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THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING ON GOAL ATTAINMENT,
METACOGNITION AND MENTAL HEALTH
ANTHONY M. GRANT
University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Despite its high media profile and growing popularity there have been no empirical investi-
gations of the impact of life coaching on goal attainment, metacognition or mental health.
This exploratory study used life coaching as a means of exploring key metacognitive factors
involved as individuals move towards goal attainment. In a within-subjects design, twenty
adults completed a life coaching program. Participation in the program was associated with
enhanced mental health, quality of life and goal attainment. In terms of metacognition, levels
of self-reflection decreased and levels of insight increased. Life coaching has promise as an
effective approach to personal development and goal attainment, and may prove to be a use-
ful platform for a positive psychology and the investigation of the psychological mechanisms
involved in purposeful change in normal, nonclinical populations.
In working with individuals to improve the quality of their lives, psychology
has traditionally focused on alleviating dysfunctionality or treating psy-
chopathology in clinical or counseling populations rather than enhancing the life
experience of normal adult populations.
However, it is clear that the general public has a thirst for techniques and
processes that enhance life experience and facilitate personal development. The
market for personal development material has grown rapidly worldwide since
the 1950s (Fried, 1994). Although psychologists feature infrequently as produc-
ers of this material, psychology has a genuine and important contribution to
make in terms of adapting and validating existing therapeutic models for use
with normal populations, and evaluating commercialized approaches to person-
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2003, 31(3), 253-264
© Society for Personality Research (Inc.)
253
Anthony M. Grant, PhD, Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney,
Australia.
Appreciation is due to reviewers including Kennon M. Sheldon, PhD, Psychology Department,
University of Missouri Columbia, McAlester Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Key words: life coaching, private self-consciousness, metacognition, self-reflection, insight, mental
health, personal development, positive psychology, coaching psychology, well-being.
Please address correspondence and reprint requests to Anthony M. Grant, PhD, Coaching
Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia NSW 2006. Phone:
+61 2 9351 6792; Fax: +61 2 9351 2603; Email:<anthonyg@psych.usyd.edu.au>
al development to ensure consumer protection and inform consumer choice
(Grant, 2001; Starker, 1990).
A recent development in the personal development genre is the emergence of
life coaching. Life coaching can be broadly defined as a collaborative solution-
focused, result-orientated and systematic process in which the coach facilitates
the enhancement of life experience and goal attainment in the personal and/or
professional life of normal, nonclinical clients.
ISSUES IN THE GROWTH OF LIFE COACHING PRACTICE
The coaching industry, and particularly life coaching, has grown substantially
since at least 1998. There have been claims that the number of executive and life
coaches number in the tens of thousands in the USA, and coaching has received
widespread attention in the popular Western press (Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck,
1999).
Despite often over optimistic claims as to its effectiveness there has been lit-
tle empirical research into the effectiveness of life coaching (Grant, 2000), with
anecdotal and marketing claims from the coaching industry itself forming the
bulk of the evidence. An overview of the peer-reviewed academic psychology
literature on coaching, in normal adult populations, as represented in the data-
base PsycINFO shows that there are only 98 citations, with only 17 of these
being empirical evaluations of the effectiveness of coaching interventions. All of
these are concerned with evaluating work-related or executive coaching within
work or organizational settings.
This is an exploratory study; the first to investigate the effectiveness of life
coaching (i.e., coaching in a nonwork or organizational setting), and to investi-
gate the impact of solution-focused, cognitive-behavioral life coaching on key
sociocognitive and metacognitive factors.
A SOLUTION-FOCUSED, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL MODEL OF COACHING
The life coaching program used in this study is adapted from a self-help book,
Coach Yourself (Grant & Greene, 2001). This program is based on principles
drawn from cognitive-behavioral clinical and counseling psychology (Beck,
Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979), brief solution-focused therapy (O’Hanlon, 1998),
and models of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1989).
