Coaching Philosophy, Eclecticism and Positivism:

Transcription

1 59 Coaching Philosophy, Eclecticism and Positivism: A Commentary Elaine Cox Oxford Brookes University Business School, Wheatley Campus, Oxford, OX33 1HX, UK ecox@brookes.ac.uk INTRODUCTION The function of Simon Jenkins article is to act as a catalyst to facilitate reflection on coaching philosophy, especially in relation to eclecticism. In this response I want to comment on how an obsession with individualism, which manifests as valuing personal philosophy, may be in conflict with the service coaches would wish to provide for their clients and the contribution they would wish to make to the developing coaching profession. My response is in two parts: the first part makes some observations on the role of personal/professional philosophy and eclecticism; and the second offers coaches a pragmatic solution that I claim would really fulfil their commitment to clients and, as importantly, the profession. PERSONAL/PROFESSIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND ECLECTICISM The personal/professional philosophy approach to coaching appears ubiquitously attractive to coaches. I suggest that there are two reasons for this. First, coaches are led by a philosophy that tends implicitly to follow the person-centred approach of Carl Rogers [1], where the emphasis is on the truth of the client s state - a realist notion that builds on the idea that within the client there is a person, a self, to be understood. Second, similarly, they expect to be guided by their own values and beliefs in the conviction that to be a good coach one must be authentic. This belief also implies that everyone has a core self to whom they must be true. This approach, in turn, has an effect on how coaches practice. Because they are guided by their values and beliefs, it follows that whatever they choose in the way of models and tools to enhance practice must also be right. Jenkins presents an extract from Jenny Rogers [2] where she provides a history of her theoretical influences. From this account, it appears as though she uses these influences in a rationalist way to explain that what she is doing is right. She also appears to make eclecticism respectable. By making her own beliefs and values, albeit influenced by theory, the sole influencers in her practice she reifies them. Many coaches and therapists work in this way.

2 60 Annual Review of High Performance Coaching & Consulting 2011 Despite its focus on practice, it should be explained that this client-centred eclecticism has little in common with a truly pragmatic approach, as I shall explain shortly, but hinges on the view that the coach s beliefs and values are true (authentic) and must influence practice in order for it to be valid. Ives and Cox [3] point out that such eclecticism leads to an atheoretical, and therefore unthinking, use of coaching models and tools, which are drawn from a variety of disciplinary areas and used without recourse to their origin. The argument is that having no evidence base or theoretical ground with which to articulate coaching practice, leaves coaching with impoverished theories and no specific body of knowledge upon which to base its growth into a recognised and respected profession. Jackson [4] recognised this danger, suggesting that not recognising the inherent theory underpinning all practice leaves coaching without any serious foundations. Barner and Higgins go further, arguing that having no clear understanding of the theory results in limitations in our coaching work, since without theory we are less likely to recognise and adapt our practice and to detect inadequacies and constraints that may attend the particular models that we use [5, p. 149]. Poczwardowski however, appears to champion this form of eclecticism, suggesting it should not be mistaken for no paradigm but rather as a creative synthesis construed from multiple perspectives without loss of their commitment to their personal core values and beliefs [6, p. 453]. However, I believe that this emphasis on personal core values and beliefs is mistaken. It is the word commitment that is wrong here. For no one, I would argue, should be committed to their values and beliefs. Indeed, I go as far as to say that to be a good coach, values and beliefs need to be malleable, flexible and open to challenge. So rather than being core values and beliefs, they need to be held up for examination at every opportunity. Also, because coaches values and beliefs may sometimes be unsound (just as clients values and beliefs may also be faulty) the quest to be true to oneself may be unhelpful. Mezirow [7] explains how people s meaning perspectives or habits of mind can be distorted, and how through critical reflection they can be transformed. This transformation process is similar to that described by pragmatist William James where he explains how all truths are regularly challenged through experience and change as a result: The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of facts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which they cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he tries to change first this opinion, and then that (for they resist change very variously), until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience and runs them into

