David Rock and Linda Page (2009) proposed that the fields contributing to coaching each have undergone an internal shift toward a new perspective, as referred to in describing responses to the five questions above. Scholars from many other fields have noted similar shifts. Otto Scharmer surveyed philosophy, systems theory, and the social sciences and concluded ” … that there is an invisible shift going on in the world. It’s as if we were standing on a threshold, about to cross through a new doorway into rooms we could never before access.” (2009, p. 111) The fact that these shifts have occurred is part of an answer to Julio Olalla’a (2004) questions “Why coaching? Why now?” Here, I am claiming that coaching emerged from that shift itself. Other fields were born in a previous era – enlightenment, rationalist, empiricist, logical positivist, modernist –and are struggling with how to incorporate or adjust to or make room for post-mechanistic perspectives such as those presented by postmodernism, neo-phenomenology, and quantum theory. But, despite borrowing many approaches and concepts from older fields, coaching itself developed along with and in response to shifts across the sciences, social sciences, philosophy, and society. One might say these shifts and coaching co-evolved. Coaching is a unique and cohesive embodiment of shifts that have coalesced into a new paradigm. Rock and Page refer to this paradigm as “systemic,” replacing its “mechanistic” predecessor.
PARADIGMS
Table 3 summarizes the mechanistic-to-systemic shifts described above. If we take the “from… ” characteristics at the beginning of the 20th century together, they emphasize a set of ideas that have been widely accepted since the 17″‘ century:
- Supremacy of the individual over relatedness, community, or context
- Dualism and attention to constituent parts rather than holism and understanding of systems Objectivity as more privileged than subjectivity
- The search for causal one-way determinants with no place for co-construction of reality or self-directed striving for potential
- Hierarchical control, punishment, and correction as the only way to manage; little acknowledgement of the possibility or value of engagement and collaboration
