A brief primer for those new to coaching research and evidence-based practice

Abstract

If coaching is to continue to grow and develop, if we as coaches are to deliver coaching and coaching methodologies that are genuinely effective for our clients, then we need to be au fait with the coaching literature and the body of research that informs effective coaching practice. In short, we need to engage in evidence-based coaching. Not only does such an approach allow us to work in an ethical and professional manner, steering clear of the all-too-frequent fads and foibles evident throughout sections of the coaching and self-development industry, but it helps us as coaches develop on a personal level. By questioning our assumptions, by engaging in constructive and informed self-reflection about our coaching practice, we become more mature, balanced and purposeful professionals. However, this can feel extremely challenging for those new to evidence-based approaches to coaching. This article aims to provide the reader with basic foundational information about the state of play in coaching research and evidence-based practice along with a simple but very useful framework for evaluating the utility of coaching literature. The article concludes with some tips for staying abreast of emerging coaching research.

Full text

The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019 3
Article
A brief primer for those new to coaching
research and evidence-based practice
Anthony Grant & Sean O’Connor
If coaching is to continue to grow and develop, if we as coaches are to deliver coaching and coaching
methodologies that are genuinely effective for our clients, then we need to be au fait with the coaching
literature and the body of research that informs effective coaching practice. In short, we need to engage in
evidence-based coaching. Not only does such an approach allow us to work in an ethical and professional
manner, steering clear of the all-too-frequent fads and foibles evident throughout sections of the coaching
and self-development industry, but it helps us as coaches develop on a personal level. By questioning our
assumptions, by engaging in constructive and informed self-reection about our coaching practice, we
become more mature, balanced and purposeful professionals. However, this can feel extremely challenging
for those new to evidence-based approaches to coaching. This article aims to provide the reader with basic
foundational information about the state of play in coaching research and evidence-based practice along
with a simple but very useful framework for evaluating the utility of coaching literature. The article concludes
with some tips for staying abreast of emerging coaching research.
Keywords: Research; coaching; evidence-based coaching; coach training; coach development.
THE COACHING industry has come a
long way since its early days in the 1990s
when the ‘you too can become a life
coach’ approach dominated. In those times
it seemed as if every man and his dog was
offering life coach training courses and certi-
cations (Grant, 2006). Virtually all of these
courses had no theoretical basis, little in the
way of common ethical and professional prac-
tice standards, and often appeared to be more
about making money for the training organi-
sation than establishing a bona de profes-
sional approach to working with coaching
clients (Spence, 2007). Many drew on ideas
from personal development programmes
such as EST (Leonard, 1998) and broad ideas
plucked from the personal development zeit-
geist (Brock, 2008). Indeed, during the early
1990s there was little to no coaching-specic
research to draw on. The current situation in
coaching differs markedly from those times.
Why bother with research?
Understanding and applying the research
underpinning contemporary coaching prac-
tice brings additional tangible value to our
coaching practice. This is true regardless of the
type of coaching involved (e.g. executive, devel-
opmental, performance, skills or personal/life
coaching), and irrespective of whether one is
an internal organisational coach, a leader who
coaches, or a professional coach.
The ability to demonstrate a good under-
standing of the evidence-base for coaching
is particularly important for those coaches
seeking to work with organisations as an
external coach or coaching consultant. This
is because those human resources practi-
tioners that are tasked with purchasing effec-
tive coaching services for organisations hold
an increasingly sophisticated understanding
of the science underpinning coaching meth-
odologies – to put it bluntly – they want to
know that we (as coaches) know what we are
doing; they want the evidence.
In addition, we as coaches need to engage
in the kind of informed, purposeful self-
reection that we encourage our coachees to
do. By engaging in constructive and informed
self-reection about our coaching practices;

