Talk:Coaching/Archives/2017

Sports?

There is exactly one sentence about sports in this entire article: " The first use of the term in relation to sports came in 1861."

I take the article's point that the term did not originate in sports and is not limited to sports, but in my understanding, sports is far and away the most prominent use of the term, and that ought to be recognized here. I would in fact expect the lion's share of this article to be given over to coaching in sports. I understand that there is another article on "Coach (sport)" but that seems to focus on how coaches fit into the structures of various sports, not on the techniques of coaching as such -- how to motivate people, how to get them to work together as a team, etc., which is applicable both to sports coaching and to coaching in other domains.

Is there a reason that sports has been left off of this page, or is it just a matter of someone stepping up and putting it in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:41:4100:6DE7:1D23:75EC:FA63:15B2 (talk) 01:57, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

In response to the preceding question: There are subsections of this article (ordered alphabetically) for different kinds of coaching, and there is a subsection for sports: see Coaching § Sports coaching. Most information about sports coaching should go in Coach (sport), which is the main article on the subject. Extensive information about coaching techniques is not appropriate for Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is not an instruction manual, tutorial, guidebook, or textbook. Biogeographist (talk) 11:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Criticism misleading

The criticism section describes "life coaching" as "akin to psychotherapy," yet the literature on coaching is abundantly clear regarding the distinctions between psychotherapy and coaching, including the ICF's own definition of "coaching" .

The criticism section fails to mention the ICF requirement for logging 100 hours of coaching experience (75 paid) in addition to 125 hours of training and passing a Coach Knowledge Assessment (CKA), among other requirements, to achieve the Associated Certified Coach (ACC) credential; 500 hours (450 paid) in addition to 125 hours of training and passing the CKA, among other requirements, to achieve the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential; and 2,500 hours (2,250 paid), in addition to 200 hours of training and passing the CKA, among other requirements, to achieve the Master Certified Coach (MCC) credential. Rwberg311 (talk) 16:33, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

References

@Rwberg311: The section did in fact accurately report the hours required for Associate Certified Coach (ACC) in the ICF Accredited Coach Training Program (ACTP). I added a sentence mentioning the stricter requirements for the ICF's Master Certified Coach (MCC) credential. (Thanks for pointing that out.) I struck a couple of phrases, "established ethical policies" (since the coaching associations certainly have these) and "the vast majority of life and wellness coaches have no formal training or certification" (since such a sweeping statement is not adequately supported by the sources). Other than that, I see nothing misleading about the section. The description of state regulation of coaches is accurate for the U.S. as far as I know. If the situation is different in other countries, please present some reliable sources and we can update the section to reflect a more worldwide view of state regulation of the profession.

There is abundant literature that opines that coaching is akin to psychotherapy; in the recent book Coach and Couch: The Psychology of Making Better Leaders (2016), Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries and colleagues wrote: "Because unconscious dynamics have a significant impact on life in organizations, organizational leaders (and followers) must recognize and plan for those dynamics, using tools and processes similar to those used with individuals in various forms of personal growth interventions or psychotherapy, but on a bigger, more systemic scale" (p. 8).

Coaches have to distinguish themselves from other helping professionals such as psychologists for legal reasons. How close coaching is to psychotherapy is a debate that seems to me to be akin to the debate over how close different psychotherapy approaches are to each other (see, for example, the Wikipedia articles: Common factors theory and Integrative psychotherapy). The opinion that coaching is akin to psychotherapy is certainly a widely expressed one among professionals; see, for example:

• Kets de Vries, Manfred F. R.; Korotov, Konstantin; Florent-Treacy, Elizabeth; Rook, Caroline, eds. (2016) [2007]. Coach and couch: the psychology of making better leaders. INSEAD business press series (2nd ed.). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-56161-9. ISBN 9781137561596. OCLC 913470088. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Passmore, Jonathan, ed. (2016) [2006]. Excellence in coaching: the industry guide (3rd ed.). London; Philadelphia: Kogan Page. ISBN 9780749474454. OCLC 927192333. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Greenberg, Leslie S. (2015) [2002]. Emotion-focused therapy: coaching clients to work through their feelings (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. ISBN 9781433819957. OCLC 903873710. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Popovic, Nash; Jinks, Debra (2014) [2014]. Personal consultancy: a model for integrating counselling and coaching. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415833929. OCLC 842330076. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kirschenbaum, Howard (2013). Values clarification in counseling and psychotherapy: practical strategies for individual and group settings. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199972180.001.0001. ISBN 9780199972180. OCLC 841171940. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Egan, Gerard (2014) [1975]. The skilled helper: a problem-management and opportunity-development approach to helping (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole/Cengage Learning. ISBN 1285065719. OCLC 847245712. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Anderson, Sharon K.; Williams, Patrick; Kramer, Allison L. (2012). "Life and executive coaching: some ethical issues for consideration". In Knapp, Samuel; Gottlieb, Michael C.; Handelsman, Mitchell M.; VandeCreek, Leon D. (eds.). APA handbook of ethics in psychology. APA handbooks in psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 169–181. doi:10.1037/13272-009. ISBN 9781433810008. OCLC 698451569. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Biogeographist (talk) 18:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

@Biogeographist: A valid criticism is surely the lack of standards for the coaching "profession" that are integral to the credibility of those who call themselves "professionals." While the ICF and other organizations (IAC, for example) promote specific competencies, require documented experience, supervised coaching, and knowledge assessments, neither these "authorities" nor the individuals they certify are government regulated. This is problematic as it invites many pretenders (quacks?) to the field. The ICF is fighting this somewhat by promulgating a general body of knowledge for coaching practice (the "coaching competencies") as well as a code of ethics. In addition, the Center for Credentialing & Education, a well-established credentialing and licensing body for the helping professions, offers a "Board Certified Coach" certification, which is gaining in popularity likely due to the less onerous certification requirements for those who already possess advanced degrees.

