16th ANNUAL COACHING & MENTORING RESEARCH CONFERENCE International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies

Programme & abstracts

02 16th ANNUAL COACHING & MENTORING STUDIES

PROGRAMMEThursday 16th January 2020

9:00 Coffee and registration (Foyer outside Clerici Learning Studio)

9:30 Welcome - Professor Tatiana Bachkirova (Clerici Learning Studio)

9:35 Keynote Speech 1: Andrew Armatas (II) (Clerici Learning Studio)

10:05 Presentation of Prizes – Representatives from EMCC and APECS(Clerici Learning Studio)

10:15 - Paper 1.1 - The experience of being coached in the workplace whilst facing a stressful life event at home: A transcendental phenomenological study

Caroline Duncan (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (PJ)Room: Clerici Learning Studio

Many adults will experience a stressful life event at home during their time at work, impacting presence, performance and commitment. In these cases, organisations typically offer counselling, and coaching to a much lesser extent. This presentation explores the experience of clients who received coaching at work, whilst facing stressful life events at home, such as bereavement. I will present the findings and will highlight implications for coaching practice and for organisations. I will also discuss how I followed the transcendental phenomenological methodology, with its advantages and limitations.

10:15 - Paper 1.2 - Images of mentoring: using visual approaches in practice

Deborah Humphrey (Postgraduate Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (II)Room: CLC.1.07

Coaching and mentoring relationships are common in the NHS, however can be fraught with challenges based on hierarchy and power relationships, thus limiting the effectiveness of the intervention. This research explored the use of photography as way of a giving voice to mentees from a BAME background. The results were unexpected, moving and reflective. The use of photography gives an opportunity for a more creative and authentic intervention in the coaching & mentoring relationship.

10:55 Coffee Break (Foyer outside Clerici Learning Studio)

11:15 Paper 2.1 - Coaching for recovery: A qualitative study of mental health service users’ experiences

David Britten (York St John University/PhD in Coaching, Oxford Brookes University) (TB)Room: Clerici Learning Studio

Over the past ten or twelve years, there has been growing recognition of the potential value of coaching for people experiencing significant mental ill-health. However, there is as yet very little research into the experiences of coaching clients with mental health problems. This presentation discusses research into a coaching project involving the service users of a mental health charity in the north of England. It highlights the project’s accomplishments and shortcomings, considers some theoretical perspectives and makes recommendations for practice and for further research.

11:15 Paper 2.2 - Work-based coaching supporting the transition to fatherhood: An action research study

Kathryn Smith (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (CFM)Room: CLC.1.07

The transition to fatherhood is one of the most joyful, yet stressful life events however, there is little evidence to support parental coaching as a supportive workplace intervention for fathers. This Action Research involved a cohort of four fathers and identified the themes brought to coaching as well as exploring the impact of the coach’s gender. Practitioners and academics will find the research helps to support the argument for parental coaching, as well as identifying opportunities for future research.

11:15 Paper 2.3 - Rhyme and Reason - How can coaches harness the Romantic Imagination to serve their clients?

Carl Tomlinson (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (II)Room: CLC.1.08

The use of Imagination in coaching is under-researched. Applying Discourse-Historical Analysis and techniques of literary criticism, I synthesise an idea of the Imagination from the writings of three English Romantic poets. The findings show how coaches and clients can become as comfortable as Keats ‘in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and Reason’. It is a necessary contribution to research in coaching and Imagination which shows how the literary canon can provide valuable insights for coaches.

10:15 - Paper 1.3 - Developing attitude during supervision training

Carsten Hennig (MA Media Studies, Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany) (TB)Room: CLC.1.08

This qualitative longitudinal study (before/after-design with approx. 2-year interval) is ongoing doctoral research regarding the question: To what extent does attitude develop during participation in an extra-occupational training course in systemic supervision?: Supervisors in training have participated in two narrative interviews each, which are being interpreted in line with Objective Hermeneutics. Interpretation results are compared to a range of theoretical concepts of (professional) attitude to analyse potential changes during course participation. A case-sample illustrates the approach.

