It is only when we turn to the fourth highest rated response (“Discuss the problem with a more experienced colleague”) that we find the isolation broken and, as we noted above, this item was quite controversial (high variance score) among those responding to the second survey.
To be totally fair in our analysis, we should note that many of the Question Two responses are oriented toward private and personal resolution of the difficulty. Nevertheless, those few responses associated with Question Two that do suggest breaking out of the isolation are consistently rated low:
“Sign up for a conference or workshop that might bear on the problem.”
“Explore the possibilitiy of referring the client to another coach.”
“Refer the client to some other noncoaching professional.”
None of these results are definitive regarding either autonomy or isolation. However, they do point toward the prevalence of a specific coaching culture that Vikki Brock and I identified in a chapter we wrote several years ago in a book edited by Drake, Brennan and Gortz (Bergquist and Brock, 2008). Brock and I identified six cultures that exist in most human service professions. One of these is the professional culture (the others being managerial, alternative/developmental, advocacy, virtual and tangible). We proposed in this chapter that many coaches are aligned with the professional culture–a culture in which practitioners conceive of coaching as a “profession” and seek to build its credibility through establishing a code of ethics, professional organizations and publications. They promote research and scholarship regarding coaching, and express an abiding concern about the credibility of coaching as a legitimate human service endeavor.
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Rey Carr
December 17, 2015 at 4:00 pm
The best part of this report of the results of these two surveys is the discussion of the concepts. Such discussion is valuable regardless of the reliability or validity of the results (or evidence).
Unfortunately, the methodology section is missing the most important aspect of methodology: how were each of the surveys distributed and what was the rate of return. If, as I suspect, this was an Internet-based survey, then the results have an exceptionally low chance of being either reliable or valid. That is, the likelihood that they reflect the “coaching industry” or “a typical coach” is incredibly small. Thus, conclusions based on the results are suspect.
But there’s the point. The discussion itself has its own reliability and validity independent of the survey. The points made are worthy of continuing discussion regardless of the surveys.