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When prospective coaching students do their initial research to find a suitable advanced programme they tend to look for evidence of theoretical rigour balanced with opportunities to practise. Some also check whether there is an accent on personal development and, if so, how it is addressed. They recog- nise that effective coach training requires more than a focus on tools, tech- niques and models.

There are many vehicles through which coaches can focus on their own personal development and gain greater self-awareness, insight and knowl- edge. Some of these activities can be undertaken in parallel and some may already be structured into an advanced coach training programme. They are: 106 PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS OF EXECUTIVE COACHING

1 Coaching psychology programmes 2 Counselling/psychology training 3 Being coached 4 Personal therapy/counselling 5 Experiential workshops 6 Ongoing groups 7 Supervision 8 Personal study/reading

Options for self-development

Coaching psychology programmes are new to the coaching field but can be expected to proliferate in the coming years. It is common for coaches to reach a point when they ask themselves whether they need to undertake a longer programme of development in psychology, psychotherapy or counselling. Some do and find it of great value to them in their coaching. It may take them off in the direction of becoming a professional therapist, counsellor or psy- chologist. Most, of course, don’t because of the time, commitment and cost. A full psychological training will always provide knowledge and skills that will enhance coaching effectiveness, but for many coaches it will be a step too far. The issue of being coached raises the interesting point that many prac- tising coaches appear to have little personal experience of being on the receiving end of coaching unless they have undertaken training that uses the practice/feedback model or where a course requirement stipulated a certain number of hours to be coached.

For many, therapy still has an unfavourable association with it: it suggests you are not functioning well enough – a theme that doesn’t always sit well in coaching. For that reason many trainee coaches baulk at the idea of going into therapy themselves. Yet therapy remains one of the most powerful processes available to people to go deeper into their personal development issues and, for some, may be the only way they will ever truly understand and make progress on some of their most persistent, intractable personal patterns. Therapy and counselling training typically involve being in the client seat as part of the overall development process. Though this can be fairly minimal, around 40 hours, it nevertheless provides the trainee counsellor or psychologist with a taste of what it means to be in that vulnerable place while also providing an opportunity to address more deep-seated issues. Some coach trainings are following suit in that they are building into their struc- tures that course members must be on the receiving end of coaching for precisely the same reasons.

Attending workshops and ongoing experiential groups can also be an enormously helpful route to self-development. The group environment offers a feedback-rich learning context where coaches can extend their self- and

social awareness, experiment with new behaviours and discover more about their impact and presence. Short courses and workshops in psychological frameworks such as psychosynthesis and Gestalt will typically combine content-specific learning with important personal growth opportunities.

Perhaps the most underestimated vehicle and the most difficult to find is the ongoing experiential group. Older readers may recall the T-groups, encounter groups and consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s and 1970s, which for some was their original learning ground for psychologically focused work. Whilst derivatives of these do exist they are far fewer and harder to locate. This kind of ongoing group is a special place and relationships achieve great depth. For these reasons they can be a central part of a coach’s self- development journey.

Any list of methods to develop oneself must include reading and private study. There is now a massive number of self-development manuals and success literature, which can open people up to new, helpful and sometimes inspirational concepts and ideas. As part of a wider range of development activities they have an important place and contribution. On their own they will not always be enough. The whole premise of coaching and any helping activity is that the process of externalising the issue to another human being, or several in the case of groupwork, provides that missing ingredient which facilitates change and development. Simply reading self-development books on one’s own may expand our consciousness but may be too inward a process on its own.

Developing as a coach, particularly if you work more psychologically, requires a commitment to your own personal development and addressing, in a deeper way, your own personal issues. Initially, students don’t always make the connection between learning how to coach and looking into themselves. They have come to a coaching programme to learn some tools and techniques to ‘do to’ other people – and to get a professional ticket. By the end of the process they typically regard the awareness development aspect of their training as the most important part. They also appreciate the critical impor- tance of EI as a key psychological competency of the coach.