4 The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019
Anthony Grant & Sean O’Connor
by explicitly benchmarking our own personal
coaching approach with the existing and
emerging research; by seeking to integrate
current best empirical research with our own
personal experience and professional exper-
tise, we become more mature, balanced and
purposeful professionals and more rounded,
more fullled human beings. In a very real
sense, we need to personally embody an
evidence-based approach.
Evidence-based coaching can be under-
stood as coaching that involves the intelligent
and conscientious use of relevant and best current
knowledge, integrated with professional prac-
titioner expertise in making decisions about
how to deliver coaching to coaching clients
and in designing and delivering coach training
programmes (adapted from Grant, 2005;
Sackett et al., 1996; Stober & Grant, 2006).
In order to utilise ‘relevant and best current
knowledge’ we need to be familiar with the
coaching literature: This not as simple as it
sounds. As can be seen from Figure 1, coaching
research is growing almost exponentially each
year.
As we read though the extant coaching
research it is easy to become overwhelmed with
the sheer volume and complexly of publica-
tions. Knowing the basic coaching research and
then staying aware of newly-published coaching
research is challenging for new practitioners,
but not impossible: We simply need to become
informed practitioners that can draw on rele-
vant and best current knowledge.
The Research Relevance-to-Coaching
Practice Model
It is important to note that the research that
can be used to inform coaching practice can
come from a very large number of knowledge
domains. These could include the behav-
ioural sciences, management literature, adult
learning and development, and areas such
as systems theory, neuroscience and psycho-
therapy. The diversity of research that could be
related to coaching challenges us, as informed
practitioners, to determine the extent to which
a particular piece of research really is relevant
to coaching practice. Where that research is
directly and explicitly focused on coaching,
this is an easy task, not so easy where the links
to actual coaching practice are more tenuous.
A useful framework for categorising
research that could be used in coaching is
the Research Relevance-to-Coaching Prac-
tice Model (Grant, 2016). This two-by-two
Anthony Grant & Sean O’Connor
Figure1:PatternofPublications(approx.)intheScholarlyCoachingLiteraturefrom
2000to2017
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
NumberofPublications (approx)PerYear
Figure 1: Pattern of Publications (approx.) in the Scholarly Coaching
Literature from 2000 to 2017

The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019 5
framework provides a simple way to catego-
rise research that can be used in coaching as
being either coaching-specic or coaching-
relevant (horizontal axis) and whether or not
this is weak or strong research (vertical axis).
Coaching-specic research includes research
that specically focuses on coaching with
coaching as the primary focus. For example,
this would include outcome studies that
examine the effectiveness of coaching,
research into the impact of coaching on a
range of variables, or qualitative research
into the nature of coach-coachee relation-
ships amongst others.
Coaching-related research includes research
that is not specically focused on coaching
but produces information that could be
used in coaching practice or might indirectly
inform coaching practice. For example, this
would include research from psychotherapy,
economics, management or organisational
research, philosophical paradigms, systems
theory, neuroscience etc. We also need to
consider the rigour and strength of the
evidence presented.
Strong evidence is information and evidence
from properly-designed and peer-reviewed
studies using the correct methodology for
the research question being addressed, and
where the results have been replicated in a
range of appropriate populations.
In contrast, weak evidence is when there are
a small number of studies, limited numbers
of researchers/sources, inappropriate or poor
quality research designs including research
with low statistical power, and/or inappropriate
analyses. Typically, this kind of work is not peer
reviewed. This category would include opinion
articles or anecdotal, unsubstantiated reports.
The point here is that we, as informed
practitioners, need to be critical consumers
of research. We need to build our critical
thinking skills so that we can identify the
research that will shed genuine insight into
coaching practice and methodologies.
One way to present the concepts is
through a two-by-two diagram (see Figure
2). This gure is presented as a useful lens
through which to categorise and classify
different bodies of research. Of course,
there will be different options as to which
studies or which bodies of research should sit
within each quadrant. Keep in mind that this
framework is designed to be an aid to those
who wish to develop a more sophisticated
understanding of evidenced-based coaching
– rather than a denitive categorisation.
The current state of play in coaching
research
Having recommended a cautionary approach
in consuming research and outlined a simple
Figure 2: Research Relevance-to-Coaching Practice Model
A brief primer for those new to coaching research and evidence-based practice
Quadrant Three
Weaker evidence for coaching
Rigorous coaching-related research
Quadrant One
Stronger evidence for coaching
Rigorous coaching-specific research
Quadrant Four
Poorer evidence for coaching
Less rigorous coaching-related research
Quadrant Two
Weaker evidence for coaching
Less rigorous coaching-specific research
Strength of Evidence
Relevance to Coaching Practice
Strong
Weak Lower Relevance Higher Relevance
Coach-related Research Coach-specific Research

