Challenges and Choices in Coach Training Programs

My review of developmental research suggests that the first half of life is devoted to expanding and extending the use of new skills and knowledge. However, phase two development concerns shifting priorities and perspectives occurring during the second half of life. We don’t so much develop by gaining new knowledge and skill; rather, we are seeing the world in new ways and shifting our personal values, needs and ways of engaging other people. Coach-training programs should primarily be in the business of fostering phase two development.

A training program based on the first perspective suggests that the person doing training holds a full pitcher of knowledge and skills. They pour their knowledge or skills into the empty mug of the coach-trainee. We now know—given the second perspective– that the mug is never empty and the pitcher isn’t always full. Participants are in phase two development. They already have knowledge and many skills. It is a matter of shifting priorities, perspectives and practices. Attention must now be given to retention and transfer of learning. What’s already in the mug and in the mug six months later? How have the ingredients of the mug been used during a coaching engagement? Given these shifting, new criteria must be considered in selecting among four primary modes of coach training.

Mode One: Intensive/Residential Programs

Mode One was commonly deployed for many years when coaching was interwoven with leadership development, organization development or clinical psychology programs. Mode One is rarely found in contemporary coach training programs—given the establishment of professional coaching as an independent field of human service. However, we should acknowledge that Mode One potentially yields a large quantity of information. A residential program is filled with challenging perspectives and practices. Trainees are saturated with new skills and knowledge. They tend to talk about it with one another (and with the trainers) over meals, in the evening and during program breaks. Another important advantage concerns community-building. Participants get to know one another in a unique way—especially in a coaching program where participants are coaching one another and learning important things about one another and themselves.