Teaching is an incredibly old profession, dating back beyond Jesus, Socrates, Moses, the Buddha. And yet, it’s only been in the last decade or so that there has been a really coordinated international effort to answer the question “what works in teaching” i.e., what is the evidence base for how to teach.
If such an old profession as teaching is only just starting to look at the evidence base, it’s not surprising that
coaching, one of the newest professions, has some work to do in this area.
In this article, let’s look at this issue and see what conclusions we can draw.
How to work out what the evidence base is
Let’s continue the comparison with teaching, as it can be useful. In a way, coaching is much easier than teaching to evaluate. It’s just working with one person (normally) and helping one person work on a single issue or set of issues.
But in another way, it is much harder than teaching to evaluate. In teaching there is generally a skill or competency- based end goal. The student will be able to conjugate their verbs, remember Newton’s second law of motion or play an E minor scale. Whereas in coaching, the goals are always different, and aren’t actually achieved in the coaching room, but at some point, after.
All of this makes it hard to work out what the evidence base is. But we have started, as an industry
Efforts being made so far
When we look at what is happening in the coaching industry, we can see that some writers are taking a lead on this.
There are two books on evidence-based coaching, one by Eric de Haan of Ashridge, and the other by Tony Grant in Australia. Tatiana Bachkirova (Oxford Brookes) and Jonathan Passmore (Henley Business School) also write plenty about the evidence base in their writings. And what is starting to emerge is not a one size fits all approach, but more of a menu of choices.
In addition, there are some schools of coach training that draw on a particular approach which is rooted in evidence.
In particular, coaching psychology, gestalt coaching, and cognitive behavioural coaching all have academic
underpinnings.
It is interesting to note that the main coaching bodies are not really focussing on the evidence base. Their focus
tends to be on competencies (being able to assess coaches as meeting certain criteria), and ethics (being able to lay out codes of conduct)
Setting up an ethical based practice
This does feel like an advanced coaching approach. The beginnings of coach training involve getting to grips with the basics of managing coaching sessions. Follow this with the establishing of coaching businesses and learning to advance coaching skills. It is only probably after this stage when coaches can start to wonder about the evidence base and dive into the literature.
I’m not sure that this is the correct approach. Again, to apply this to other professions. In most professions the
evidence base is likely to underpin the initial training, to ensure that early learning doesn’t take the student into
unhelpful areas of practice. This is something that coach training providers could do well to review.
Coaches can do what I do – read the literature, make notes, talk to fellow coaches, and eventually come up with
their version of evidence-based practice. That’s ok, but it does seem like very hard work. As an industry, we could be doing more to simplify and make it accessible.
Tools and shiny things
Coaches often will see approaches, tools and techniques. They may read about them in a book or on social media, pick them up from fellow coaches, or be taught them in training. The temptation is to consider a tool as effective, just because it is a tool.
Sometimes that’s fine, and a tool can work very well. And sometimes there is a good evidence base to back it up. The classic “keep a gratitude journal” has a strong evidence base and is shown to be effective. Many life coaches
encourage their clients to do this.
Sometimes a tool or an approach sounds like a good idea, but there is no evidence to prove that it is effective. There may even be proof of the opposite. Take the idea that talking about a difficulty, or a negative emotion will always help the person to feel better. A coach can be tempted to carry on with the “tell me more” approach when the coachee is in a negative spiral, with the belief that talking it through will always help. The problem is that it doesn’t always help, and there is good research to show that this is a “tread very carefully” area.
The one that I fret about the most is what is known as the empty chair approach. Originally from the Gestalt school, it can look like quite a simple approach. Using the empty chair to embody the absent person or sitting in different chairs to talk through from different perspectives. I know both new and experienced coaches who use this approach.
The issue with it is that it is deceptively simple and does need some specialist training. I don’t use it for that reason.
Accidental use of the evidence base
One of the things about an evolving practice is that many coaches may be using evidence-based approaches, without even realising that there is an evidence base. For example, if a coach is talking themselves and their achievements down, and the coach asks “you’ve focussed on what isn’t so good. What about what is going well?”
This is a good example of a strengths-based approach, which has a strong evidence base.
It is fine to stumble across practices and approaches, even if they don’t come in a box marked “evidence based –
handle carefully.” We can still use them and be grateful that we stumbled across them.
My encouragement is to do a bit of cross referencing – look up any specific approach you find and see if there is
some evidence to substantiate it. That may give you a bit of reassurance
Final words
In the next year or so I will write more about the evidence base, will look to put a toolkit together, and will also
review our coaching training to make sure we are following what I am writing about. I think we are, but it is easy for
things to slip beneath the wire. And I encourage all coaches to do the same. If you have tried and tested methods, spend a bit of time checking them out and making sure they respond to the evidence base.
Happy coaching and happy evidence gathering.
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