How do coaches decide their ongoing development needs?
Elizabeth Crosse and Adrian Myers explore key findings from a literature review
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that if only you walk long enough.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
When we start out as coaches, the routes seem reasonably clearly defined. Accredited or non-accredited training courses provide initial preparation (Gannon & Myers, 2018).
After acquiring initial training, the pathway for ongoing learning is less clear while coaches build their practice. As coach educators and supervisors, we often hear coaches ask the questions, ‘How do I become a better coach?’ and ‘What’s next for my development?’ regardless of their experience. It’s widely recognised that continuous coach development is essential for good professional practice (Myers & Bachkirova, 2021).
However, a lack of understanding of what coach development should consist of makes it challenging to take a considered approach to plan for continuous coach development. Consequently, approaches to identifying and addressing developmental needs too are often confused and haphazard. This is particularly concerning for coaches working in organisations that require in-depth learning and development to ensure they have the professional capability and personal capacity to support leaders facing complex challenges (Carden, 2022).
Better understanding of coach development
If we think of coach development as a journey, how coach development is understood provides a map which allows coaches to plot their route. For some coaches, development is about enhancing technical knowledge. If this ‘map’ is used, coaches will likely take short courses introducing them to approaches such as Gestalt, Cognitive Behavioural or Systemic Leadership Coaching. Coaches might attend conferences and webinars or read books. For other coaches, development is understood as gaining a better sense of self or enhancing self-confidence. Using this map, a coach might consider supervision or mindfulness training.
Another map represents the view of coaches who worry less about knowledge or personal development and seek to move through the levels of accreditation with a chosen coaching association as they gain more practice hours. They might focus on learning how to develop their own business. These maps are not necessarily mutually exclusive but highlight differences in viewpoints about what development is and how it might be managed.
While it’s clear, from the type of developmental activities coaches prioritise, that there are likely to be different understandings of coach development, there has been little research in this area. A recent empirical investigation (Crosse, 2023) sought to address this issue by exploring how executive coaches identified their development needs.
How executive coaches understand coach development
The literature review conducted as an initial phase of the research focused on articles and studies relating to coaching expertise, coach education, coach assessment and coach development. The aim was to understand better what affected coaches’ views and opinions on coach development. This review provided insights into the factors that influence how coaches decide their ongoing developmental needs.
First, there’s still a lack of clarity on what differentiates an expert coach. The debates have shifted from defining expertise in terms of obtaining successful outcomes to understanding the coaching process that enables quality coaching (Myers & Bachkirova, 2020).
Recent research demonstrates that coach education rather than experience leads to better coaching qualities (Diller et al, 2020). This raises questions about what coaches need to know, as having a defined body of knowledge is no longer seen as a precursor for coaching being viewed as a professional practice
(Gray et al, 2016).
There’s an appreciation that professional coaching embraces a wide body of knowledge and that a competency-based approach is insufficient for continuous coach development. We need to embrace the more sophisticated forms of learning if coaches are to enhance their self-awareness and critical thinking skills required to deliver quality coaching (Bachkirova, 2017).
This has implications for competency-based assessments as a way of acknowledging coaching expertise. Scholars argue that the generic nature of competency-based assessment doesn’t reflect the complexity of the coaching process (Nadeem et al, 2021).
While this approach may have a function at the start of a coaching journey, it doesn’t meet the needs of experienced coaches. A case has been made for evaluating capability, which involves a more comprehensive approach to coach assessment (Bachkirova & Lawson Smith, 2015).
Against this backdrop, there’s a lack of consensus on what’s important for coach development and how it’s addressed. Practitioner literature and professional coaching bodies refer to continuing professional development (CPD) to describe the development of knowledge, skills and competencies needed to provide the best value to their clients (ICF, 2023).
