Abstract
Positive psychological coaching (PPC) has emerged as a popular “paradigm” for practitioners interested in the professional development of people. A recent review consolidated the literature on PPC and produced a 5-phase positive psychological coaching model aimed at facilitating professional growth. However, little is known about practically operationalizing each phase of the coaching process (i.e., how to facilitate each phase and which underlying tools and techniques could be employed to do so). As such, the purpose of this systematic review was to address this limitation by (a) determining which coaching tools and techniques are proposed within the coaching literature and (b) classifying the identified tools and techniques into the respective phases of PPC model. The investigation used a two-step approach by conducting a systematic literature review (to identify various PPC tools/techniques) followed by an iterative heuristic classification process (to assign these PPC tools/techniques to a known PPC model). The systematic literature review resulted in 24 peer-reviewed publications on positive psychological coaching, providing 117 different coaching tools that could be condensed into 18 overarching coaching techniques. The iterative classification process showed that most techniques and tools are useful in at least two phases. Interestingly, experts still vary in opinion on the timing and application of these specific techniques and tools within the positive psychological coaching process. This study provides researchers and practitioners with practical guidelines to facilitate a positive psychological coaching process.
Highlights
Positive psychological coaching (PPC) has emerged as a popular “paradigm” for practitioners interested in the professional development of people (1)
The research approach consisted of a systematic literature review, followed by a three-step, iterative heuristic classification process to classify the most commonly used coaching tools/techniques into the various phases of Van Zyl et al.’s PPCM (10)
We derived 18 overarching coaching techniques applied by coaches during a positive psychological coaching process
Summary
Positive psychological coaching (PPC) has emerged as a popular “paradigm” for practitioners interested in the professional development of people (1) This popularization was fuelled by the scientific advancements in positive psychology in the early 2000’s, and lauded as a new approach to optimize the potential of people through focusing on “what already works well,” rather than on “fixing what is wrong” (2, 3). This, in turn, largely removes the stigma attached to the use of psychological services and lowers the threshold for utilization/participation (8) It is, not surprising that PPC has become a buzzword within the modern-day coaching practitioner’s lexicon (9)
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