Beyond Coping and Adaptation: Toward a Sociology of Coaching
A Necessary Paradigm Shift to Address Contemporary Dramatic Social Change
Elisabeta Stănciulescu (Romania)
Introduction
Non-sports related coaching is now a global, fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar industry (ICF, 2020), encompassing a wide range of services known as life coaching, career coaching, business coaching, executive coaching, team coaching, and so on. In this article, ‘coaching’ refers to all of them. The professional providing such a service is called a ‘coach’, and the individual or group with whom the coach is working is called a ‘coachee’. The article places coaching within the context of contemporary disruptive and dramatic social change (DSC) – which has not been specifically done before – and proposes out-of-the-box thinking about the process and its consequences. It highlights important limitations of ‘classic’ (i.e. typically used and respected) approaches and models in DSC contexts, argues for a DSC-relevant sociologically informed paradigm shift in coaching practice and research, and presents the rationale and key features of a new definition of coaching and a new approach and model to address DSC. It provides coaching practitioners, who rarely have a consistent sociological background, with basic sociological concepts relevant to DSC, explained in simple terms. Furthermore, it makes the case for appropriate sociological knowledge, learning science, and research methodology to be included in the education of coaches. It also points to interdisciplinary research topics combining coaching sociology – which must be developed to make coaching a well-founded profession – and coaching psychology, which currently dominates the knowledge production in the field. Implications for workplace strategies to attract, motivate, and retain employees in search of meaning or purpose in life are suggested.
There is no single agreed-upon definition of coaching. It is usually considered one of the ‘helping by talking interventions’ (Tee and Passmore, 2022), with similarities and differences to counselling, consultancy, psychotherapy, training, teaching, mentoring, or mediation (Rosha, 2014). It has long been understood as an ideologically neutral tool for ‘unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance’ (Whitmore, 2009: 9–10), a ‘collaborative solution-focused, result-oriented, systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of the life experience and goal-attainment in the personal and/or professional life of normal, non-clinical clients’ (Grant, 2003: 254), and a set of ‘technologies of the self’ in a Foucauldian sense:
Specific techniques that human beings use to understand themselves [. . .] which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Foucault, 1988: 18)
The field has long been developed with very limited sociological input and there is a lack of research on how it relates to societal issues such as macroeconomic development, power dynamics and democratic governance, social stratification and inequality, social mobility, corruption, crime, and so on. Although in sports coaching many have noticed that sociology is ‘the invisible ingredient in coaches’ knowledge’ (Potrac and Jones, 2019 [1999]: 55–59; emphasis added) and suggested a wider range of sociological concepts to better inform the practice (Cushion, 2018; Jones et al., 2011; Lee and Corsby, 2021), non-sports coaching has largely evolved either with no consistent theoretical foundation or under the guidance of coaching psychology. In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007–2009 (Duignan, 2023), a growing body of critical literature (Chiu, 2022; Gannon, 2021; Shoukry and Cox, 2018) has emphasised the need to analyse coaching as a social process and ‘an enabler for [desired social] change’ (Shoukry, 2017). Several social change-oriented frameworks have been proposed (see summary in Shoukry, 2017) and the International Coaching Federation (ICF, 2019b) has released ‘tips for Incorporating Coaching for Social Change into Your [Coaches’] Work’. While recognising the progress that has been made, it is important to explore the limitations of these analyses, frameworks and guidelines in order to identify directions for improvement.
Change today, globally, is increasingly disruptive and dramatic. De la Sablonnière (2017) defines DSC as ‘a situation where a rapid event leads to a profound societal transformation and produces a rupture in the equilibrium of the social and normative structures and changes/threatens the cultural identity of group members’ (p. 12). Triggered by various events such as political upheavals, economic and legal reforms, technological innovation, booms of artificial intelligence, violent and powerful protests of large masses, massive migrations, wars, climate change, and other unsettling social or natural phenomena, DSC is now ‘the new normal’ (de la Sablonnière, 2017: 12) affecting millions of people worldwide. Examples of non-disruptive innovation giving us hope that ‘growth fuelled by non-disruptive creation occurs without incurring any industrial and social disruption and pain, thus helping to bridge the gap between economic and social good’ (Kim and Mauborgne, 2023: 19) are still few and far between. This is the new context in which coaching must operate. However, the above-mentioned analyses, frameworks, and guidelines did not take into account the DSC concept and did not question the relevance of the ‘classic’ approaches and models in today’s DSC world, overlooking the fact that ‘classics’ were developed in comparatively more stable natural, economic, political, and social contexts. The sociological perspectives they use do not address the nature and complexity of DSC. Thus, they define social change in a normative manner, as development or progress, focusing on social justice, inclusion, and emancipation. They specifically target ‘fringe’ groups such as the oppressed people and the change-makers, and their possible allies. Coaches are encouraged to adopt militant non-neutrality to help these people challenge and transform existing oppressive power structures; to help them cope with the consequences of crises and adapt to changes; and to provide pro bono services for impoverished people. These all are necessary and important. Nevertheless, the DSC nature implies more than just coping, adapting, increasing or at least maintaining well-being, and challenging and transforming established power structures. It also implies that people naturally and unavoidably co-participate in the ongoing construction of the emergent social and normative structures and socio-cultural identities/selves.
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Please note that this article presents only a portion of the full content. To access the complete article, kindly visit the following link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/05390184241252770
Source: iCN Issue 50 (The Power of Life Coaching in Achieving Personal & Professional Success); pages 75-80
About Elisabeta Stănciulescu
Elisabeta Stănciulescu, former teacher, high school teacher, sociologist and university professor, now coach. PhD in sociology: sociology of human development (education and self-education throughout life) and sociology of the family.
Creator of a new paradigm and a new model of coaching-development, the only original products in the field created in Romania, not imported “from abroad”.
