Educating coaching psychologists: Responses from the field

Abstract

This paper responds to Grant (this issue), Developing an agenda for teaching coaching psychology. Representatives of key stakeholder groups were asked to respond to the issues raised in Grant’s article. These groups included practicing coaching psychologists, coaches, coach educators, Professional bodies in coaching psychology and corporate purchasers of coaching. An agenda for training is intimately bound up with issues of identity for coaching psychology. It raises the questions of how we define ourselves and our relationship to the world. Our respondents also focused on four key questions.Purpose/Agenda – What is the curricula trying to achieve and for whom?Contextual issues – important considerations beyond psychology that might shape training in coaching psychology education.Curriculum content – topic areas, theories, models, approaches and perspectives.Teaching process – Considerations about how the curriculum should be taught.A range of perspectives are brought to bear on these questions. The diversity of responses reflect the reality of working in a diverse world. This is not something to be overcome, but embraced by coaching psychology. Any discussion of the training of coaching psychologists should include multiple models of training, and multiple curricula. In this way we reflect the adaptive quality of the coaching conversation, and its ability to incorporate cross-disciplinary insights and understandings. This is what gives coaching its unique responsiveness to the emerging needs of our clients.