Goal-focused Coaching

Theory and Practice

Yossi Ives, Elaine Cox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136476327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

This book offers a comprehensive, practical guide to goal-focused coaching. Addressing a significant gap in the literature, Ives and Cox contextualize goal-focused coaching within the broader coaching framework and explain the efficacy of this approach across a number of contexts and applications.

The book draws on behavioral science, rather than humanistic psychology, to provide a well-researched, evidence-based guide that includes:

• A detailed examination of the theoretical underpinnings of this approach
• A discussion of the skills, models and formats for goal-focused coaching
• Cutting edge insights into barriers to coaching and managing the coaching relationship
• Summaries, vignettes, references, and diagrams to aid learning

Goal-focused Coaching will be of interest to students taking classes in coaching, as well as professional executive coaches.

1 Introduction

Aims

• To explain Goal-focused Coaching (GFC);
• To outline the need for a theory of GFC;
• To provide a guide to reading the book and give an outline of the chapters that follow.

This book is aimed at filling a significant gap in the coaching literature. It combines a practical guide to the goal-focused approach to coaching with a theoretical underpinning in order to substantiate the approach and explain its efficacy across a number of contexts and applications.

Despite its importance in coaching practice, goal-focused coaching (hereafter referred to as GFC) is an area that has not so far attracted significant attention in the coaching literature. There have been occasional short chapters in books, most of which link GFC with brief coaching or solution-focused coaching, but do not explain the differences. In addition, there are a few notable academic writings (e.g. Cavanagh & Grant, 2010; Grant & O’Connor, 2010). However, notwithstanding the explosion of interest in and writing about coaching, the nature and application of GFC has been largely (and inexplicably) ignored. In fact, while most approaches to coaching involve the setting of goals (Garvey, Stokes & Megginson, 2009) GFC is currently very much a practice without a theory.

This book will therefore provide a much-needed comprehensive practical and theoretical guide to GFC. It will explain the unique dimensions of the approach while embracing the broader coaching processes and techniques. It also discusses a variety of applications of coaching that are made possible through a goal focus. The book contains more than 30 original diagrams and tables and numerous other user-friendly features, such as summaries, vignettes and useful references and tips. It is designed to meet the needs of busy practitioners, but at the same time to pay attention to scholarly accuracy and the importance of the theoretical foundations. The book capitalises on doctoral research and so has a wide-ranging theoretical orientation, which informs a new and systematic presentation of GFC.

A key aim of this book, as suggested, is to synthesise extant research into a theory of GFC. The book therefore draws on a range of theories, including goal theories, self-determination theories, motivation theories in education, selfregulated learning, social cognitive theory, self-regulation and volition theories, goal-focused coaching and solution-focused coaching.

To achieve this aim, it is first necessary to clarify the role and establish a definition of GFC. Following this, in the second section of this chapter, we justify the need for a theory of GFC, discussing the current eclectic and atheoretical nature of coaching in some detail and suggesting that coaches should make use of more thoroughgoing theoretical explorations in order to understand their work and provide a better service. In the third section, we outline our structure for the book.

Defining GFC

Based on a review of numerous coaching approaches (drawn primarily from coaching handbooks such as Drake, Brennan & Gortz, 2008; Palmer & Whybrow, 2007; Passmore, 2005; Peltier, 2001; Stober & Grant, 2006) it emerges that coaching approaches can be divided into two main applications: coaching to modify people’s actions (external) and coaching to change people’s attitudes (internal).

This distinction is akin to Peltier’s (2001) bifurcation of coaching into two main categories: executive coaching (internal, attitudinal) and a day-to-day management activity (external). It also shares some similarity with Summerfield’s (2006) division between ‘acquisitional’ coaching (acquires a new ability) versus ‘transformational’ coaching (undergoes personal change). GFC, we identify as being essentially about raising performance and supporting effective action, rather than addressing feelings and generating deep reflection. We suggest that GFC primarily aims for a level of operational change, rather than psychological restructuring (Hall & Duval, 2004) and looks primarily to make small, incremental improvements (Jackson & McKergow, 2008). According to this conception, its foremost intention is to promote immediate enhancement of productivity, rather than personal transformation of the coachee.

