How do we know that someone is ready for coaching, and that they’re not ready for coaching:  what criteria are used to evaluate readiness?  How is the decision being made on who is coached and not?

How is assessment being used?  Is it worthwhile doing, and if so, what kinds of assessment and data gathering, such as standardized instruments, observation, 360’s, et cetera?

Finally, the last area is the impact of coaching on society, and that’s the area that matters most to me, because we can do all of this and it’s nice to have an impact on one individual, but wouldn’t it be nice for coaching to have an impact on the crazy world that we’re living in?  Saving the planet from this self-destruction and from killing each other, and supporting a quality of life for all the poor people in the world and the people going through war in every part of the world?  Wouldn’t it be nice if coaching could have an impact on the people who influence the state of the world and the survival of our planet for generations to come?

STATE OF RESEARCH NOW

Bill Carrier: When you’re starting to look at all of this research across four and a half years, at all of the peer-reviewed articles about coaching research, what did you find?

Lew Stern: The good news is that there’s a little research going on.  The bad news is there’s very little, and it’s not systematically being managed, so most of the questions aren’t being addressed.  Basic research is not being done, so we don’t know what the shared definitions are.  We don’t know how coaching is defined in different parts of the world.  We don’t know what is going on in the coaching room or on the teleconference when people are doing coaching.  We don’t know the actual dynamics.

We don’t know whether or not it’s getting the results.  We don’t know what results are being measured.  We don’t know whether or not a coach with one kind of background and certain kinds of training and certain competencies does any better on certain results than any other kind of coach.  We don’t know what kind of impact the organizational system or a person’s life system has on outcomes and the degree to which a coach needs to understand that in order to help the individual.  We don’t know what processes work better than any others.  We don’t know whether or not there are certain things about contracting that can increase the efficacy of coaching.

We don’t know what research designs would give us the most efficient and yet most useful results, and internationally we don’t know the impact that coaching is having on societies.

We do know that a lot is going on, but the research that has been conducted has not systematically gathered that data to know what is going on in what parts of the world with what kinds of results.