By Julie-Anne Tooth
I felt a strong sense of déjà vu reading an article about life coaching in The Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year [1].The article raised a number of questions around the unregulated industry for life coaches and the quality of services provided by individuals with limited training and experience who promote themselves as qualified life coaches.
Reading the article reminded me of where we were in Australia a decade ago in executive and organisational coaching, when our emerging field was described as being akin to the frontier of the Wild West of the United States in the 1800s, offering promise but being fraught with risk and danger [2]. It occurs to me today as I write this, just how far we have come as an industry.
The Standards Australia project was a real turning point for organisational coaching in Australia. Through collaboration and a commitment from a range of stakeholders (including purchasers, universities, government, professional bodies and providers of coaching services and coach training), Australia was able to produce an industry guideline, Standards Australia [3], which supported and encouraged quality organisational coaching. In so many ways this project was a world-first and contrasted markedly with overseas examples, for example in Norway, where similar advancements had not succeeded [4]. The Standards Australia project signalled that the industry of organisational coaching in Australia had reached a level of maturity that had not been evident previously. As practising coaches, it now appears that we are able to enjoy the benefits of a more sophisticated marketplace that has a much greater understanding of the practices, benefits and applications of organisational coaching than it did 10 years ago. And the Hong Kong industry is not far behind in this development.
So, what’s the next major step in the development of organisational coaching?
We believe part of the answer to this question lies in the further development of university education in organisational coaching. In the context of the further advancement of the coaching industry, recent research has argued that university qualifications are critical for extending and deepening the knowledge base of coaches and for providing a greater theoretical base for coaching practice. Further, if organisational coaching is to move at any stage towards establishing itself as a profession, the further development of university-based education programmes will also need to be a significant area of focus [5].
At IECL we are committed to taking our coach training programmes to this next level and in 2015 will offer, in partnership with Charles Sturt University, a Graduate Certificate in and Graduate Diploma of Organisational Coaching and Leadership. Our experience has been that many of our alumni members already share our enthusiasm for this exciting development and recognise the value of university education, especially postgraduate study, in the delivery of quality, credible coaching services and also for the future of our industry.
Join the discussion here. I want to hear your feedback, especially on the following two points:
(1) What developments have you experienced in organisational coaching in Hong Kong over the last decade?
(2) What do you see as the important next steps in the advancement of organisational coaching in the Hong Kong market?
Julie-Anne Tooth is a Senior Executive Coach and as associate of IECL. She is one of the few individuals in Australia to have completed PhD research in executive coaching, which will soon be published in the book, Experiencing executive coaching. Julie-Anne can be contacted at [email protected]
MORE INFORMATION AT www.iecl.com
[1] Smith, S. (2014, June 19) Anyone can be a life coach, so is it time to ask: who is really coaching you? The Age.
[2] Sherman, S. & Freas, A. (2004). The wild west of executive coaching. Harvard Business Review, 82(11), 82.
[3] Standards Australia. (2011). HB 332-2011 Coaching in organizations. Sydney: SAI Global Limited.
[4] Svaleng, I. & Grant, A.M. (2010). Lessons from the Norwegian coaching industry's attempt to develop joint coaching standards: An ACCESS pathway to a mature coaching industry. Coaching Psychologist, 6(1), 5-15.
[5] Tooth, J.-A. (2014). Experiencing executive coaching. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Charles Sturt University, Sydney, Australia. ADD IN HYPERLINK TO TOOTH RESEARCH
Source: https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/experiencing-executive-coaching/isbn/978-3-639-66809-4
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
