Home Research History of Coaching An Interview with John Lazar: Institutions and Influences

An Interview with John Lazar: Institutions and Influences

26 min read
2
0
227

The reason I say that is because I received comments from a number of people with whom I worked. They expressed their gratitude, not only for the opportunity to write something for the journal, but also for the learning experience of working with me or Bill to get something into a final form.  I think we helped crystallize ideas into things that were even more accessible and even more useful.

The journal never had a large readership.  I don’t think we ever had more than 500 or 1,000 subscribers.  We had people who were purchasing articles off the website.  I think perhaps a tribute to the impact of the journal is that more than three years after we stopped publishing—and while doing nothing to advertise about the journal—we still had people coming to the website buying articles, back issue, and things like that.  They couldn’t buy subscriptions anymore but they were making purchases of things that were relevant to them.

We also have, as I remember, at least one article that continues to be used by one of the business schools, I think Stanford, in one of their courses.  That to me is, at least, a couple of data points around the impact of the journal.

I think one other thing is that over the years, Bill and I continued to improve the production values of the journal. In the last couple years we really had a handsome publication. We were able to not only increase the quality of the articles but also to increase the size of each issue.  I think we went from 40 or 50 pages initially to more than 160 pages.

Bill Carrier:  Thank you.  I think one of the things you are saying here is that the journal—even though you closed it down in 2011—is still affecting the ability of coaches to do their work, that the journal actually had an impact in developing the thinking of professionals who wrote the articles.

John Lazar:  Yes.  Our issues always had a theme, and so the authors that we would invite to work with us were authors that could contribute around that theme.  One of the issues that we had was on coaching and neuroscience and there was a David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz article.

That particular article was the one picked up by Stanford Business School for one of their professors for one of the courses and it continues.  I get something from the Copyright Clearing House every year with a request for so many copies of that particular article.

Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Download Article 1K Club
Load More Related Articles
Load More By John Lazar
Load More In History of Coaching

2 Comments

  1. Rey Carr

    March 12, 2016 at 10:11 am

    Finally, I understand what happened to that excellent journal, The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations. John is to be congratulated on establishing a publication that lifted coaching into both the world of empirical science and friendly dialogue. I’m grateful for your pioneering efforts.

    Reply

  2. Vicki Foley

    February 7, 2017 at 7:57 pm

    Bill and John, thank you for this interview. I enjoyed the historical perspective, a bit of reminiscing about IJCO and ICCO, and the suggestions of ways to associate within the profession. John, you are a revered master.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Dr. Brock Materials on History of Coaching

Dr. Vikki Brock is the author of the Sourcebook of Coaching History and has generously pro…