First published on the good coach.

Part 1: The Semantic History of Coaching

Traveling in France or Le départ de la diligence Drawing by George Cruikshank (1818).A black box surrounds coaching, especially around how the word ‘coach’ transformed from being an object i.e. a carriage or ‘kocsi’ that was first used to describe a new kind of vehicle that was Kocs, a place near Buda in Hungary, to its current representation of a skilful expert who works alongside management to ‘unlock a person’s potential [and] maximise their own performance’. The noun ‘coach’ stems from the Latin curro, ‘to run, to travel, to hurry, to speed, to move, to proceed, to traverse’.

Placing coaching in its historical context, Stec (2012: 232) identifies four distinct but overlapping phases, which is also complicated by the issue of payment and professionalism:

1. A technology that was a medium of transportation (fifteenth century to present day);

2. An object capable of conferring status (eighteenth century);

3. A character in sport (nineteenth century to present day); and

4. A management concept (late twentieth century).

The coach, in the context of carrying people from one place to another, has moved from horse pulled coaches to describing how much an individual is willing to pay for space and comfort on modern transportations. During the 18th and 19th Century, prestige was associated with the passenger (typically the aristocrats), and the coach driver who was capable of driving the horse and carriage with impressive speed, skill and responsibility for self and others. Coach drivers were admired for their impressive performance; and the gentlemen (amateurs) ‘sought coaching’ to drive a team of horses that pulled the coach that included rules of dress i.e. wearing the appropriate attire and the time before requesting coaching.

Within the 18th Century, references to a sport coach became firmly associated with athletic competitions via rowing, who were members of the working class like coach drivers. This was also a period of the revival of the cult of sport, Pierre de Coubertin and the Olympic games, in which the athlete symbolised ‘the key figure of ancient somatic idealism’ and ‘demonstrated an epochal change of emphasis in practice behaviour’ (Sioterdijk 2013: 27). In addition, educational reforms in 1870, particularly in England, increased the number of children (1.25-5million) attending school. This in turn required access to more sport coaches (retired professionals) because sports were an integral part of the curricula for achieving social control (Stec 2012a).

The coach (object/technology) represents two things: a contraption that carried its passenger from place to place, and something that needed to be controlled and skilfully steered by the coach driver who needed to understand the assemblage (team of horses, carriage and its suspension, road conditions, acceptable comfort levels to the passengers versus speed). Accepting that technology (the coach) comes before the driver, he only becomes foregrounded after he has demonstrated his capabilities. Whilst in sports, the coach who was previously a professional or had credible experience in that game is now being paid to ‘coach’ others, from their experience, to improve athletes’ own performance in preparation for competitions and to watch from the sidelines[1].

In the 18th and 19th Century, professionalism tainted sport because it was viewed to be the equivalent of prostitution as professional sportsmen used their body to earn money (Stec 2012b).  Furthermore there was a mixing of class, and regardless of the values being promoted in sports, the aristocrats were not particularly interested in competing with others though it was important to maintain ‘the rules … the de facto removal of the labouring class from eligibility’ (Harper and Hammond 1977: 124 cited by Stec 2012b). Against the changing national landscape and the clashes of class and language, coaches persevered, and they are now integral to individual and team sports.

Moving into the twentieth century, sports coaches continued to thrive, and with the change in management techniques (post Taylorism and post Fordism) and an increase in leisure time and an affinity to sports, managers turned to books published by sports coach for inspiration.  This is also why business writers and executive coaches frequently draw upon the experiences of athletic team coaches of ‘bringing the best out of the individual and team’ to describe what they do in coaching but in a workplace context.

[1] We should caution though that not every professional sportsman can be a coach either. 

PART 2: DEVELOPING THE FIELD OF COACHING

The Human Potential Movement and Positive PsychologyRecognising the relevance of sports coaching to executive coaching, I now trace how the coaching field developed starting from the Human Potential Movement (HPM) from which two well-known categories of coaching have emerged: life coaching (achieving personal goals in life) and executive coaching (achieving personal and professional goals at work). They overlap in the concept of the intimate private sphere and the impersonal, cold and aloof public life as defined by Sennett’s book The Fall of Public Man (1974). Transformation in society has resulted in the merging of the private sphere with the public sphere, bringing in intimate topics like love, passion, family and autonomy into a logical-rational environment. Coaching as a management tool was brought into organisations via the Human Resource department either as personal development programs that contained various degrees of HPM, or through secular disciplines, in particular psychology and management consulting.  For the remainder of this section I focus on executive coaching in which executive coaches are paid by organisations rather than the client (in their personal and professional development).

