Workplace Coaching

Workplace coaching is an organizational intervention that is designed to support and enhance individual and organizational performance. This article deals with workplace coaching, not life coaching, personal coaching, or sports coaching, although some publications cited may also have relevance for life coaching, personal coaching, or sports coaching. Workplace coaching is a relatively new field, with most of the research being conducted since 1995 – although a few earlier studies date as far back as 1937, when C. B. Gorby published “Everyone Gets a Share of the Profits” (Gorby 1937, cited under History and Trends in Workplace Coaching). Coaching is now widely used in organizations in a variety of different ways to achieve a range of different outcomes. The term is increasingly being applied to situations and environments that range from leadership development and career transition to supporting health-care interventions and improving safety outcomes. This diversity has led to confusion about the nature of coaching and its boundaries and, arguably, misunderstanding and misuse. Among academics and practitioners, opinions differ about the definition of coaching. Two definitions are offered to help clarify the terminology. In Coaching for Performance: GROWing People, Performance and Purpose (Whitmore 2017, cited under Coaching Practice and Skills), John Whitmore suggests that: “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them” (p. 8). He notes that “the dual generic goals of coaching are to deepen a person’s self-awareness and to increase the individual’s personal responsibility” (pp. 70–88). Jonathan Passmore and Annette Fillery-Travis in Passmore and Fillery-Travis 2011 (cited under History and Trends in Workplace Coaching) offer a technical definition of coaching: “a Socratic-based, future-focused dialogue between a facilitator (coach) and a participant (coachee/client), where the facilitator uses open questions, summaries and reflections which are aimed at stimulating the self-awareness and personal responsibility of the participant” (p. 74). This article will be of use to academics, researchers, practitioners, and students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in addition to students in high school.