At the risk of belaboring a disagreement regarding the semantics of your statement that "Critics see life coaching as akin to psychotherapy," inasmuch as the word "akin" is an adjective defined as "of similar character," the critics you cite authoritatively are asserting that life coaching is similar in character to psychotherapy. That assertion is plainly incorrect. I'm familiar with much of the literature you cite, in which many statements that contradict your own are contained. For example,

In Passmore, ed. (2016), which you cite, multiple distinctions between coaching and psychotherapy are made, viz. 1. "Coaching is forward focused," whereas "Psychotherapy…is usually sought to fix a particular problem arising from past trauma;" 2. "Coaching is coachee-led," whereas "Psychotherapists sometimes use techniques that lead and influence the patient…;" and 3. "Coaching is about improving performance" whereas psychotherapy clearly is not (p. 27).

In Popovic & Jinks (2014), which you also cite, see, for example, Chapter 2, "Coaching and therapy: Integration and differentiation," in which distinctions between the two disciplines are detailed. In fact, the very title of the work distinguishes between the two disciplines. Why would there be a need for "a model for integrating counselling and coaching," as the title suggests, if they were "akin" to each other, i.e., "similar in character?" Complementary? Perhaps. Similar in character? No.

Finally, Patrick Williams, a coauthor of another work you cite (Life and executive coaching: some ethical issues for consideration) in Law and ethics in coaching: How to solve - and avoid - difficult problems in your practice, provides a table that differentiates between therapy, mentoring, consulting and coaching (p. 11).

Surely many criticisms are valid, not least of which are (i) the lack of a central authority or licensure requirements in any state in the US (that I know of), and (ii) the propensity of opportunists with zero qualifications to hang out shingles and call themselves "coaches" in a professional context. This is not only wrongheaded but dangerous - especially among those fakers who partake in "therapy-like" interventions, which are anathema to what coaching is all about. In fact, emphasizing the distinction between coaching and therapy is a major part of the mission of organizations like the ICF and thought leaders like Williams, hence my passion for attempting to correct the record on this point. Coaching ("life" or otherwise) is simply not akin to psychotherapy, regardless of the claims of uninformed critics.

(For completeness, consider adding the PCC credential as an intermediate step between ACC and MCC in your description.)

Rwberg311 (talk) 14:06, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

References

@Rwberg311: Thanks for your comments; I don't disagree with you about the importance of differentiating coaching from psychotherapy, but I would like to clarify that I did not add the phrase "Critics see life coaching as akin to psychotherapy"; I am merely defending the phrase. One need not be a "critic" of coaching to see how it is akin to psychotherapy. (Indeed there are critics of psychotherapy within the field of psychotherapy who would like it to have a conceptual basis more like coaching; see, e.g., Basseches, Michael (2003). "Adult development and the practice of psychotherapy". In Demick, Jack; Andreoletti, Carrie (eds.). Handbook of adult development. Plenum series in adult development and aging. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. pp. 533–563. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-0617-1_28. ISBN 0306467585. OCLC 49519013. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)) Coaching and psychotherapy are similar in character insofar as they use overlapping sets of helping skills to work with the same psychological mechanisms, the same mechanisms common to some other professions, such as teaching.

Learning requires memory and memories are learned. Learning and memory are two facets of one major developmental mechanism. If infants were unable to learn and/or form memories, they would never develop into the children, adolescents, and adults that we are familiar with. In short, learning and memory mechanisms enable virtually all psychological development and interventions. We can therefore confidently conclude that all clinically effective empirically supported psychological interventions entail learning. A corollary point is that all evidence of altered cognition, affect, and behavior is also evidence that learning has occurred. Therapists, and the therapeutic approaches that currently divide us, differ only with regard to what is to be learned and how it is to be acquired.

— Tryon, Warren W. (January 2010). "Learning as core of psychological science and clinical practice" (PDF). The Behavior Therapist. 33 (1): 10–12.

I could write a dissertation here defending the idea that coaching is akin to various forms of psychotherapy and counseling, citing supporting passages from all of the sources that you quoted above: for example, there are certainly forms of psychotherapy that are "forward focused" (e.g. solution focused brief therapy), "coachee-led" (e.g. client-centered therapy), and "about improving performance" (e.g. Rodney Lowman's Counseling and Psychotherapy of Work Dysfunctions). But I don't think that a hair-splitting scholastic debate on a Wikipedia talk page is the best use of our time. I have added a brief phrase mentioning the PCC credential. Biogeographist (talk) 13:55, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

I have removed from my previous comment a sentence that mistakenly attributed the phrase "Critics see life coaching as akin to psychotherapy" to another editor. Reviewing the article history, I see that the phrase resulted from a process of word-by-word evolution over the years (as often happens on Wikipedia). The phrase evolved from the considerably less defensible assertion that that life coaching is "little more than a clever way of practicing psychotherapy without the restrictions or oversight", a quotation that was attributed to psychology professor David M. Fresco (although I can't confirm the accuracy of the original quotation) in this verbose edit in 2007. Biogeographist (talk) 19:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Undue weight

I am reverting most of this edit (but keeping the phrases that were not redundant) because it gave undue weight or emphasis to Christian van Nieuwerburgh. We have been trying to avoid mentioning any individual coaches in the body of this article to avoid undue weight to any particular coach. We also certainly cannot call a particular coach "a leading coach in the field" (as this edit called van Nieuwerburgh) without abundant support from independent secondary sources, not the coach's own writings! Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 19:58, 15 May 2017 (UTC)