Coaching means many things to many people, not only in different parts of the world and of the United States, but also in different disciplines within the United States and then in different parts of the world in the same way.  There’s a multitude of things that people are calling executive and leadership and organizational coaching, or executive coaching. Here’s a critical consequence of that imprecision:  When it’s hard to agree on what it is that we’re going to include in the research, because we all have different definitions, it’s very hard to know even what kind of research to do with whom.

Then comes the design of how do we do that, how do we get the real experts in research?  Because I’m a PhD and I was trained as a researcher, I happen to understand, to some degree anyway, what is good research design.  I’m familiar with what are good qualitative and quantitative studies, and things like when do you use control groups, how you can do that, what kind of statistical analyses you should be able to do to make it generalizable, so that we can interpret what is applicable in one situation versus all situations, or at least to what degree can we generalize findings.

I understand that, so there’s where I bridge, as a lot of other people who have backgrounds in social sciences or medical science, or anthropology.  A lot of people in coaching have backgrounds that include research expertise, and they can be bridges between the experts in research and the experts in practice. They’re doing practice, they’re doing a little bit of research, and they understand research enough to connect the two.  Does that answer your question?

RESEARCH IN COACHING HISTORY

Bill Carrier: Very much so. You’ve been talking about this particular bridge between practice and research, and I know that you’ve written about the difficulties in research on coaching.  Can you help us understand a little bit about, first, how you got involved in the idea of research broadly serving the field of coaching?  I know, for example, you were involved in the ICRF, the Institute of Coaching Leadership Forum at Harvard, which was convened to set up an agenda and guidelines for research that would help advance the field.  Then I’d like you to talk a little bit about your own research into the research.

Lew Stern: Absolutely.  Where would you like me to start?