The Development of Coaches Survey: I. Do Coaches Change and What Are Their Competencies?

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This report is the first in a series that will convey and interpret results from two version of a questionnaire that was initially prepared by the Development of Coaches Research Collaborative in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Network of the Society for Psychotherapy Research. The initial survey was completed in 2009 by 153 coaches from throughout the world. The second version based on the first (with only minor editing changes) was distributed in 2015 by the Library of Professional Coaching in cooperation with ITLCInsights. Fifty eight coaches provided responses to the second questionnaire — yielding a total of 211 responses to the two surveys. The time interval between the two surveys was six years, enabling us to get a preliminary sense of possible changes in coaching attitudes over this period of time, as well as a sense of stability (low levels of difference in mean scores and variance) in the attitudes of professional coaches regarding their own development.

Unlike most coaching surveys, the two surveys conducted in 2009 and 2015 were directed toward those actually doing the coaching, rather than the users of coaching services. Furthermore, these surveys were completed by a widely ranging group of coaches — coming from several different countries and from diverse coaching schools and perspectives, as well as ranging widely in age and years of experience in providing coaching services.  While many surveys of practitioners in a specific field are funded and sponsored by organizations with a particular stake in the outcomes (such as surveys in medicine and psychotherapy that are funded by pharmaceutical companies) or are conducted by faculty in high prestige, research-oriented universities (who tend to seek responses from others of similar status), these two surveys are being conducted by sponsors (the Library of Professional Coaching and ITLCInsights) that have no specific stake in the outcomes, and were distributed to practitioners at many levels of practice and status. These surveys are truly ‘”neutral” and “democratizing.”