Elizabeth Crosse and Adrian Myers share findings and research on coach development. What are coaches’ priorities?
In a previous Coaching at Work article (Crosse & Myers, 2023), we shared some findings from a literature review exploring how we understand coach development.
We highlighted that there’s often uncertainty and confusion about identifying development needs, and this tension is reflected at a systemic level. Continued professional development (CPD) is considered a crucial element of the discipline’s desire to be seen as a professional service (Gray, 2011). Still, there’s a paucity of studies related to ongoing coach education and development despite recognising that the continued growth of coaching as a professional discipline depends on the quality of such provision (Crosse, 2023).
The limited research on coach development tends to focus on skills acquisition and personal development in foundational coach education or has a narrow focus, equating ongoing coach development to CPD or supervision. This article shares the findings and implications from research, which contribute to addressing this gap by exploring coaches’ opinions on developmental priorities.
The research study
The study sought to identify shared viewpoints on coaches’ developmental priorities. This would provide insight into how practitioners conceptualise coach development. We were interested in contributing to the debate on how to foster an approach to coach development that recognises the unique developmental needs that a coach should address to enhance the quality of their coaching.
The study used Q methodology (Q), which uses statistical techniques for data analysis and a qualitative approach for data interpretation to identify shared viewpoints on a topic of interest. This makes it well suited to exploring a range and diversity of subjective perceptions, experiences, and beliefs (Watts & Stenner, 2012) and offers a way of exploring priorities for coach development.
Forty-eight executive coaches based in the UK took part in the research. The research instrument was a Q set, 56 statements relating to coach development. Participants ranked these statements in a forced distribution to represent their view on what was most important when identifying development needs. Factor analysis was used to identify three distinct viewpoints, which were used to create a typology of three types of developmental strategy. The three-factor solution accounted for 83% of the study variance.
A typology of developmental strategies
The developmental typology (Table 1) reflected three distinct stances on strategies for addressing coach development: the Craft of Coaching (DTC), (development of) the Being of Coaching (DTB), and (development of) the Art of Coaching (DTA).
Continuing professional development (CPD), which focuses on knowledge skills and mastering techniques, is pertinent for all three types. However, DTB and DTA place a greater emphasis on personal development, engaging in activities that are likely to enhance reflexivity and criticality. The findings suggest that developmental strategies are influenced by several factors that change over time, such as previous learning experiences, client requirements, or a credentialling application. Although all the coaches that identified with DTB and DTA had been in practice for a number of years, experience alone was not a determinator of type. The DTC stance was relevant for experienced coaches. The explanations coaches provided for prioritising competency-based development implied that this ‘performance mindset’ (Hullinger & DiGirolamo, 2020, p.16) became relevant when they were required to engage in the credentialling process of the professional coaching bodies.
The implications
The typology of developmental strategies provides insight into how practitioners conceptualise coach development. The types provide a frame of reference for developmental choices for coaches to target their learning experiences more effectively to foster development. The distinct nature of the three types substantiates the argument for a more pluralistic attitude to coach development (Bachkirova & Lawson Smith, 2015; Lawrence & Moore, 2018), moving beyond traditional approaches that focus on skills, competency and knowledge acquisition. The findings demonstrate that coaches embrace a wider remit when identifying development needs rather than solely focusing on coach-specific development.
The time seems right to re-evaluate the type of developmental activities the professional coaching bodies accept as evidence of coach development to maintain membership. The findings highlight the need for debates and discussions on how supervisors, coach educators and the bodies can foster the development of experienced coaches. There’s a call for coach educators not to exclude post-graduate coach education but to consider alternatives and to provide less costly and time-consuming programmes that also encourage the development of critical thinking, reflexivity, and the development of self. For supervisors, the invitation is to ensure their approach enables coaches to enhance their self-awareness and personal capacity for managing complexity.
Against this backdrop, most guidance for practitioners focuses on competencies and professional capability (Passmore & Sinclair, 2020; ICF, 2023). The bodies continue to accentuate the professional development of the coach’s competence (ICF, 2022) to support the growth of coaching knowledge and skills (EMCC, 2022). This study’s findings provide further evidence that this historical perspective on coach development doesn’t reflect the viewpoints of executive coaches.
The findings provide some evidence that the way coaches identify their development needs is influenced by the bodies’ requirements for competency-based CPD to maintain and upgrade coaching credentials. This conjecture adds weight to the arguments for a holistic and individualised approach that encourages personal and professional development to meet the diverse, dynamic, and contextual nature of a coach’s development needs.
- The full paper providing details of the study will be published next month in the August edition (Open Access) of the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring (IJEBCM)
About the authors
- Dr Elizabeth Crosse, MCC, is an experienced coach, mentor and supervisor. Her thinking on coach development has evolved from over 30 years of involvement with the coaching profession, personal experience and her doctoral research. Elizabeth can be contacted at
elizabeth@eacrosse.co.uk - Dr Adrian Myers is the programme lead for the MA in Coaching and Mentoring Practice at Oxford Brookes University: amyers@brookes.ac.uk