It is also possible that the high ratings for virtually all of the items is in some way a distortion of reality that should not be considered definitive for most coaches (or even coaches completing these two surveys). The social desirability factor that we mentioned earlier might be at play. To what extent would one expect the respondents to “air their dirty linen” in a public survey — even if it is anonymous. Perhaps, at an even more fundamental level, one wonders if someone who has a poor concept of themselves as a coach would even complete a survey such as this one or remain a coach for very long if they felt like a failure or at least not clearly a success as a coach.
It may be that many people who become coaches have already explored multiple careers in their life and are now trying out coaching. If they succeed then they stay around, if not then they move on. In my own writings and teaching I have often used the metaphor of a frontier town when describing inhabitants of the coaching world. This frontier town is populated not just by the homesteaders, who are in the field of coaching to stay, and not just be the preachers and teachers who are persistent advocates for highly ethical and knowledgeable coaching. The frontier coaching town also attracts men and women who are “drifters” or “prospectors” looking for a short-term lucrative venture and (as a result) tend to be attracted to fads, fashions and fantasized futures.
In a more respectful manner, we might think of the inhabitants of the coaching frontier town as women and men who are dreamers, visionaries and optimists–Everett Rodgers’ innovators and early adopters (Rogers, 2003). Just as they typically encourage their clients to follow their bliss and do only those things that bring short (or long) term gratification, so they themselves might be biased in the direction of dreams, visions and optimistic images of their own performance. If they were not so aligned then we might consider them to be “snake oil” salesmen in the village or at the very least hypocrites.
If nothing else, we can reflect on the kind of people who fill out surveys like this–whether it is about coaching development or one’s attitudes toward a new software product or dishwashing detergent. Most of the respondents to surveys tend to lean toward one extreme or the other in their responses. They often will not fill it out if they don’t have strong opinions: “I hate this new software program. Why do they keep making it difficult for me!” or “I love this new dishwashing detergent and will recommend it to all of my friends.” Are the people who fill out a survey about the development of coaches likely to be those who are committed to the field? They want to homestead in or near the town and perhaps are even among those who preach or teach about the importance of coaching and the processes of personal change and development.
