FAQs

The following are excerpts from Canada Coach Academy give us a well-rounded view of where coaching has come from and its relevance today for you.

Passmore and Lai’s earliest reference to coaching was found in 1911, when journal articles reported the term coaching, interchangeably with training, aimed to help debating team members improve their skills. In the 1930s, workplace coaching was reported to help factory workers develop and improve factory processes, again implying that coaching and training are synonymous.

In this era, sports coaching began to emerge. Sir John Whitmore’s 1992 seminal book on coaching, Coaching for Performance (now 5th edition, 2017), drawing on Timothy Galwey’s inner game model, “placed a marker in the sand” with a clear definition of coaching:

“Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them – a facilitation approach.” Whitmore believed that coaching (in contrast to the knowledge exchange in teaching or training) is designed to help people cultivate self-awareness and personal responsibility. Whitmore’s video demonstrating and comparing coaching and instruction in golf is legendary.

In the US, the two pioneers of coaching were Thomas Leonard and Laura Whitworth. Whitworth developed co-active coaching, summarized later as four cornerstones – the client is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, that coaching sessions are a co-created dance in the moment which expand the wholeness of the client’s perspective, and lead to new ways of being and doing.

IOC scientific advisor Tatiana Bachkirova and collaborators (2010) introduce the topics of human development and sustainable change. Coaching is “a human development process that involves structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the coachee…”

Moore and co-authors (2010) connected coaching to self-determination theory and positive psychology: “Coaching is a growth-promoting relationship which elicits internal motivation, leverages strengths, increases the capacity to change, and facilitates a change process through visioning, goal-setting, and accountability that leads to sustainable change for the good.”

Peer-reviewed research notes three areas of distinction between coaching and therapy:

1. Clients are seeking improvement and development rather than eliminating psychological problems and dysfunctions.
2. Expected outcomes and evaluation methods are usually defined at the beginning of a coaching program.
3. Coaching has a defined time horizon, process, and number of sessions, contrasting with therapy which can continue indefinitely, for as long as it takes.

Coaches have specific training competencies needed for their coaching role. A great coach will suggest referral to a therapist when:

• there is an issue that is a barrier to making progress in coaching
• an issue in life interferes with daily functioning
• the issue is psychological in nature and deals with deep-seated emotions

Coaching tends to focus on the here and now, encouraging the coachee toward awareness and desired change.

Coaching can benefit a wide range of individuals across various personal and professional contexts. Here are some examples of who can benefit from coaching:

• Executives and Leaders
• Professionals
• Business Owners
• Career Changers
• Students and Graduates
• Athletes and Performers
• Individuals Seeking Personal Growth
• Teams and Organizations
• Parents, Children, Entire Families

Coaching is a powerful experience for people in all walks and stages of life. It provides a strong relationship designed to be led by the coachee and is only for the benefit of the coachee.

Coaching is both versatile and transformative. 

A great coaching relationship provides support, guidance, and accountability to help people achieve their full potential and create positive change in their lives and work.

Psychologists in several countries led by Australia and the UK, now including New Zealand, South Africa, and France, have focused on defining coaching psychology over the past 20 years.

Note the authors: “Coaching psychology is ‘the well’ which refreshes the wider coaching
profession. It is the heart of scientific enquiry about coaching practice for work with non-clinical populations.”

The understanding of scientific theory and evidence that informs coaching practice, and contribution to coaching research is more common among coaching psychologists than practicing coaches.

They go on: “At its birth, coaching psychology’s Godfather, Anthony Grant, offered a definition of coaching psychology that subsequently established the foundation of coaching psychology definition within the British Psychology Society.

In 2001, Grant defined coaching as:
1. An empirically-validated framework of change which facilitates the coaching process.
2. A model of self-regulation which allows delineation of the processes inherent in self-regulation, goal setting and goal attainment.
3. A methodology of how behaviour, thoughts and feelings interact, and how behaviour, thoughts and feelings can be altered to facilitate goal attainment.”

In 2006, Palmer and Whybrow reformulated Grant’s definition for the British Psychological Society’s Special Group on Coaching Psychology: “Enhancing well-being and performance in personal life and work domains, underpinned by models of coaching grounded in established adult learning or psychological approaches.”

In 2010, Passmore defined coaching psychology as “the scientific study of behavior, cognition, and emotion within coaching practice to deepen our understanding and enhance our practice within coaching.”

In 2011, Grant updated his definition of coaching psychology: “Coaching psychology is a branch of psychology that is concerned with the systematic application of the behavioural science of psychology to the enhancement of life experience, work performance and wellbeing for individuals, groups and organisations. Coaching psychology focuses on facilitating goal attainment, and on enhancing the personal and professional growth and development of clients in personal life and in work domains.”

Coaching psychology is flourishing and providing wisdom and experience for everyone involved in the coaching process.

In 2003, Palmer and colleagues defined health coaching as “the practice of health education and health promotion within a coaching context, to enhance the wellbeing of individuals and to facilitate the achievement of their health-related goals.”

In 2013, Wolever and colleagues published a systematic review that defined the common elements of health coaching emerging in the literature. The coaching elements, in contrast with a focus on expert education, training, or clinical care, are:

• Coaches are trained in behavior change, motivational techniques
• Patient-centered (guided by patient values)
• Patient determined goals
• Self-discovery
• Accountability
• Combined with education
• Ongoing relationship

The formation in 2016 of the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC), a nonprofit affiliate of the National Board of Medical Examiners (developing physician licensing examinations in the US since 1015), has enabled the dissemination of the NBHWC definition of health and wellness coaching:

“Health and wellness coaches work with individuals and groups in a client-centered process to facilitate and empower the client to develop and achieve self-determined goals related to health and wellness.
Coaches support clients in mobilizing internal strengths and external resources, and in developing self-management strategies for making sustainable, healthy lifestyle, behavior changes.”

Importantly in healthcare, NBHWC defines the scope of practice for combining education with coaching: While health and wellness coaches do not diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or provide psychological therapeutic interventions, they may provide expert guidance in areas (consistent with treatment plans as prescribed by clients’ health care providers) in which they hold active, nationally recognized credentials, and may offer resources from nationally recognized organizations.

Grant (2014) defined life coaching as: “a collaborative solution focused, result-orientated and systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of life experience and goal attainment in the personal and/or professional life of normal, non-clinical clients.”

Other terms for life coaching include well-being coaching or positive psychology coaching.

Life coaching specialties have emerged including relationship coaching, career coaching, and retirement coaching.