The approach to coaching taken in this book is rooted in the cognitive perspective. As we explore at length in Chapter 3, GFC presents coaching as an effective tool for managing the relationship between attributions and expectancies and goal-related activity. People’s actions are viewed as being more the result of cognition, attribution and expectancy than habit, drive and need. GFC foregrounds the role of conscious decisions and of goals in the process of human functioning (Bandura, 1986, 2001). Cognitive and environmental factors are viewed as more influential than stable personality dispositions. Thus, our conception of coaching marginalises trait, entity and personality type constructs in favour of directionality and level of aspiration (Pintrich & Schunk, 2003), including both internally-focused subconscious factors such as attributions and emotions as well as externally-focused, conscious factors such as goals. GFC also recognizes the centrality of self-efficacy beliefs, as they play a decisive role in influencing behaviour (Bandura, 1986) by impacting on choice, effort and determination (Bandura & Cervone, 1983; Schunk, 1991), and cognitive engagement (Schunk, 1984).

A key element of GFC is the role of goals as regulators of action. Goal theorists view life as a cyclical process of establishing and pursuing goals that energise and direct people’s activities (Ford, 1992; Latham, 2007; Locke & Latham, 1990). Consciously setting a goal stimulates a rigorous set of activities that focus the mind towards reaching the goal. Therefore, the most successful way of improving goal performance is to address the individual’s situated, immediate, conscious, personal goals (Locke & Latham, 2006).

GFC is thus viewed as a self-regulation tool. Self-regulation can be defined as the process whereby coachees activate and sustain the cognitions, behaviours and affects oriented towards attainment of their goals (Pintrich, 2000; Zimmerman, 1989). Self-regulation maintains concentration and directs effort by managing attentional and self-regulatory resources (Baumeister & Vohs, 2007; Mischel & Ayduk, 2007). Within this theoretical framework, interventions that seek to boost self-regulation are perceived as highly effective in bringing about positive outcomes by raising performance levels and by influencing future self-efficacy judgements.

However, the features of the goal, the directional variables, are the key factors for successful self-regulation (Rawsthorne & Elliot, 1999), and for maximising goal setting effectiveness. Goal setting is about discrepancy management, crafting the careful balance that is required to achieve optimum goal-oriented motivation. We shall explain further in Chapter 8 that disaggregating the goal is the key objective of goal implementation (Carver & Scheier, 1998).

Monitoring progress is also a key part of self-regulation and is at the heart of coaching since, as Carver & Scheier (1998 p. 34) claim, “increases in self-focus can promote increases in task-focus ,” facilitating appropriate adjustments to the goal (Carver, 2007). Feedback is viewed as crucial in both self-regulation and motivation theory (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996) and is highlighted in coaching texts (Parsloe & Wray, 2000; Whitmore, 2003). However, in GFC, feedback is recursive and is primarily used to inform future decisions and motivate future actions: it is intended to assess past performance and compare to goals set, rather than facilitate long-term learning and development (Ives, 2008).

In this book we will argue that GFC should be classified as a distinct variety of coaching, encompassing the various forms of coaching that are goal- or solution-focused, including:

• (1) Brief coaching (Berg & Szabo, 2005), which argues that short and focused interventions can be effective in generating lasting change;
• (2) Solution-focused coaching (Grant, 2003; Jackson & McKergow, 2008) which discourages problem analysis and promotes identifying and building on what works;
• (3) Goal-oriented models (Alexander & Renshaw, 2005; Grant, 2006; Greene & Grant, 2006) that view goal setting and action planning as central to the coaching process.