6 The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019
Anthony Grant & Sean O’Connor
two-by-two framework that can be used to
categorise different types of research studies,
we can now turn our attention to the current
state of play in coaching research. The
following brief overview describes aspects
of coaching-specic research that draw on
key research that is situated in Quadrants
One and Two. It should be noted that the
following is meant only as a brief primer that
focuses on some key themes in the research
in order to act as a guide for those newly
engaging in evidence-based approaches to
coaching: This should not be taken as a
denitive review of the coaching literature.
Outcome studies
Outcome studies are studies that explore the
impact of a coaching intervention on some
specied variable which is deemed to have
changed as a result of the coaching interven-
tion. There is now quite a considerable body
of research indicating that coaching can be
an effective approach for facilitating change
on a number of variables.
Such outcome variables include goal
attainment, personal resilience, subjective
wellbeing, solution-focused thinking, self-
insight, and transformational leadership
behaviours (Bozer & Jones, 2018). Most of
the extant coaching outcome research has
focused on workplace or executive coaching,
although there is an emerging body of
research looking at personal/life coaching –
particularly where the coaching impacts on
quality-of-life or specic health issues (Hale
& Giese, 2017). The personal/life coaching
research literature also suggests that
coaching is an effective means of creating
intentional personal change (Spaten, 2018).
Coaching outcome research methodolo-
gies vary from single person qualitative case
studies (e.g. Libri & Kemp, 2006) through to
large scale outcome studies (e.g. de Haan et
al., 2016). We have recently seen the emer-
gence of meta-analyses of coaching research
and systematic reviews (Bozer & Jones,
2018). Meta-analyses can be considered
the most sophisticated form of quantitative
outcome coaching research, as it combines
and conjointly analyses a number of previ-
ously published research studies in order to
calculate the average effect size of a number
of different coaching interventions. To date
there have been ve meta-analyses (Burt &
Talati, 2017; De Meuse et al., 2009; Jones
et al., 2016; Sonesh et al., 2015; Theeboom
et al., 2013). The Jones et al. (2016) and
Theeboom et al. (2013) studies are the two
most cited meta-analyses. All of these meta-
analyses indicate that coaching is an effective
change methodology.
It should be noted that goal-focused,
solution-focused and cognitive-behavioural
coaching methodologies are the most vali-
dated in the literature (Bozer & Jones,
2018). However, this does not mean to say
that other coaching methodologies are inef-
fective. Rather this situation reects the facts
that aforementioned coaching methodolo-
gies represent the more common coaching
practices.
Coach-coachee relationship studies and
characteristics of effective coaches
The coach–coachee relationship is a vital
factor in successful coaching practice. The
extant evidence strongly indicates that as
coaches we need to pay particular attention
to the quality of the relationships we have
with our coachees. There is an emerging
body of research looking at the nature of the
coach-coachee relationship. Again, a broad
range of methodologies have been used and
a number of tools for the assessment of
the relationship have been developed (e.g.
Bachkirova et al., 2015; Jowett et al., 2012).
Early research by Gyllensten and Palmer
(2007) explored the qualitative experi-
ences of nine coachees, noting that the
coach–coachee relationship was of three
subthemes: valuable coaching relationship;
trust; and transparency. A more recent large
scale, predominately quantative study, (de
Haan, et al., 2016) utilised data from 1895
client–coach pairs nding that the strength
of the coachee–coach working alliance is a
key ingredient in successful coaching, but
coachee or coach personality and personality