HUMAN POTENTIAL MOVEMENT

The Human Potential Movement (HPM) was an influential experimental rebellion against the mainstream psychology, organised religion, and stagflation[1] of the sixties and seventies[2]. The 1960s marked the beginning of a period of rapid social change with no fear of unemployment[3], and an explosion of rebellious creativity and experimentation. It led to one of the most significant and influential counterculture movements, which rapidly expanded from the margins into mainstream society, in the arena of personal development, emotional literacy, and human values in the workplace called ‘therapeutic culture[4]’. It is a dominating influence from the day-to-day level through to public policy,

Secularisation is also important during this specific period of modernity in Western cultures. The public sphere provided the locus for the success of HPM via humanistic psychology and spirituality (Sutcliffe & Bowman 2000; Williams 2008). Maslow developed a more optimistic, holistic theory based on health and happiness that emphasised choice and values after the basic survival needs and psychological issues are solved i.e. self-actualization. Spirituality, as an alternative to organised Western religions and an extension of self-actualization, is an attractive proposition for modern individualists seeking transcendence or meaningful experience that is based on subjective experiences and psychological growth mixed with mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions (Puttick 2000). A more recent approach is the integral model of Ken Wilber and others, that offers a holistic and multidimensional view of the various modalities for understanding human development that evolves with the mental, physical, spiritual and social (Wilber 2001; Beck & Cowan 2005).

HPM trades in personal development, and whilst being ‘largely pro-business and entrepreneurial’ (Puttick 2000:211) it found its way into both the public and private sectors, the professions, and education by offering and delivering training courses and coaching.  Most of the training and coaching does not focus on spirituality directly, though the values may be implicit and shared when the client is ready. Combining spirituality, personal development, and business impacts business philosophy. Management consultants utilise the psychological and spiritual techniques as their competitive edge in delivering successful change management programs. On the other hand, failure is almost guaranteed during restructuring programmes by organisations whose chief executives or senior leader do not share or practices these values.

[1] Stagflation is the combination of high inflation and mass unemployment.

[2] This included the media coverage of successive economic crises including the Vietnam War, the Arab embargo (oil), assassination, financing of the Great Society welfare, as well as the success of Apollo 11 (first man on the moon) and advances in computer technology

[3] State-led Keynesian capitalism after the World War was the most successful period of economic management, in terms of standard of living, technological progress and financial stability and full employment policies.

[4] For more see Furedi 2003 and Swan 2010.

PART 3: SHAPING THE FIELD CALLED EXECUTIVE COACHING

Photo: Fredik BodenThe two root disciplines dominating executive coaching are psychology and management consulting, which are also used to define the boundaries of executive coaching (includes personal development).

PSYCHOLOGY

The logical assumption is that executive coaching has its root in psychology, because psychology is all about working with the whole individual on their behaviours, thoughts and emotions and how that impacts various areas of their life. The five theoretical traditions in psychology that have been adapted to coaching are psychoanalytic, behavioural, humanistic/phenomenological, trait, and social cognitive, and they all have different concepts of the person. Both the psychoanalytic (aka Freud) and the behavioural (Skinner) models developed from biology are focused on ‘curing’ pathology. The humanistic/phenomenological approaches of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (influential in HPM) focuses on the integrity and sense making of individuals that creates health and happiness as a reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Positive psychology extends the humanist thinker’s beliefs that focus on how to help human beings prosper and lead healthy happy lives. The trait approach focuses on measuring a person’s psychological characteristics, and the social cognitive tradition focuses on how an individual is motivated to understand both self and the social world in order to establish a sense of order and predictability.

An executive coach with a psychology background will see what they have been trained to see, and as long as the coaching assignment was successfully completed (based on feedback) it will confirm that this is the right approach.  Their coaching identity is the sum of their experiences and feedback through their educational training as a psychologist, as Berger and Luckmann (1967:178) note: ‘psychologies produce a reality, which in turn, serves as the basis for their verification’ (Rousseau 2014).

MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

Management consulting is concerned with improving efficiency and increasing effectiveness in organisations through technology and management practices. The rapid growth in management consultancy coincided with the rising status of corporate managers in all sectors e.g. mining, banking and finance. Management consultants provide expertise on the claims of possessing the knowledge that clients learn experientially, Jackall (2009) labels this as ‘ambiguous experience’.

