Development of Coaches: VII. Are There Any Differences between Personal and Organizational Coaches?

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This final set of items is directly aligned with those of the previous question—except in this instance the items focus on the current (rather than overall) development of the coaches. Once again, very few differences were found between personal and organizational coaches. There was only a marginally significant difference to be found with regard to current influence: personal coaches are more likely to be influenced by case discussions with their colleagues than are organizational coaches. Given the isolation to be found among coaches (as we noted in an earlier report based on these two surveys), it might be important to identify and support those areas where dialogue does occur and where the walls of the professional silo can be breached—at least for those doing personal coaching.

Discussion

There are not as many significant differences among survey respondents as a function of the type of coaching in which they are engaged as was the case among respondents as a function of whether or not they completed ICF certification. Nevertheless, there were some intriguing—in one case perhaps even startling—differences found in our analyses. We seem to have discovered another source of variance in the responses of coaches to some of the items in the two surveys—though we should be reminded of Rey Carr’s cautionary note regarding Survey Monkey results. Furthermore, we need to be reminded that when many statistical calculations are being performed, the use of .05 and .01 confidence levels become suspect. Put simply, if one hundred calculations are performed, then five of them will be significant by chance. Technically, the levels of confidence should be adjusted and the “bar” of significance raised when multiple t-test (or analyses of variance) are performed.