In contrast, in the academic literature, coach development is considered more complex and problematic, involving questions about the meaning and purpose of coaching and the nature of human development (Jackson & Bachkirova, 2019). Through this lens, coach development is viewed holistically as continuing personal and professional development (CPPD). The academic focus is on enhancing our capacity to manage ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity as we develop reflexivity and critical thinking skills.
From the literature it’s clear that coaches are likely to have diverse views on continuous coach development. How coach development is understood will be shaped by initial coach education, life experience, and previous professional expertise. Furthermore, a coach’s viewpoint on developmental needs will be determined by the theoretical underpinning of their coaching approach and personal definitions of what working with expertise means in practice. For coaches engaging with credentialling pathways, coach assessment also affects how development is understood.
A final consideration drawn from adult learning and development theory (Merriam & Clark, 2006) is that the development journey initiates changes in how coaches understand themselves.
These deliberations offer a different perspective on the way coach development is understood. They present a picture of how coaches think about development as an evolving concept, shaped by the dynamic interaction between the enhanced ability to work with expertise and the developmental activities undertaken, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Coaching: an evolving concept shaped by dynamic interactions
The findings from the research, to be published later this year, confirm that there are a range of opinions on how to develop as a coach. They also substantiate the arguments for a more considered approach to continuing development that meets the diverse needs of coaches. This is undoubtedly a better route towards professionalism than the path that Alice, in our opening citation, seems happy to take.
About the authors
- Elizabeth Crosse has just completed her professional doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring at Oxford Brookes University and this article is based on her doctoral research. She is coaching practice director of Maximum Coaching, an international coaching provider.
elizabeth@eacrosse.co.uk - Dr Adrian Myers is the programme lead for the MA in Coaching and Mentoring Practice at Oxford Brookes University. He is a chartered occupational psychologist. amyers@brookes.ac.uk
References
- T Bachkirova and C Lawton Smith, ‘From competencies to capabilities in the assessment and accreditation of coaches’, in International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 13(2), 123-140, 2015
- T Bachkirova, ‘Developing a knowledge base of coaching: Questions to explore’, in T Bachkirova, G Spence, and D Drake (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Coaching, SAGE, pp23-41, 2017
- E Crosse, A journey to expertise: how executive coaches identify their development needs. DCM thesis. Oxford Brookes University (Unpublished), 2023
- J Carden, Self-awareness and coach development. PhD thesis. University of Reading. Available at https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/104446/ Accessed: 24 August 2022
- S J Diller, J Passmore, H J Brown, S Greif, and E Jonas, ‘Become the best coach you can be: the role of coach training and coaching experience in workplace coaching quality and quality control’, in Organisationsberatung, Supervision, Coaching, 27(3), 313-333, 2020
- J Gannon and A Myers, ‘Coach education, training and development’, in E Cox, T Bachkirova and D Clutterbuck (eds.), The Complete Coaching Handbook. SAGE, pp465-482, 2018
- D E Gray, B Garvey, and D A Lane, A Critical Introduction to Coaching and Mentoring: Debates, dialogues, and discourses, SAGE, 2016
- ICF, Continuing Professional Development, 2023 Available at: https://coachingfederation.org/credentials-and-standards/professional-development
- P Jackson and T Bachkirova, ‘The 3 Ps of supervision and coaching’, in S Palmer and E Turner (eds.), The Heart of Coaching Supervision, Routledge, pp20-41, 2019
- S B Merriam and M C Clark, ‘Learning and development: The connection in adulthood’, in C Hoare (ed.), Handbook of Adult Development and Learning. Oxford University Press, pp27-51, 2006
- A Myers and T Bachkirova, ‘Boundaries and best practice’, in S O’Riordan and S Palmer (eds.), Introduction to Coaching Psychology. Routledge, pp141-158, 2021
- I Nadeem, B Garvey, and M Down, ‘The adequacy of competency frameworks for coaching academic deans: A critical review’, in International Journal of Based Coaching and Mentoring, 19(2), pp3-23, 2021