A fundamental feature of GFC is its relative disinterest in directly addressing underlying motives or resolving conflicting issues (Jackson & McKergow, 2008; Whitmore, 2003). Goal-oriented approaches adopt a practical stance towards their coachee’s problems and avoid delving into the underlying aspects of the coachee’s life, in contrast to many other approaches to coaching that seek to address deeper dimensions of personality (Peterson, D. B., 2006; Snyder, 1995). Grant (2006 p. 156) argues that coaching supports “solution construction in preference to problem analysis,” and Jackson and McKergow (2008 p. 25) insist that “understanding why things are how they are does little to help you decide what to do.” Proponents of goal-oriented coaching thus view coaching as a method of helping coachees to reframe their challenges as practical problems, and to help them discover the required internal and external resources. Goal-oriented approaches generally focus on specific aims, seeking to integrate an ongoing self-regulatory process into daily modes of behaviour, rather than aiming for a clear life-changing breakthrough.

The Need for a Theory of GFC

As suggested above, from a reading of the many books and articles on coaching that have been published in recent years it could be concluded that coaching is the victim of an identity crisis, and that “creating a unique identity of coaching is still an unresolved problem” (Bachkirova, Cox & Clutterbuck, 2010 p. 3). Coaching is often given contradictory interpretations and incompatible connotations. We therefore believe it is vital for the various forms of coaching to be clarified and defined and this book contributes towards remedying the problem for GFC and related approaches.

Although there has been a growth in evidence-based coaching (Skiffington & Zeus, 2003; Stober & Grant, 2006), most of what has been written on coaching is decidedly non-scientific. Rigorous studies looking at the effects of coaching are sparse, as are studies about the most effective coaching methods. While there have been repeated calls for research to be undertaken (Jackson, 2008; O’Broin & Palmer, 2006), the coaching field remains mostly uncharted territory (Garvey et al., 2009). Additionally, little of the ‘evidence’ that is used to inform coaching practice is built on empirical research into coaching; rather it relies on a range of theories from other helping fields, such as adult learning (Cox, 2006), humanist psychotherapy (Stober, 2006), personal development (Berger, 2006), and positive psychology (Kauffman, 2006). In fact, as Garvey et al. (2009 p. 25) argue coaching is in the ‘swampy lowlands’, lacking a firm research base. What little research there is they lament for being “fragmented, partisan and impressionistic” (p. 40). They further note that “there are almost more surveys of the field bemoaning its quality than there are quality studies doing something to improve the situation” (p. 45).

Moreover, there appears to be a lack of clear evidence for the transfer of ideas and techniques from these disciplines to the field of coaching: Drake (2008 p. 20) argues that “coaching would gain more credibility if coaches would make more explicit and transparent the connections between their theoretical base, practice methods and client results,” and while coaches insist that their work is distinct from therapeutic approaches, many continue to cite evidence from psychotherapy without empirical evidence ofits relevance to the coaching discipline (Bachkirova, 2007). Linley (2006 p. 4) for example, suggests that there is potential for benefiting from the ‘common factors’ between the therapy and coaching and advocates adopting lessons from the therapy literature, if nothing else “as a basis from which to construct critical coaching research questions.” However, the areas of commonality are a matter of considerable debate and we agree with Stober, Wildflower and Drake (2006 p. 3) who acknowledge that “evidence based coaches would do well to first evaluate the evidence’s applicability” to coaching before extrapolating from other disciplines.

The assumption is that best practice and scientific data derived from other fields, after appropriate adjustment, is relevant to coaching. While this is possibly a plausible argument, it is largely unsubstantiated (Palmer & Whybrow, 2007) in that the research just does not exist. The problem of extrapolation is considerably worse for GFC approaches. Here, we would argue that the comparison to personal development and therapeutic interventions, for instance, is less justified, rendering research and evidence on the effectiveness of GFC particularly crucial and our task in this book vital.

