The Philosophical Influences that have Shaped Coaching

SOME BINDING THEMES

We have now looked at six philosophers and their potential impact on coaching practice. To summarize, from Socrates we take the concept of dialectical enquiry; from Descartes, self awareness and the start of an individualist world view; from Locke and Hume the challenge of sense experience and the rejection of the a priori; from Kant the synthesis of the objective and subjective worlds; and from Dewey the practical application of knowledge as ongoing discovery. Some themes have emerged from these discussions that might be seen to bear exploration by practitioners in their own right:

• The dialectic as a founding principle: coaching involves an exchange of viewpoints. Is this to say that we cannot coach ourselves? Indeed we can; yet doing so requires that we somehow stand outside of our current perceptual, mental or emotional world. This is essentially what we offer as coaches.
• The relative weight of internal and external worlds: there is power in an empathetic acknowledgment of an individual’s worldview in order to foster confidence and in providing a critical foil to these very same worldviews in order to stimulate growth.
• The variability of our processes in seeking to understand the external world: both as coaches and as clients we must acknowledge that our perceptions are tentative and relative.
• The need to act on something: coaching can be seen as a reflexive process of putting philosophy into action.

We would add a fifth theme that is only implicit in our investigation of epistemology but is constantly triggered by it in our practice:

• Coaching is a relationship between two people.

We claimed in the Introduction that the goal of philosophy was to pursue effective action and the ‘good’ life through abstract thought and that coaching parallels this objective in relation to another person, the client. However, coaching must be more than a collection of tools for knowing and a coach is more than ‘gadfly’. Coaching draws on the dialectic nature of philosophy with its focus on the relationship and dialogue between two people – two fallible, different, inconsistent selves with their own perceptions and experience. Coaches have to manage both of the aspects of this dialectic in order to be effective in working with their clients. As an example of how these two sides of the process come together, take this extract from Rogers (2004) which was first published in 1967, based on a lecture given in 1954:

It is only as I understand the feelings and thoughts which seem so horrible to you, or so weak, or so sentimental, or bizarre – it is only as I see them as you see them, and accept them and you, that you feel really free to explore all the hidden nooks and frightening crannies of your inner and often buried experience. (p. 34)