David A Lane International Centre for the Study of Coaching Middlesex University

1. David A Lane International Centre for the Study of Coaching Middlesex University Professional Development Foundation (David.Lane@pdf.net) Building a Profession – challenges and opportunities

2. What does Business Coaching have to offer: • If a coach can take a three day course and apply tools that work, why do we need five years experience/training? (Full Membership) • What do we offer clients that justifies those years? • What about sports scientists, health visitors, management consultants, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers or HR practitioners as coaches, what do they offer that we do not? • Perhaps what we offer, uniquely, is our commitment to professional practice as evidence based practitioners – are we? • Perhaps it is our competence in asking effective questions and interest in the results of asking them that makes a difference to our clients – do we? • Perhaps we offer a different lens, we have tools to combine the pictures our clients create, evaluate their qualities and design futures, that work – have we?

3. What is a profession and do we want to be one? • Professions as designated carriers of rationality • Code of conduct, codified knowledge, client service, self regulation/guild • Professions in pursuit of social and economic prestige? • Agency of state and capital, market monopoly by state licence, exclusion • Professions as site of social identity? • Client relationship primary, context led and socially constructed

4. Professions as a future construct • The future as a social construct • New forms of association, communities of practice • Associations of practice based on shared interests, do we want collaboration or conflict • What might be a different lens, how might we create new pictures, evaluate their qualities and design futures, that work.

5. On what modes of knowledge do we build our professional practice? • Disciplinary – scientific, correct ways of gathering data, value free, setting free, • Technical rational – beyond setting, evidence based, divested of practice knowledge, • Dispositional/transdisciplinary – practice as deliberative action concerned with specific context and reflection, • Critical – to challenge existing discursive structures.

6. What forms of knowledge are represented in coaching? • Is it a form of evidence based practice? • What sort of evidence do you draw upon as a practitioner? • Take a minute to reflect, note it down • Share with your neighbour • Reflect, are you drawing on different, or a similar knowledge base?

7. What do you use in practice? • Disciplinary – scientific, when was the last time you applied a scientific finding to your practice? • Technical rational – when was the last time you followed, exactly, an evidence based manual? • Dispositional/transdisciplinary – when was the last time your practice was deliberative and concerned with a specific context and client? • Critical – when was the last time you challenged existing powerful (discursive) structures?

8. Surely it depends on: • Our purpose – what we agree with our client • Our perspective – what informs our work • Our process – what happens when we work • OR - does it depend on our position on truth • Is it possible to say something is true (or probably so) on the basis of evidence, or • Does it always depend on context (relative)? • Are our questions propositional or implicational?

9. Do we: • want to build a case for a distinct profession of business coach, (regulated as such)? • or as part of the broader area of coaching practice? • or as part of a different discipline, say business or psychology? • Could you: • Frame the case in terms of the specific needs of your organisation – link with business strategy • Consider all your stakeholders and make the case to them • Consider the organisational environment/culture that makes a distinct profession necessary • Persuade decision makers or become the deciders • Prepare for questions/scepticism/conflict/collaboration with others

10. What form can distinct recognition take: • Recognition by a register or overarching registration council? • Recognition based on completion of a recognised course? • Recognition through individual application and demonstration of learning/competence/prior experience? • Issues of levels, competence, forms of training/development, standards? • None of the above – something different? • So what future do you want to create? • What should WABC do? • What are you prepared to do? • How might we create a future?

11. WABC • The International Board – competencies • What it is • What it is doing • The Standards Project • What it is • What it is doing • The Ethics Committee • International Collaboration – GCC • WABC as part of many bodies working together

12. What makes sense for you: • As a coach? • As a business coach? • As a business coach who is also a member of a related profession? • What form can your contribution take ? • As part of WABC? • Other bodies of which you are a member? • Through national roundtables? • Through international collaborations such as the Global Coaching Convention? (www.coachingconvention.org)

13. So, thanks for listening, and where next? Reading: Lane DA and Corrie S The Modern Scientist Practitioner London Routledge Jarvis J Lane DA and Fillery-Travis A The Case for Coaching Wimbledon CIPD. Participation: Contact WABC for progress on their initiatives, contact www.coachingconvention.org for the global collaboration.