The history of management consulting begins with Taylor's scientific management principles of measuring and accelerating efficiency at work (1910s), Mayo's studies of cooperation between managers and the workers (1920s and 1930s), Drucker’s focus on executive effectiveness, and Levinson’s study of the psychological contract (the unspoken contract) between an individual and organisation (1960’s and 70’s). The knowledge base of management consultancy is social science.

As consultants moved away from reporting on ways to implement process changes to technical challenges to being engaged in implementing their recommended changes, they became embroiled in the social structure (politicking) of the organisation and the ‘expert [now] trades in other’s troubles’ (Jackall 2009:148). Executive coaching is an example of one of the techniques in executive development practiced by management consultants to deliver change.

Executive coaches with psychology knowledge who have a consulting background rely on knowledge, ability or skill to master a challenge or solve a problem (Kilburg 2004 as cited in Ozkan 2008). They rely on the instincts they developed during their life (professional and personal experiences) and refer to a bricolage of published works. In a similar way this is how they present their coaching identity[1].

THE REALITY IS...

Today the market is a more sophisticated consumer of executive coaching and it wants to see progress. Likewise, there is increasing demand amongst the independent suppliers of executive coaching that I spoke with, and there is a building momentum and consensus for it to become a formal profession. Different countries have different approaches, for example in the United Kingdom there is an increasing interest from different stakeholders to move towards a Chartered Institute, in Australia the commercial coach training organisations offer government accredited coach-training programs under the Australian Qualifications Framework, in America the Graduate School Alliance for Education in Coaching (GSAEC) is leading the way in professional graduate education for executive and organisational coaching. One of today’s challenges of becoming a profession is about who ‘owns’ the definition of coaching, and from which expert body of knowledge it will stem from.

It is clear that executive coaches come from a diverse social and cultural background. Bono et al (2009) carried out a survey of executive coaching practices and they concluded that the debate should move on from whether an executive coach should have a psychological training to ‘what we can expect coaches of different backgrounds to do best and what type of training would help all coaches be more effective (p. 386)’. A caveat exists. Irrespective of the background of executive coaches, what is a consistent message from executive coaches is how to define the client. Acceptable clients are ‘mentally healthy’ and have ‘higher functioning’ based on the official distinctions in DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders). The ability to correctly diagnose a client depends on the executive coaches training, and exposes the subtle influence of ‘psy’ discourse. 

[1] A number of practitioners have second degrees in psychology at the graduate level, and through informal conversations it seems that it is likened to therapy in that helps them to understand their experiences of past situations and be more self-aware of past behaviours and not transfer onto others during coaching.

Reference:

Beck, D.E. & Cowan, C., 2005. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change, Wiley-Blackwell.
Bono, J.E. et al., 2009. A Survey of Executive Coaching Practices. Personnel Psychology, 62(2), pp.361–404.
Jackall, R., 2009. Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers 2nd ed., Oxford University Press.
Ozkan, E., 2008. Executive Coaching: Crafting a Versatile Self in Corporate America. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rousseau, N., 2014. Society explained: An Introduction to Sociology, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Puttick, E., 2000. Personal Development: the Spiritualisation and Secularistion of the Human Potential Movement. In S. Sutcliffe & M. Bowman, eds. Beyond New Age: Exploring Alternative Spirituality. Edingburgh University Press, pp. 201–219.
Sennett, R., 2003. The Fall of Public Man Paperback, Penguin.
Sutcliffe, S. & Bowman, M., 2000. Beyond New Age: Exploring Alternative Spirituality S. Sutcliffe & M. Bowman, eds., Edingburgh University Press.
Wilber, K., 2001. A Theory of Eveything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality, Gateway.
Williams, P., 2008. The Life Coach Operating System: Its Foundation in Psychology. In D. Brennan, D. Drake, & K. Gortz, eds. The Philosophy and Practice of Coaching: Insights and Issues for a New Era. John Wiley & Sons, pp. 3–26.
Sioterdijk, P., 2013. You must change your life on Anthropotechnics, Polity Press.
Stec, D., 2012a. The personification of an object and the emergence of coaching. Journal of Management History, 18(3), pp.331–358.
Stec, D., 2012b. Using history to comprehend the currency of a passionate profession. Journal of Management History, 18(4), pp.419–444.