Coaching and Mentoring

Training, coaching, mentoring and counselling all develop people, but each is a different conversation with different boundaries. This module draws on Jonathan Passmore's definition of coaching and his continuum of helping, David Clutterbuck's view of mentoring, a short history from Gallwey to Whitmore, the Bill Campbell case study and the meta-analytic evidence on whether coaching works.

The quality of the working relationship is one of the strongest predictors of whether coaching makes a difference. This module covers Bordin's working alliance, Erik de Haan's large-scale coaching study, contracting at the start, the ICF core competencies, presence, the Co-Active three levels of listening, Passmore's guidance on listening and intuition, and Amy Edmondson's psychological safety.

Coaching models share a common root in Timothy Gallwey's idea that performance equals potential minus interference. This module follows that line from the Inner Game of Tennis to John Whitmore's GROW, Michael Bungay Stanier's Coaching Habit questions, and four successors, OSKAR, CLEAR, PRACTICE and ACHIEVE, then helps you choose a model and hold it lightly so it serves the person.

Coaching is at heart a learning process, because adults learn by making sense of experience rather than by being told. This module connects coaching to David Kolb's learning cycle, Honey and Mumford's learning styles, Malcolm Knowles's andragogy, the Conscious Competence model, Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, the Johari Window, Argyris and Schön's learning loops, Carol Dweck's mindsets and Jack Mezirow's transformative learning.

Person-centred, solution-focused and positive approaches share the view that people have the resources to grow. This module covers Carl Rogers's core conditions and humanistic roots, Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg's solution-focused toolkit and the Brief Family Therapy Center case, strengths and positive psychology coaching, David Cooperrider's appreciative inquiry, and Stephen Fineman's critique of relentless positivity.

How we react to events is largely shaped by the views we take of them. This module introduces cognitive behavioural coaching for people who are functioning well and want to function better, drawing on Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, the ABCDE model, common thinking errors, Michael Neenan and Stephen Palmer's coaching adaptation, practical tools, a randomised trial in a public health agency, and where coaching stops and referral begins.

Whatever model a coach uses, the moment to moment work comes down to the same practical skills. Drawing on Jonathan Passmore's aide memoire for managers and David Clutterbuck's guidance, this module covers planning a session, five types of question, powerful questions, listening, reflecting, clarifying and summarising, acknowledging, reframing and accountability, a six stage structure, the Meena teaching case and practising in triads.

The Tavistock tradition treats every coaching conversation as taking place inside a system, with anxiety beneath the task. This module traces the tradition and separates group relations from T-groups, then covers Wilfred Bion's basic assumptions, primary task, boundary, role and the organisation in the mind, transference and social defences, Isabel Menzies Lyth's nursing study, and what a systems-psychodynamic coach does differently.

Coaching one person and sending them back into an unchanged system can achieve surprisingly little. This module compares individual, team and systemic coaching, and covers Peter Hawkins's five disciplines, David Clutterbuck's definition of team coaching, Hackman and Wageman's theory and timing, the senior leadership teams research, Avanti's approach to group coaching, and Gestalt and narrative coaching.

Jonathan Passmore has done much to turn coaching into an evidence-based discipline, and his teaching has helped shape Avanti's approach. This module covers his integrative model and four levels of work, motivational interviewing for clients who feel stuck, the APPEAR ethics model developed with Eve Turner, his campaign for rigorous evidence, and his randomised trial of coaching with British Army learner drivers.

Mentoring is the older and in some ways richer relative of coaching. This module draws on Kathy Kram's career and psychosocial functions and four phases, David Clutterbuck's sponsorship and developmental models, the roles of mentor and mentee, Terri Scandura's work on dysfunction, formal and informal mentoring and matching, peer, group, distance and political mentoring, and reverse mentoring at General Electric.

A good instrument opens a conversation, and every score is a hypothesis. This module covers why coaches use psychometrics, type and trait approaches, the Big Five, reliability, validity, norms and fairness, the Myers Briggs evidence debate, 360 degree feedback, strengths and emotional intelligence tools, and the ethics and competence needed, drawing on Passmore's Psychometrics in Coaching, Pittenger, Barrick and Mount, and Smither.

In the UK anyone can call themselves a coach, so protection for clients must come from codes, good practice and supervision. This module covers the Global Code of Ethics and the ICF code, the APPEAR model, confidentiality and its limits, three-way contracting, the manager as coach, the boundary with mental health support and referral, record keeping under UK GDPR, and supervision using Proctor's functions and the seven-eyed model.

A coaching culture is not a scheme; it is how people talk to each other every day. This module covers Hawkins's definition and Clutterbuck and Megginson's four stages, the case for internal coaching, three routes to capacity, selecting, training and supervising internal coaches, matching and conflicts of interest, the Academi Wales All Wales Coaching Network, Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation, and pitfalls that stall coaching cultures.

Some of the most useful developmental conversations happen between colleagues at the same level. This module separates buddying, peer coaching, co-coaching and line manager coaching, and draws on the research of Parker, Hall and Kram and of Ladyshewsky, buddying for new starters, the co-coaching triad, Reg Revans's action learning and his Belgian programme, a structured peer session, and ground rules against common risks.

Artificial intelligence can now hold a fluent conversation and ask open questions, and coaching bots are already offered to employees. This module calmly reviews the evidence, including Passmore and Tee's definition, studies of coach and client attitudes, an AI coach assessed against ICF competencies, Terblanche's comparison with human coaches and a systematic review, then considers what stays human and how to use and pilot AI safely.

This capstone introduces no new theory; it puts the topic's frameworks to work on three real cases. You will read Atul Gawande's experience of being coached by Robert Osteen, Kraft, Blazar and Hogan's meta-analysis of instructional coaching for teachers, and the Youth Endowment Fund's mentoring trial, then draw together four threads: the person holds the answer, the relationship does the work, learning needs reflection, and the system matters.