Cognitive-behavioral approaches to counseling and coaching psychology rec-
ognize the quadratic reciprocity between the four domains of human experience:
behavior, thoughts, feelings and the environment. From a cognitive-behavioral
perspective, goal attainment is best facilitated by understanding the relationship
between these four domains of human experience and structuring them so as to
best support goal attainment. However, possibly because its roots are in the treat-
ment of psychopathology within a medical model, the cognitive-behavioral
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
254
approach tends to emphasize psychopathology, an approach which is often alien-
ating for nonclinical populations.
Thus, the Coach Yourself program incorporates aspects of brief solution-
focused therapy. Solution-focused therapy is a constructivist, humanistic
approach that concentrates on the strengths that clients bring to therapy, and
emphasizes the importance of solution construction rather than problem analy-
sis.
SELF-REGULATION, SOCIOCOGNITION, METACOGNITION AND COACHING
Goal-directed self-regulation consists of a series of processes in which an indi-
vidual sets a goal, develops a plan of action, begins action, monitors his or her
performance (through self-reflection), evaluates his or her performance by com-
parison to a standard (gaining insight), and based on this evaluation changes his
or her actions to further enhance performance and better reach his or her goals.
The coach’s role is to facilitate the coachee’s movement through the self-regula-
tory cycle towards goal attainment. Hence, coaching is a useful means of fur-
thering our understanding of the sociocognitive and metacognitive factors
involved in purposeful behavior change as people move through the self-regula-
tory cycle. Figure 1 presents a generic model of self-regulation.
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
255
Set a Goal
Develop an
Action Plan
Act
Monitor
(requires Self-reflection)
Evaluate
(associated with Insight)
Change what's not working
Do more of what works
Success
Figure 1: Generic model of self-regulation and goal attainment showing self-reflection and
insight.
(requires Self-Reflection)
Some of the key metacognitive factors in the self-regulatory cycle are found
within the construct of private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss,
1975), specifically, the processes of self-reflection and insight. Both clinical and
nonclinical change programs often encourage candidates for change to spend
time in self-reflection on the assumption that this will lead to insight, and insight
will facilitate goal attainment and behavioral change (Sedikides & Skowronski,
1995). However, it is important to note that self-reflection and insight are logi-
cally two separate processes. One may spend time in self-reflection without nec-
essarily developing insight.
METACOGNITION AND COACHING: PAST RESEARCH
SELF-REFLECTION, INSIGHT AND MENTAL HEALTH
Research into private self-consciousness has focused on how self-reflection
and internal state awareness (and the associated construct of insight) are related
to mental health, rather than to goal attainment through the coaching process. In
general self-reflection has been found to be correlated positively with measures
of psychopathology with internal state awareness being negatively correlated
with measures of psychopathology (Creed & Funder, 1998). Investigations into
the relationship between self-reflection and insight using the Private Self-
Consciousness Scale (PSCS; Fenigstein et al., 1975) have produced inconsistent
findings, and there have been calls for the PSCS to be revised.
A new measure of private self-consciousness, the Self-Reflection and Insight
Scale (SRIS; Grant, Franklin, & Langford, 2002), comprises two orthogonal
subscales, self-reflection (SRIS-SR) and insight (SRIS-IN), and initial findings
suggest that the SRIS is a valid and reliable measure of self-reflection and insight
which represents an advance on the PSCS (Grant et al., 2002).
Little is known about how the metacognitive factors of self-reflection and
insight change as individuals move purposefully towards goal attainment
through a change program. Grant et al. (2002) found that individuals who regu-
larly kept journals in which they wrote about their life experiences had higher
levels of self-reflection, but lower levels of insight than did individuals who did
not keep journals. Grant et al. suggested that the journal-keepers were in some
way stuck in a process of self-reflection, and were primarily engaged in a process
of understanding their personal behavioral, cognitive and emotional reactions,
rather than moving towards goal attainment. If this is the case then it can be pre-
dicted that individuals’ levels of insight should increase as they move through
the self-regulatory cycle towards attaining goals that had previously eluded
them.
