Coaching Practiced

Section 2 Coaching Frameworks The Role of Frameworks, Models and Approaches in Coaching

David Tee & Jonathan Passmore

While coaching is similar to other helping-by-talking interventions such as counselling and therapy in the range of ‘approaches’ available (many of these coaching approaches indeed having their conceptual roots within therapy), the ever-growing number of ‘models’ is something that sets coaching apart from related practices. Given this, it is of interest that the term ‘model’ is rarely defined and variously applied in the coaching literature.

Within the context of counselling supervision, Reeves (2013) uses the term ‘models’ to refer to frameworks which bring “…a particular perspective to how the supervisory process might be negotiated and understood” (p. 387). Within the coaching practitioner literature, ‘models’ can be used to refer to any theory, theoretical framework or tool deemed of potential use to coaches in their client work (Bates, 2015). More commonly, however, the term applies to frameworks or structures, often producing acronyms, which suggest a sequence of linear stages to follow within a coaching conversation. As an example, the RADAR model has the steps Rapport, Analyse, Demonstrate, Activity, Review (Giangregorio, 2016) or alternatively Relationship, Awareness, Dream, Action, Results/Review (Hilliard, 2012).

A general point can be made before specific models are considered. Coaching models are often positioned as how coaching practitioners cut ...