03 16th ANNUAL COACHING & MENTORING STUDIES

11:55 Paper 3.2 - The role of coaching across the retirement transition

Tessa Dodwell (MA Coaching and

Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes)

(PJ)

Room: CLC.1.06

Presenting the first UK study exploring coaching across the retirement transition. Six retirees were interviewed about their retirement experiences and the role that coaching played for them. Each interview was analysed using Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological approach to produce a general essence. Pre-retirement, coaching was primarily practical and skills-based, whereas post-retirement coaching provided a deeper role addressing core values, identity and fears about aging. This study offers an insight into how to optimise coaching across the transition to retirement.

11:55 Paper 3.4 - How can charities use coaching to help develop managers and achieve their mission?

Peter Watson (MA Coaching and

Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes)

(JM/SC)Room: CLC.1.08

Little research exists on coaching in charities. Does the organisational context of coaching matter? Using an interpretivist, case study approach involving interviews with key stakeholders, this study investigated coaching in two large, national charities. The views and experiences of coachees, L&D managers and coaches indicated a synergy between key values of coaching and those of charities. Interviewees saw the investment in coaching as having significant benefits for managers and great potential for charities to help them improve people’s lives and the world we live in.

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break (Foyer outside Clerici Learning Studio)

13:30 Paper 4.1 - How can a training intervention help managers begin coaching their direct reports?

Sandra Illsley (MA Coaching ad Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (JM/SC)Room: Clerici Learning Studio

Managerial coaching is under-researched and lacks empirical data, in particular, around training managers to coach their direct reports. To address this gap, I devised and delivered an interactive training intervention, evaluating each manager against a foundation coaching standard and then improving the intervention through two cycles of action research. I found that each stage was key to motivate, train and embed a coaching approach and that numerous factors influenced the extent to which the managers engaged with coaching.

13:30 Paper 4.2 - ‘Like a lightning rod’: How solution-focused coaches experience and make sense of coaching

Stephen Lawson (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (II)Room: CLC.1.07

Five solution-focused (SF) coaches were interviewed and the data subjected to an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results suggest that SF coaches see change as complex and constant, and occurring at the macro and micro level. Clients are seen as autonomous, resourceful and experts in their own situations. The client is capable of prospecting into the future, simulating their prospective state and achieving it with minimal involvement from the coach. Coaches use metaphor to describe cognitive and sensory phenomena they experience during coaching.

13:30 Paper 4.3 -From transmission to transformation: How using coaching enabled children’s social workers to enhance their practice & fulfil their vocational aspirationsSuzanne Triggs (PhD, University of Huddersfield) (JG)Room: CLC.1.08

This research explored both children’s social workers experiences of delivering development coaching to service users (parents and young people) and service users experience of receiving coaching from them. The findings revealed that foregoing habits of ‘fixing’ and advice-giving during coaching resulted in social workers transforming elements of their identity and everyday practice, which re-invigorated their vocational drive to ‘make a difference’. This enhanced how they performed as social workers in a turbulent environment experiencing a crisis of resilience.

14:10 Paper 5.1 - Evaluation of leadership coaching through a lens of ambidexterity

Mark Jamieson (Professional Doctorate in Coaching, University of Chester) (II)Room: Clerici Learning Studio

Evaluation of leadership coaching, primarily focused on short term targets, contradicts the espoused strategic priorities of organisations, emphasising new leadership behaviours to deliver an adaptive environment for competitive performance. This research adopted a conceptual lens of ambidexterity to collect data from senior practitioners. The data confirmed the contradictory environment for evaluation and revealed fresh insights, including 6 new dimensions of problematics and 7 promising movements. More generally, ambidexterity opened up possibilities for a wider strategic contribution. Findings from this study were developed to suggest the dimensions of an ambidextrous evaluation framework that is simultaneously workable and strategically helpful.

14:10 Paper 5.2 - How does coaching help adults with the pathological demand avoidance (PDA) profile of autism: A constructivist grounded theory study

Alison Booth (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (AM)Room: CLC.1.07

This small study investigated the relevance of coaching for people with this controversial behavioural presentation of autism, and the type of approaches that might be useful. The interview findings and the core concept of Human Kindness will be presented in the context of the Autism Spectrum and of Neurodiversity as a whole, with mention of why this may be equally relevant to all coaches in the general population.

