PREFACE
Our entrance at the Hudson Institute into the coaching arena in the late 1980s was distinct from many others: we had deep roots in the domain of academia and a long history of developing experiential adult learning curricula in human and organizational systems and psychology. In 1986, Frederic Hudson left his post as the founding president of the Fielding Graduate University, and I was engaged in a clinical psychology practice and organizational work. Together we embarked on creating an organization that was originally focused on mentoring midlife adult leaders who wanted to craft important changes in their lives.
Frederic brought his background in philosophical studies along with a successful history in building adult learning curricula in human and organizational systems and clinical psychology. He had studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich and was influenced by the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Walter Rauschenbusch during his doctoral years at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. I added my background in clinical and organizational work to our efforts, along with years of training and learning in family systems theory through the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic under the leadership of Salvador Minuchin, Gestalt group and team training with Miriam and Irving Polster, transactional analysis training with Robert and Mary Goulding, and extensive neoanalytical work.
During the Fielding years, both Frederic and I had the advantage of knowing and working with some of the great thought leaders in organizational development and the field of psychology. The list included Malcolm Knowles, father of adult learning; Robert Tannenbaum, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, organizational guru, and author of several books on change inside organizations; Edgar Schein and his well-known process consultation model; Richard Beckhard, organizational development guru and author; Marjorie Lowenthal Fiske, well-known developmentalist and researcher on intentionality; Robert Goulding, founder of redecision psychotherapy; Art Chickering, professor and author who taught us that learning changes as we develop; social scientist Nevitt Sanford; and so many more influencers, including Vivian McCoy, Carol Gilligan, and Daniel Levinson.
Development throughout the course of our lives as individuals, and in systems and organizations as well, has been researched and understood through the many lenses of psychology, adult development, organizational and leadership development, change theory, and more. Work—from the seminal concept of individuation articulated from the perspectives of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and others, to Erik Erikson’s and Daniel Levinson’s age and stage theories, Jean Piaget’s and Robert Kegan’s conception of levels of development, Gerald and Marianne Corey’s work on team and group development, and Eric Flamholtz’s work on the developmental trajectory of an organization—provides an important window into the developmental process of the human journey in the context of our many human systems.
Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs to accentuate the developmental nature of our wish to strive for more. Erikson taught us about the layers of identity we develop over the life course. Kegan draws our attention to understanding the implications of stages of adult development relative to individuation, and Gilligan focuses attention on the gender differences in our developmental journey. Psychology teaches us a healthy respect for the power of the past when we are working to make changes, and the subfield of positive psychology illuminates areas of particular relevance to coaching in leadership domains, including emotional intelligence, optimism, and engagement factors. The field of neuroscience demonstrates the power of mindfulness in providing the resilience we need to make crucial changes in our daily lives. Systems theory illuminates for us the power of homeostasis in a system of any size and the challenge we have as coaches to fully appreciate and work to uncover the natural underlying resistance to change. Charles Handy teaches us about the paradox involved in any change and the force at which change is hurling itself onto us as a culture today.
Learning theory includes the contributions of David Kolb, Chris Argyris, Malcolm Knowles, and others and teaches us how learning, ranging from deep transformative learning to smaller behavioral shifts, occurs and articulates the ingredients that must be in place for learning to be optimal. As coaches, we know that experientially based learning is one of the most vital elements in developing, growing, and changing during our adult years. Finally, philosophy always continues to be a source of wisdom, and the contemporary postmodern work of Manuel Flores, Ken Wilbur, and others builds on these philosophical roots while seeking to articulate an overarching theory of development that transcends all preexisting conceptualizations and combining the best of Eastern and Western thinking.
At one time in history, the sigmoid curve seemed to do a pretty good job of summing up the story of life as individuals and as businesses. We begin the journey slowly, experimenting, vacillating, and wavering along the way; we wax and then we slow down and inevitably decline and wane. Today it’s not that simple. Whether we turn to the well-known developmental and longitudinal work of Erikson or the organizational life cycle articulated by Flamholtz, a thoroughly predictable linear pattern in this late-industrial age is no longer workable as a blueprint for our development. Life is changing too rapidly to hold on to a predictable map with a one-way direction. As Hudson (1999) writes, “Since the industrial revolution, linear thinking has dominated our consciousness until now with its basic notions of progress, perfectionism, success, happiness, and planned change. A linear perspective portrays life as a series of advances from simple to complex, from lower to higher, and from good to better” (p. 30). Luckily life today includes multilayered complexities and possibilities, and choices in our lives exist at all points in the adult journey.
Today change happens at lightning speed within the individual human system and the largest of organizations. Our challenge is not just managing and surviving change; it’s learning to live with it, use it to our advantage, and remain fully engaged and alive at all points in the journey. As we orient our lives to this time in history, we shift from a predictable linear paradigm toward a cyclical and developmental one. And this is where the emerging role of coaching gains particular relevance.