The study also investigated the impact of life coaching on individuals’ ability
to reach their goals. It was predicted that participation in the life coaching pro-
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
256
gram would be associated with increased goal attainment. Making successful
purposeful change and reaching one’s goals can have a positive impact on indi-
viduals’ mental health (Sheldon & Kasser, 2001). Thus it was further hypothe-
sized that participation in the program would enhance mental health and increase
participants’ quality of life.
METHOD
PARTICIPANTS AND MATERIALS
Twenty mature-age postgraduate students from the Faculties of Science,
Economics and Business in a major Australian university (15 women and 5 men,
mean age = 35.6 years) took part in this study.
The Coach Yourself (Grant & Greene, 2001) life coaching program is a struc-
tured life coaching program. The present study used the Coach Yourself program
as a basis for group life coaching facilitated by an external coach.
DESIGN, PROCEDURE AND THE COACHING PROGRAM
The study utilized a within-subject design. Participants initially completed a
life inventory task from the Coach Yourself program in which they examined the
main areas of their lives (e.g., work, health or relationships) and then developed
three specific, tangible and measurable goals which could be attained, or towards
which significant progress could be made, within a 13-week time frame.
Participants were able to select any goal that they had wanted to achieve in the
past, but had been unsuccessful in achieving.
Participants met in a group for ten, 50-minute weekly group coaching sessions,
and were coached in the application of cognitive-behavioral coaching tech-
niques, including self-monitoring, cognitive restructuring, behavioral modifica-
tion and environmental structuring, and solution-focused techniques such as the
“Miracle Question” (de Shazer, 1988).
The Miracle Question is a technique which facilitates the generation of options
and action plans. The client is asked to respond to a question such as; “if you
woke up tomorrow, and a miracle had happened and the solution was somehow
present, what would be happening?”. Although a relatively new modality, pre-
liminary studies have shown solution-focused approaches to be effective in a
range of applications (Gingerich & Eisengart, 2000).
The role of the coach was to facilitate this process, and to help the coachees to
systematically work through the self-regulation cycle, monitoring and evaluating
their progress towards their goals during the preceding week, and developing
action plans for the coming week.
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
257
Measures
Participants completed the questionnaires in a group setting before and fol-
lowing completion of the Coach Yourself program.
Goal Attainment Scale. Participants were asked to identify three goals.
Participants rated each goal for perceived difficulty on a four point scale (1 =
very easy, to 4 = very difficult), and also rated their degree of past success in
attaining the goals on a scale from 0% (no attainment) to 100% (total attain-
ment). Goal attainment scores were calculated by multiplying the difficulty rat-
ing by the degree of success, and dividing by the number of chosen goals to find
a mean score. Participants also rated the length of time they had sought to attain
these goals.
The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The DASS-21 (Lovibond
& Lovibond, 1995) was utilized as a measure of psychopathology.
The Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI). The QOLI (Frisch, 1994) is a 32-item
self-report questionnaire that assesses individuals’ perceptions of their quality of
life in 16 life domains: health, self-esteem, goals and values, money, work, play,
learning, creativity, helping others, love, friends, children, relatives, home,
neighborhood, and community.
The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS). The SIRS (Grant et al., 2002) is
a 20-item self-report scale which comprises two subscales: a self-reflection scale
(SRIS-SR) and an insight scale (SRIS-IN). The SRIS assesses individuals’
propensity to reflect on, and their level of insight into, their thoughts, feelings
and behavior.
Self-reflection items include; “It is important to me to try to understand what
my feelings mean”, and “I frequently take time to reflect on my thoughts”.
Insight items include; “I usually know why I feel the way I do”, and “My behav-
ior often puzzles me” (reverse scored).
RESULTS
To assist interpretation effect sizes are reported and t tests were used to assess
statistical significance. Alpha was set at 0.05. Results of the intervention are pre-
sented in Table 1.
Participation in the life coaching program was associated with increased goal
attainment, with a large observed effect size (d = 2.85; Cohen, 1992). The aver-
age length of time that the participants had been trying to reach their goals was
23.5 months.