Besides a weak evidence base, then, coaching lacks theoretical underpinning (Jackson, 2008). However, there is little consensus about which core theoretical principles underlie coaching (Gray, 2006): for the most part principles have been rooted in an assortment of psychological disciplines, such as gestalt (Allan & Whybrow, 2007), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) (Auerbach, 2006; Ducharme, 2004; Neenan, 2006; Palmer & Szy-manska, 2007; Peltier, 2001; Sherrin & Caiger, 2004), psychoanalysis (Allcorn, 2006; Lee, 2010), behavioural psychology (Alexander, 2006; Peterson, D. B., 2006; Skiffington & Zeus, 2003;), appreciative inquiry (Gordon, 2008), solution-focused therapy (de Shazer, 1988), and person-centred psychotherapy (de Haan, 2008; Joseph, 2010; Pemberton, 2006; Stober, 2006).

Thus, most of the theoretical foundations attributed to coaching are drawn from a variety of disciplines (Williams, P., 2008), and are transplanted into coaching, rather than being empirically tested in the field or developed organically from practice. Books that explore the roots of coaching sometimes read as a catalogue of ideas drawn from across the full range of mainly psychology literature, displaying little in terms of theoretical integration. In fact, it would seem that authors often embrace conflicting paradigms without acknowledging that this is happening, as identified by Cox (2005), Bachkirova, et al. (2010) and Ives (2008). Furthermore, those works that explore the theoretical foundations of coaching often celebrate eclecticism, a tendency which has been justifiably criticised for lacking coherence (Jackson, 2008).

Jackson (2008) advocates challenging the overly eclectic, theory-free approach to coaching, and cautions that not recognising inherent theory risks leaving coaching without any serious foundations. Similarly, Barner and Higgins (2007 p. 149) argue that problems occur when coaches fail to clarify their predominant theoretical orientation: “When we lack a clear understanding of the theory base that shapes our practice, we are less likely to adapt our practice to those shortcomings and constraints that accompany the particular model that we employ.” In our view, an empirical, evidence-based approach is essential since it extends knowledge beyond the idiosyncratic eclecticism of the individual coach and feeds into a more complete, theoretical commons that can become a resource for the profession.

Coaching is versatile and can be applied to a diverse range of circumstances, needs and types of people and so it is only natural that it will encompass a wide range of approaches to meet those needs, address those circumstances and suit those people. Furthermore, specific models or approaches will be relevant at different times or situations. Thus, coaching theory rightly needs to acknowledge the diversity of legitimate approaches that the coaching discipline encompasses. However, in practice such coaching theory has been left largely undeveloped. What each coaching approach needs is its own theory: an organised logical basis for its proposed course of action.

Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory

To allay the concerns that many practitioners have regarding theory, it needs to be noted that theory need not be abstract, and it need not be removed from real-life knowledge. Schon (1991) distinguished between ‘technical rationality,’ which is taught didactically and ‘theories in use,’ which are accumulated through experience. He argued that the latter are superior. Coaching theory, too, can be generated by subjecting the experiences of coaches to careful analysis and thoughtful consideration. Coaching practice needs increasing levels of critical inquiry to challenge assumptions, research effectiveness and ensure the healthy development of the discipline.

Theory is not about establishing strict cause and effect, which is not desirable and arguably is not even possible, as no two human situations are ever identical. However, revealing social mechanisms, patterns and systems, much like meteorologists or economists do, can help to guide the person towards more intelligent decision-making. What jurisprudence is for law, coaching theory is for coaching practice. Much as engineers are taught the physics behind design, so too coaches should be master designers of coaching interventions. To do this,...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Goal-focused Coaching
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword by Anthony
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What Is Goal-focused Coaching?
• 3 Goal-focused Coaching Theory
• 4 Goal-focused Methodology
• 5 Relationship Management in Goal-focused Coaching
• 6 The Coaching Cycle
• 7 Team, Group and Peer Coaching with a Goal Focus
• 8 Goal Setting
• 9 Action Planning
• 10 Commitment in Goal-focused Coaching
• 11 Questioning and Listening Skills
• 12 The Complete GFC Process
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index