3 Coaching Philosophy, Eclecticism and Positivism: A Commentary 61 one another most felicitously and expediently. [8, p. 32] I see my task in this commentary as being to highlight how many of our opinions about coaching may be old, they may, using Mezirow s terminology, be distorted, and that the way to overcome that charge is to remain open to other ideas. There may be occasions in the service of the client where we have to abandon personal beliefs, our habits of mind temporarily and concentrate on the immediate, practical needs of the situation. We may ask ourselves, what is more important as a coach, being myself or being in the service of my client (or my profession)? This could result in coaches holding no values, only the value that they value openness. I realise here that I am inevitably introducing my own values and beliefs, but I make no apology, I want to argue that in valuing openness, coaches become guardians of professional values, beliefs, knowledge and understanding. They become pragmatists and are not only less concerned with the personal philosophies that they might once have held, they are also less concerned with the fixidity of extant theories or the search for integration. What they are most concerned with is what is best for practice and how that informs theories for the benefit of clients and for other practitioners. A PRAGMATIC SOLUTION The pragmatic approach, which I believe coaches should adopt, recognises theories as important, but sees them as socially constructed truths, ripe for amendment: as James [8] points out the term pragmatism is derived from the Greek word pragma, meaning action. So the pragmatist coach would take the tools and techniques that he/she believes might be useful in a certain situation, based on others accounts of effectiveness, and then apply those choices in practice, thus testing the them in an applied way. The method of pragmatism then asks that the evidence from application be mapped back to relevant theoretical origins to check if all aspects remain true. Was the recommendation made by the original theory true and in what ways should it be modified to meet particular needs? The pragmatic method then merely insists that truths be tested against practice or action. Similarly our own truths, our beliefs and values, need to be challenged. I see the pragmatic approach to coaching practice as overcoming many of the flaws in current thinking about coaching. It justifies an initial eclectic approach, appeases calls for integration, over-rides a top-down, single school approach and gets us away from an emphasis on the individual coaches values and beliefs. A pragmatic, empirical position expands the meaning perspectives of the practitioner, takes the emphasis away from the individual as having some core of inner truth and extends human knowledge beyond the personal knowledge of the individual, or the orthodoxy of particular theories, and outwards towards a more comprehensive, socially constructed, theoretical commons that can become a basis for a profession and a professional philosophy that all can build and share. Lampropoulos [9], cited in the article by Jenkins, has argued that empirical research is necessary in order to assess whether interventions are as effective or harmonious in their new framework [9, p12]. This is a pragmatic approach, and what Lampropoulos calls the contradictory hodgepodge that is often the result of

4 62 Annual Review of High Performance Coaching & Consulting 2011 technical eclecticism is not acceptable in this paradigm. Pragmatism charges us with undertaking empirical research that will unravel the contradictions and the hodgepodge and provide a firm base for practice. So the eclectic use of tools and techniques is admissible only in so far as coaches are using them in an exploratory way that will ultimately serve to inform future understanding - their own and preferably others - through contributions to practitioner and research literature using critical action research and case studies, for instance. My personal philosophy (which I hope is always open to transformation) currently drives me to believe that we can only be better at coaching if we do something following on from our practice, by following the action with something that in turn modifies and informs the extant theory. If I use a tool in practice that has its origins in a certain theoretical approach, I can either trust blindly that this will work in whatever circumstance, or keep any reservations to myself, or I can contribute empirically to the expansion and development of the theory, through critical reflective practice and empirical exploration. As James explains: You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed. [8, p. 30] A reflexive, pragmatic approach to practice overcomes the domination of theoretical paradigms by allowing us all to be researchers. CONCLUSION If, as coaches, we position ourselves as pragmatists many of our problems with theory and eclecticism recede. We no longer get accused of being atheoretical or eclectic and we can be openly client centred with a focus very much on practice (rather than personal philosophy). In fact, as I have tried to argue here, our professional philosophy should not be a personal philosophy, but a shared philosophy built by a community of practice; a community of practice founded on evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence. REFERENCES 1. Rogers, C.R., Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, Rogers, J., Coaching Skills: A Handbook, 2 nd edn., Open University Press, New York, Ives, Y. and Cox, E., Goal Focused Coaching, New York: Routledge, Jackson, P. Does it matter what the coach thinks? A new foundation for professional development. In D. B. Drake, D. Brennan & K. Gortz (Eds.), The Philosophy and Practice of Coaching: Insights and Issues for a New Era (pp ). London, England: Wiley, Barner, R., and Higgins, J. Understanding implicit models that guide the coaching process. Journal of Management Development, 2008, 26 (2), Pocwardowski, A., Sherman, C.P. and Ravizza, K., Professional Philosophy in the Sport Psychology Service Delivery: Building on Theory and Practice, The Sport Psychologist, 2004, 18, Mezirow, J., Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 1990.

5 Coaching Philosophy, Eclecticism and Positivism: A Commentary James, W., Pragmatism: A Series of Lectures by William James, , Arc Manor, Lampropoulos, G.K., Bridging Technical Eclecticism and Theoretical Integration: Assimilative Integration, Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 2001, 11(1), 5-19.

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