11:55 Paper 3.3 - A team coaching model for developing criticality in undergraduate studentsGeorgia (Gina) Kostoulias (Doctor of Coaching and Mentoring, Oxford Brookes) (EC)Room: CLC.1.07

A Team Coaching Model for Developing Criticality in Undergraduate StudentsThree unconnected areas in higher education that of criticality, critical dialogue, and coaching are brought into a dynamic relationship under a theoretical, philosophical and educational framework of a team coaching model. Two action research cycles of implementing the team coaching model with student teams and tutor/coaches revealed that the proposed CTC model can support critical dialogue and provide a fertile ground for student-teams to explore answers to questions, discover knowledge for themselves and construct knowledge through a collective dialogic process.

14:10 Paper 5.3 - Fees, fluctuating politics and fierce competition: can coaching provide an answer to Higher Education’s woes? A case study

Caroline Searle (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (SC)Room: CLC.1.08

The Augar Report (May, 2019) signalled another potential destabilising shift in Higher Education (HE) funding, prompting further stimulus to UK universities seeking to develop their human capital in a competitive landscape. This case study explored whether the use of coaching can add value to the HE sector and any industry-specific barriers to achieving that value. Extant coaching literature is rich in the field of education but thinner for HE. Few studies explore organisations as a whole, suggesting a gap, which my study aimed to inform.

11:55 Paper 3.1 - Understanding coach decision-making

Paul Berry (MA Coaching and

Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes)

(TB)

Room: Clerici Learning Studio

This study aimed to better understand how coaches make real-time decisions, which is hoped will contribute to a broader debate concerning the development of adaptive expertise. A novel study design within a case study approach entailed the separate videoing of two coaching sessions. An interpretative epistemology justified the use of thematic data analysis. Questions that arise from this study include; how do novice coaches’ make decisions; does reasoning vary according to coach model/philosophy; do non-conscious drivers of coach decisions actually reflect intuition?

04 16th ANNUAL COACHING & MENTORING STUDIES

14:50 Tea Break (Foyer outside Clerici Learning Studio)

15:40 Paper 6.1 - How team coaches make sense of shared leadership

Asha Ghosh (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (JG)Room: Clerici Learning Studio

As organisation structures become flatter, teams are now designed to be expertise-led, distributed and collaborative shifting the onus of responsibility at a team level to foster actions, direction and decision-making. However, Team coaching research is under-developed and shared leadership has yet to be fully explored by the field. This study seeks to capture team coaches’ perceived experiences of motivating and developing team capacities to share influence. It has explored their perceptions of team intra- and interpersonal dynamics of working as part of a shared leadership team and reveals the importance of two dynamic qualities; energy and unity, once combined, they provide the team with conditions for sharing responsibilities.

15:40 Paper 6.2 - The coaching manager with Gen Y graduates: An interpretive phenomenological analysisBenita Mayhead (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (II)Room: CLC.1.07

Over the last two decades, a shift has occurred in organisations resulting in today’s norm of managers coaching as part of their roles, often with no training in how to. Diversity of population has also changed with Generation Y comprising 35% of the workforce. This presentation will share the experiences of six coaching managers who manage Generation Y graduates. The findings support an argument for organisations to review how they are training line managers when coaching is an expected norm.

15:40 Paper 6.3 - How is a coaching intervention perceived within an NHS Foundation Trust?Angela Bird (MA Coaching and Mentoring Practice, Oxford Brookes) (PJ)Room: CLC.1.08

This single intrinsic case study explores how the experience of coaching compares to that of supervision with a cohort of registered nurses. Additionally, a contextual understanding is developed of how organisational perspectives on coaching are aligned. Rich participant description drawn from the key findings is supported by coaching and nursing theory. Together they inform two themes for discussion: ‘A comparison of coaching and supervision’ and ‘Coaching within the organisation, intent versus reality.’

16:20 ‘What Makes a Good Book Proposal’, Laura Pacey, Head of Publishing, Open University Press

If you would like to attend and haven’t registered yet, please register here.

For enquiries, please contact Matty via

iccams@brookes.ac.uk

Other events organised by International Centre for Coaching and Mentoring Studies:

Coaching Supervision Colloquium

OBCAMS

15:10 Keynote Speech II: Pauline Fatien Diochon (II) (Clerici Learning Studio)

16:30 Plenary and concluding remarks by Professor David Clutterbuck in the Clerici Learning Studio