At the Hudson Institute, we advocate a holistic model in coaching that encompasses and accounts for the context in which we live while simultaneously acknowledging our individual journey in life. Whether coaching a leader at the peak of his career, an early career person looking to define her own path, or a successful midcareer leader who is burned out and bored, it’s essential we understand the developmental terrain in all contexts.
When we wrote the first edition of The Handbook of Coaching in 1999, we postulated that this emerging field of coaching seemed to be surfacing in response to the culture crisis of the 1990s that brought about immense change and created anxiety and confusion over how to continue to use old roles that governed our lives so well in the past and seemed increasingly irrelevant.
At that time, we outlined a series of principles that were emerging out of this cultural crisis. Today, over a decade later, these same principles are proving essential for our ability to thrive in this century:
Four Principles for the Twenty-First Century
In our first edition of this book, we regarded coaching as a new skill set and a potential stand-alone field focused on helping individuals and systems develop and sustain resilience and renewal at each step in life’s developmental journey. We conceived of coaching as a synthesis of mentoring and guiding—a skill set often combined with consulting, leading, and managing. Over time the emerging field has refined itself. Skill-based competencies have become more reliably consistent, and best and next practices have developed through study, action research, and practice.
Coaching continues to grow at a rapid pace as a skill set and as an emerging field of study. Growth is strongest in the coaching of leaders at all levels in all varieties of settings, from the large corporate environment, to the entrepreneurial venture, to the family business enterprise. What remains true in this rapidly changing field of coaching is what we wrote about this then new field in our first edition: “A coach helps a client see options for becoming a better version of one’s self. The appeal of the profession is in the satisfaction good coaches take in seeing their clients discard the old, fixed, constricting rules and begin to develop new behaviors and ways of being in their world that give them the strength to thrive in whatever situation they find themselves.”
Our original view of this emerging field of coaching in 1999 included a much broader view from that which has evolved. Coaching today is primarily focused on leadership challenges and development at all levels in organizations large and small and in key transition work at each stage in the developmental journey that adults take.
The purpose of this Completely Revised Handbook is more ambitious than the first edition, with more focus on the specific elements necessary in supporting masterful coaching and much less attention to resources and bibliographical references. This completely revised edition provides seasoned and novice coaches with an overview of the essential elements required on the journey to mastery, including a thorough understanding of the key role of self as coach; a robust and agile coaching methodology; a review of theories and concepts informing the essential pillars of masterful coaching; a holistic understanding of the client’s life through the lens of transitions, values, and human systems; a look at the development of a coaching culture inside today’s organizations, as well as the value of a coaching skill set for today’s managers; and finally all that’s required on the coach’s journey to mastery, including the growing role of supervision in a coach’s development.
The Completely Revised Handbook is written for these audiences:
The book begins with a brief examination of the history of coaching and the field as it exists today and the current state of coaching. The heart of the book that follows is divided into seven parts. In Part One, we begin by looking at the changes in the landscape of coaching since the first edition of this book twelve years ago. From nascent to current state, the development of the profession of coaching mirrors changing needs and changing times.
Part Two focuses on what we term self as coach: self-knowledge and the all-important use of self as the essential ingredient without which effective coaching does not exist. Knowledge of self includes awareness and insight into our limits, assumptions, beliefs, biases, and blind spots that guide and restrain us in working with others, understanding and empathizing with others, and more. We introduce the concept of leading from behind in Chapter Five and explore how this perspective is important in creating sustainable change that the client owns.
Part Three, devoted to theories and concepts of coaching, examines the intellectual underpinnings of coaching and provides a brief review of the growing body of research and literature on the current state of the field. These are described in Chapters Six to Nine. We believe it’s essential for practitioners to have a sense of the broad intellectual roots of the field of coaching, from psychological and social theories to developmental and systems perspectives, and the newest domains of neuroscience, somatics, positive psychology, and others. We must be well grounded in theories and practices that inform our work.
In Part Four, we provide a broad overview of the work of a coach. We then outline the critical role of an underlying methodology in coaching and examine the details of the methodology overlaying case studies that allow us to put methodology to practice.
In Part Five, we provide a broad holistic and developmental perspective of the client’s life through the lenses of transitions, human systems, and values. We examine the role of transition and change in our work as coach, study the relevance of understanding the basic values and sense of purpose in the life of our client, explore the complex human systems at play in our client’s lives, and demonstrate the power of a bigger, broader vision in the client’s life. We conclude this part with an examination of the adult learning agenda.
Part Six explores the essential elements in the development of a coaching culture, as well as the role of the manager as coach and developer of their people. The chapters in this part include key skills needed for moving from a managing mind-set to a coaching mind-set, as well as a tool kit for how to conduct just-in-time coaching sessions.
Part Seven examines the journey to mastery in the development of a coach. We study coaching practice through the lens of the novice, the midstage coach, and the masterful coach and overlay a series of case studies to ground us in the development of a coach that occurs over time and practice combined with continuous learning. We then explore the multilayered role of supervision—self, peer, internal organizational, individual, and group—and present an initial model for group supervision. The final chapter returns to the main models (elements of masterful coaching, self as coach, coaching methodology) and concludes with ten strategies for staying on the journey to mastery.