Participants’ reported levels of depression, anxiety and stress were significant-
ly reduced, with statistically significant effect sizes of d = 0.82, 0.48 and 0 .69
respectively. Participants reported a significantly enhanced quality of life with an
observed large effect size of d = 1.62. As predicted, participants’ levels of insight
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
258
significantly increased following the life coaching program with a medium effect
size being observed (d = 0.59), and participants’ levels of self-reflection signifi-
cantly decreased (d = 0.76).
There was no significant positive correlation between the self-reflection scale
of the SRIS and the insight subscale either before (r = .10) or following the life
coaching program (r = -.22). A significant negative correlation between post-
program SR-SRIS scores and goal attainment was found (r = -.35, p = .03), and
the positive correlation between postprogram IN-SRIS and goal attainment was
significant with a one-tailed test (r = .28, p = .04; one-tailed).
DISCUSSION
THE IMPACT ON GOAL ATTAINMENT AND WELL-BEING
This exploratory study provides preliminary empirical evidence that a life
coaching program can facilitate goal attainment, improve mental heath and
enhance quality of life. This study also sheds light on the metacognitive process-
es of self-reflection and insight, and how these change following a program of
purposeful directed change.
It appears that the life coaching program was indeed successful in terms of
goal attainment. The participants chose to work towards attaining a wide range
of goals. These included; establishing a new business; extending social life; bal-
ancing work/life and attending to neglected financial affairs. On average these
individuals had been trying to reach their goals for 23.5 months. The goal attain-
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
259
TABLE 1
MEAN PRE-
AND POST-COACHING PROGRAM
SCORES
Pre Post
MSD MSDt (1, 19) pd
GAS 60.00 35.24 204.05 65.79 -10.02 <.01 2.85
Goal Difficulty 3.07 .46 2.97 .38 .88 .39 0.19
DEP 4.60 4.77 1.20 2.28 3.65 <.01 0.82
ANX 2.90 4.18 1.10 1.77 2.16 .04 0.48
STRESS 12.60 9.38 7.80 5.98 3.11 <.01 0.69
QOLI 24.25 18.71 44.45 18.23 7.24 <.01 1.62
SRIS-SR 56.05 5.65 49.05 10.19 3.40 <.01 0.76
SRIS-IN 35.65 6.71 38.60 5.55 2.64 .02 0.59
Note: GAS = Goal Attainment Scale; QOLI = Quality of Life Inventory; DEP = DASS-21 depres-
sion scale; ANX = DASS-21 anxiety scale; STRESS = DASS-21 stress scale; SRIS-SR = Self-
Reflection scale SRIS-IN = Insight scale
p values are given as two-tailed
ment scale effect size was large (d = 2.85) and this compares favorably with
meta-analytic reports of the efficacy of bibliotherapy where the mean estimated
effect size was d = 0.56 (Marrs, 1995).
However, it should be borne in mind that the goal attainment scale used in this
study was self-report. Although it was not possible for the investigator to objec-
tively determine the veracity of reported goal attainment, nevertheless, it
appeared from the discussions in the weekly group coaching sessions that the
participants were making genuine progress towards their goals. For example,
several of the participants’ goals were to establish new businesses and have pay-
ing clients by the completion of the life coaching program, and they spoke enthu-
siastically about the development of their new businesses.
The life coaching program appeared to enhance quality of life and mental
health, even though the enhancement of mental health and life quality were not
specifically targeted in the life coaching program. The observed effect sizes for
mental health were d = 0.82 for depression, d = 0.48 for anxiety and d = 0.69 for
stress. The magnitude of this study’s impact on mental health is noteworthy
given that Ergene (2000) found a mean effect size of d = 0.65 for cognitive-
behavioral psychological treatment for anxiety programs, and effect sizes for
psychological treatments for depression range from d = 0.28 to d = 1.03 (e.g.,
Febbraro & Clum, 1998; Reinecke, Ryan, & DuBois, 1998).
