Executive Coaching: Towards a Dynamic Alliance of Psychotherapy and Transformative Learning Processes

Coaching is emerging as a major professional development and performance enhancement process. There are, however, few professional development programmes aimed at coaches themselves, and no internationally recognized qualification or professional standard. Much of the literature on coaching has been written by those with a human psychology perspective, and particularly psychotherapeutic approaches to support. Yet some psychotherapeutic processes assume longer term relationships between the coach and the coachee. Many businesses and managers themselves, however, seek focused solutions to immediate problems. This article offers adult learning theory, and specifically transformative learning, as an alternative or parallel theoretical model for underpinning the coaching processes. All coaches, however, need to be aware that the coaching process may open up deep-seated anxieties, some of which are more appropriately addressed by a psychotherapeutic approach. Hence, a dynamic network model of coaching is proposed, in which psychotherapists and non-therapists collaborate to facilitate their mutual professional coaching development, learning and support.