Coaching Practiced

Section 10 Narrative Coaching Introduction

David Tee & Jonathan Passmore

If the variety of coaching approaches represented by the techniques and models in this volume are to be placed in a taxonomy, then Whybrow (2021) classifies narrative coaching as a constructivist approach, placing it alongside personal construct psychology and neuro-linguistic programming. Each of these approaches seeks to understand how we as human beings make sense of our own world; specifically, that how we find meaning is socially constructed, to a notable extent shaped by our own histories, families and cultures, and that meaning can therefore be reconstructed. For narrative coaching, Drake (2018) describes this as using a spiralling approach in partnership with the client as they “… release old stories that are no longer working for them and create new stories which enable them to make new decisions” (p. 111).

The specific scope for narrative coaching is a matter of debate amongst its leading contributors. Drake (2015) describes it as an open source, holistic methodology that draws from multiple disciplines beyond psychology, such as literary theory and the humanities. Law (2019a) and Stelter (2016) ask questions about Drake’s inclusion of attachment theory, which Stelter states is psychodynamic-oriented and therefore represents essentialist thinking. That ongoing debate aside, there is much that unifies how these different writers conceptualise narrative coaching. Drake (2017), Stelter and Law (2010) ...