Focus of the Present Study
This eighth report concerns potential differences in responses to the Development of Coaches survey based on the country in which the coach is operating (and usually the country in which they were born and have lived most of their life). The results from this analysis of the survey results is particularly important because professional coaching has become truly international in recent years. While much of what we now call professional coaching began in England and elsewhere in Europe, the United States is usually considered the “birthplace” of coaching. At the very least, most of the early training programs and a considerable amount of the financial and organizational support for professional coaching came initially from the United States.
As professional coaching has spread to many other countries throughout the world, it is important to note that culture, history and societal norms undoubtedly impact on the perspective held by a professional coach (regardless of the training program, if any, in which they participated). Even more importantly, the perspective and needs identified by their coaching clients undoubtedly have influenced the perspectives and practices of the coach.
The key question is: are differences in these broader social-environmental practices manifest in the developmental path taken by the coaches and choices they make regarding their own training, supervision and continuing education? We turn to our data analyses in seeking to find an answer (or several answers) to this question. In this eighth study we examined ways in which coaches who identify themselves as coming from the United States (USA) might differ in their perspectives on development from those who identify as coming from outside the United States (non-USA). We assigned respondents to one of two categories based on their identification of current residency.
It should be noted that the USA group is larger than the non-USA group: 136 from the USA and 48 from the non-USA. This discrepancy is partially attributable to the fact that the survey was mounted inside the United States and partially attributable to the apparent larger number of professional coaches operating in the USA. The field has become increasingly global – but the USA is still a center for professional coaching activities. Furthermore, we need to assert the important caveat that many coaches are globalists, in that they have either lived in several countries or work in many different countries. It is hard to isolate society and cultural influences when gathering data from these boundary-crossers.