The program also appeared to enhance general life satisfaction. The QOLI
(Frisch, 1994) assesses 16 different life domains and there was an observed large
effect size (d = 1.62). This finding suggests that although the life coaching pro-
gram was directed at the attainment of specific goals, the benefits generalized to
participants’ broader life experience, and this provides preliminary evidence of
the general value of life coaching in enhancing well-being, in addition to its
more specific impact on goal attainment.
THE IMPACT ON SELF-REFLECTION AND INSIGHT
The life coaching study also impacted on the participants’ levels of self-reflec-
tion and insight. Following the program participants’ levels of self-reflection
decreased while their levels of insight increased.
These findings lend support to the notion that high levels of self-reflection may
be more akin to a self-focused rumination, rather than a reflective processes
associated with goal attainment. Indeed, Lyubomirsky, Tucker, Caldwell, and
Berg (1999) found that dysphoric self-reflection led participants to rate their own
problems as severe and unsolvable, and to report a reduced likelihood of actual-
ly implementing their solutions.
These findings also suggest that as individuals move through the self-regula-
tory cycle towards goal attainment they become less engaged in self-reflection
and experience greater insight. This suggests that the constructs measured by the
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
260
SRIS may be malleable as a result of coaching, and this notion is somewhat at
odds with previous research which has identified private self-consciousness as a
trait facet (e.g., Trapnell & Campbell, 1999). The items on the SRIS are present-
ly expressed in a global, trait-like fashion. Exploration of the malleability of self-
reflection and insight may be further facilitated by the inclusion of process-relat-
ed or goal-specific items in the SRIS.
LIMITATIONS
There are a number of limitations to the present study which should be taken
into account when interpreting these findings. This exploratory study used a
within-subjects design. The lack of a control group means that the effects could
have occurred naturalistically, rather than being caused by the intervention. In
addition, the participants were self-selected mature-age university students, who
may not be representative of the general population, and who may have been
especially motivated to achieve their goals. Further, the design may have
induced a demand effect; that is, the participants may have felt that they had to
report making progress and enhanced well-being in order to please the experi-
menter. Nevertheless, this study has begun the process of evaluating the effec-
tiveness of life coaching and has further advanced our knowledge of a psychol-
ogy of life coaching.
IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE COACHING PRACTICE
This study has indicated that solution-focused, cognitive-behavioral life
coaching can facilitate goal attainment, improve mental health and enhance gen-
eral life experience.
This study also found that over the course of participation in the life coaching
program levels of self-reflection decreased and levels of insight increased. This
has been interpreted as an indication that as individuals move through the self-
regulatory cycle towards goal attainment they are less engaged in self-reflection.
The implications of this finding for life coaching practitioners emphasize the fact
that an excessive focus on self-reflection may be counterproductive in terms of
goal attainment. Use of the solution-focused approach may be useful in counter-
acting tendencies to engage in prolonged self-reflection, and may serve to
remind coaches to ensure that life coaching is conducted as a solution-focused,
goal-directed process.
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research should employ random assignment to treatment and control.
The construction of process-specific or goal-specific items to complement the
existing global items on the self-reflection and insight subscales of the SRIS
would be a valuable step in developing an understanding of the role of metacog-
THE IMPACT OF LIFE COACHING
261
nition in purposeful change, and would further explorations of the relationship
between insight and goal attainment. Given the apparent positive impact on par-
ticipants’ mental health, future research should investigate also the utility of life
coaching as a means of enhancing well-being.
SUMMARY
This study has shone some light on the roles of self-reflection and insight in
the self-regulatory cycle. It appears that overengagement in self-reflection may
not facilitate goal attainment. This finding serves to remind coaches that life
coaching should be a results-orientated solution-focused process, rather than an
introspective, overly-philosophical endeavor.
This study has shown that solution-focused, cognitive-behavioural life coach-
ing can indeed be an effective approach to creating positive change, enhancing
mental health and life experience and facilitating goal attainment. In addition to
these therapeutic aspects, life coaching and coaching psychology provide a use-
ful framework from which to further develop our knowledge of the psychologi-
cal processes involved in purposeful change in normal, nonclinical populations.
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