Read this page for an overview of the 2004 annual seminar.
Dr. Patrick Williams - Friday 30th January 2004
Coaching, while the latest and hottest trend to invade the work place, is not really new. It is a new derivative of the best thinking in self-improvement since the turn of the 20th century. Coaching found its place in history, and most recently in the business world, when it exploded into the corporate environment in the 1990s. Today, workplace coaching has dozens of specialty fields (just like medicine) for every kind of business concern including personal career coaching, transitions and mergers coaching, start-up venture and entrepreneurial coaching, and executive leader coaching, (team coaching), and, what many call, life coaching; after all, behind every job is a real person. There is coaching for every type and size of business from the self-employed sole proprietor to huge coaching programs within the top Fortune 500 companies. Boeing International even has a coaching department. Coaching has proven a worthy investment during its short but remarkable history.
The Roots of Coaching
Coaching evolved from three main streams that have flowed together:
- The helping professions such as psychotherapy and counseling
- Business Consulting and organisational development
- Personal development training such as EST, Landmark Forum, Tony Robbins and the Covey Seminars.
Many psychological theorists and practitioners since the early 1900s have influenced the development and evolution of the field of business coaching. William James, America's father of psychology, influenced coaches as they help clients discover their brilliance, which is often masked or buried and can be experienced when they begin to design life and work consciously and purposely. Many of the theories of Carl Jung and Alfred Adler are antecedents to modern day coaching. Adler saw individuals as the creators and artists of their lives and frequently involved his clients in goal setting, life planning, and inventing their future - all tenets and approaches in today's coaching. In a similar fashion, Jung believed in a 'future orientation' or teleological belief than we can create our futures through visioning and purposeful living.
In 1951, during the human potential movement, Carl Rogers wrote his monumental book, 'Client Centred Therapy,' which shifted counselling and therapy to a relationship in which the client was assumed to have the ability to change and grow. This shift in perspective was a significant precursor to what is now called Coaching. Abraham Maslow researched, questioned, and observed people who were living with a sense of vitality and purpose and who were constantly seeking to grow psychologically and achieve more of their human potential. He spoke of needs and motivations, as did earlier psychologists, but with the view that man is naturally a health-seeking creature who, if obstacles to personal growth are removed, will naturally pursue self-actualisation, playfulness, curiosity, and creativity. This belief is the foundation of coaching today. Maslow's treatise 'Toward a Psychology of Being' (1968) set the framework which allowed coaching to fully emerge in the 1990s, as an application of the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Important Distinctions
Coaching is a derivative of many fields and the innovative thinking of great pioneers. As such, however, it is important to recognise the major distinctions between coaching and other disciplines such as therapy, mentoring and consulting.
With coaching, little time is spent in the past, except for brief 'visits' and the focus is on developing the person's future. This philosophical shift has taken root in a generation that rejects the idea of sickness and seeks instead wellness, wholeness and purposeful living - both personally and professionally. The coaching relationship allows the client to explore their blocks to great success and to unlock his or her biggest dreams and desires. The shift from seeing clients as 'ill' or having pathology toward viewing them as 'well and whole' and seeking a richer life is paramount to understanding the evolution of coaching.
To surmise; I often say therapy is about recovering and uncovering , while coaching is about discovering...
So, a big thank you to Patrick, for his excellent seminar. I would also like to thank everyone who was involved in making his seminar such a great day; from the members who went along, to see just what Patrick had to offer, to the staff at The UKCLC and at the Royal Society of Medicine who helped to arrange the event.