The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019 7
A brief primer for those new to coaching research and evidence-based practice
matching between coach and coaching were
unrelated to outcomes, a nding echoed by
a number of other researchers (e.g. Bozer,
Joo & Santora, 2015).
The research into the coach–coachee
relationship has some similarities with the
research that has looked at the therapist-
patient relationships – the ‘therapeutic
working alliance’. But coaching is not
therapy, and the nature of these helping
relationships do differ somewhat.
A key nding in the coach–coachee rela-
tionship research literature emphasises the
importance of having a strong focus on goals
and desired coaching outcomes, rather than
overly concentrating on the deep rapport
and unconditional positive regard central
to psychotherapy. Some research suggests
that while empathy, positive regard and
autonomy support are, of course, important
characteristics of the coach-coachee relation-
ship, a solid focus on goals is most likely the
key deciding factor in creating successful
coaching interventions (Grant, 2013).
As regards the characteristics of effective
coaches; the evidence indicates that coaches
with an academic background in psychology
and/or the social sciences of human behav-
iour (and/or training in evidence-based
methods) are more effective in terms of facil-
itating greater increases in coachees’ self-
awareness and job performance than those
coaches without such a background (Bozer,
Sarros & Santora, 2014). This key research
emphasises the importance of having coach
training that is solidly grounded in the
behavioural science.
Research about how coaching works:
The psycho-mechanics of coaching
There is a considerable amount of research
that sits within Quadrant Three of the
Research Relevance-to-Coaching Practice
Model, much of which challenges commonly-
held coaching assumptions and mythologies.
Goal research is one such example:
Locke’s classic (1996) review of goal-setting
research, although not explicitly aimed at
coaching practices, contains a wealth of
information that should be the bedrock of
any coach who aspires to evidence-based
coaching practice. Locke’s research disem-
bowels many coaching mythologies and
misconceptions. For example, it is often
said in coaching circles that the coachee
should set their own goals as this leads to
more commitment to the goal. Whilst this
is true, Locke’s research shows that when
someone else (not the coachee) sets a goal,
it is more likely to be more stretching, and
stretching goals are very often (but not
always) related to better performance. So,
here we have a conundrum; if the coachee
sets the goal, they will be more committed,
but if someone else sets the goal it will lead
to higher performance. In fact, Locke’s
research shows that it doesn’t matter who set
the goal. The key factor is that the coachee
needs to understand why the goal is being set
and that they agree with that reason. In this
case goal commitment is the same as if they
had set the goal themselves. Although this
may seem pedantic, understanding and then
applying this research gives the coach much
more agency and exibly in their coaching
practice: the coach is no longer bound by
common coaching mythologies, rather
they are able to create their own coaching
approaches based on solid research. In short,
this research gives the coach far greater exi-
bility in being actively engaged in goal setting
with the coachee than common coaching
mythology would suggest.
A second key area in Quadrant Three
is related to the research on self-reection
and self-insight. Drawing on psychotherapy
and counselling theory it is often assumed
that we should encourage our coachees
to engage in deep self-reection, and that
such self-reection will naturally lead to self-
insight and increased wellbeing. However,
there is a body of emerging coaching-related
research that sits within Quadrant Three
that challenges these assumptions. Firstly,
the relationship between self-reection and
self-insight is not clear cut. Indeed, counter-
intuitive as it maybe, there is often a nega-
tive correlation between self-reecting and

