I thought if I’m lucky, I might have another 25 years left at most. I became less interested in some things and more aware of some of the personal hobbies I like to do, such as astronomy.”
Those of us who know Palmer can’t imagine he’ll ever really put his feet up though.
Volume 7, issue 6