8 The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019
Anthony Grant & Sean O’Connor
self-insight (Lyke, 2008), and self-insight but
not self-reection is typically correlated with
wellbeing (Harrington & Loffredo, 2011).
This kind of Quadrant Three research
strongly suggests that coaches need to help
their coachees develop good self-insight,
rather than steering the coaching conver-
sation towards introspective self-reection.
Moreover, this is particularly important if the
coachee has a degree of ‘negative self-talk’
or dysfunctional attitudes (Stein & Grant,
2014).
It is beyond the scope of this primer
article to discuss in depth the utility of
research and evidence from non-coaching
areas such as neuroscience, systems theory
or ‘evidence’ from organisations selling
proprietary leadership development assess-
ment tools. Sufce it to say that we should
regard such ‘evidence’ with caution, particu-
larly where such ‘evidence’ is promoted by
commercial entities or privately-owned ‘insti-
tutes’. A useful point to think about when
evaluating research or coaching literature
from Quadrants Three and Four is to ask
yourself these questions: (1) ‘Is this infor-
mation actually useful in my coaching prac-
tice?’; (2) ‘In what tangible way can I apply
this information, and what difference will
it make?’; and (3) ‘is this interesting, but
not really useful?’. The ‘useful’ vs. ‘inter-
esting’ perspective is a very effective way to
categorise research. For example, some of
the Quadrant Three and Four neuroscience
literature that is discussed in coaching falls
into the ‘interesting’ but not ‘useful’ cate-
gory, and so we should be wary of being side-
tracked by research that is not of tangible
use in developing our coaching skills and
practice.
Simple tips for staying current with the
emerging coaching literature
Staying abreast of good-quality current
research is essential if we are to be effec-
tive evidence-based practitioners. Using
commercial databases or subscribing to indi-
vidual journals can be expensive and time
consuming. Relying on blogs or information
from the providers of commercial coaching
services can lead to the use of inaccurate or
biased information.
One of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to
stay up to date with emerging peer-reviewed
coaching research is to set up an alert in
Google Scholar. To do this you simply need
to decide on your search terms (the cate-
gory or keywords that you are interested in);
for example, ‘executive coaching’. Once
you have run that search simply look for
the ‘Create Alert’ icon in the left column
of the results page, and then click ‘Create
Alert’. You will then receive an email alert
whenever new articles on your topic are
published. You will not always be able to
access the full article for free via Google
Scholar, but you will be able to read a
summary of the article, and that is often
enough for you to be able to decide whether
or not to nd the full paper from the library
or by emailing the authors directly yourself
and asking for a soft copy.
We also need to be aware that each
journal has its own specic target audience
and target readership. This means that
each journal with have a form of implicit or
explicit bias as to what kind of research it
publishes. Some journals will prefer sophis-
ticatedly designed quantitative studies and
be targeted at academics and researchers;
other journals will put more emphasis on
the practical applications of research and
will be aimed more at practitioners. This is
not to say that one is better than the other;
rather this serves as a reminder to us to be
critical in our reading of research and our
use of evidence.
Summary
An awareness of current coaching research
is vital if we are to become (and remain)
mature, balanced and purposeful coaching
professionals. This is vital whether we are a
professional coach, a leader who coaches,
an HR professional or a personal/life coach.
Although the sheer amount of research that

The Coaching Psychologist, Vol. 15, No. 1, June 2019 9
A brief primer for those new to coaching research and evidence-based practice
may be potentially informative to coaching
practice can feel overwhelming, particu-
larly to those new to this area, it is rela-
tivity easy to come to grips with the key
coaching-specic research. In order to stay
abreast of the emerging evidence, we need
to develop a critical and analytical approach
to understanding and consuming research.
In this way we can deliver best practice to our
coaching clients and continue to grow and
develop as coaching professionals.
Key tips
• Recognise that research and evidence-
based coaching are the foundations
of professional and ethical coaching
practice.
• Become familiar with the key foundational
evidence for coaching effectiveness – i.e.
those peer-reviewed coaching-specic
studies that show that coaching ‘works’.
• Become familiar with the coaching-
related research that shows how coaching
works and gives ideas on how to improve
your coaching practice.
• Learn to distinguish between high- and
low-quality research.
• Remember that each journal, book or
published report on coaching will have
some kind of implicit bias; learn to recog-
nise those biases and take them into
account.
• Keep abreast of emerging research through
tools such as Google Scholar alerts.
• See research as another personal and
professional development tool; enjoy!
Correspondence
Anthony M. Grant
Coaching Psychology Unit
University of Sydney
Email: anthony.grant@sydney.edu.au
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