Coaching, leadership, Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

The Evolution of Coaching (Part 2)

As mentioned in the previous post, the evolution of a Coach’s way of knowing and making sense of experience passes through specific stages. Truthfully, development is dynamic, and these stages simply help us to understand how we experience our sense of self, other and the environment.

Before we describe these “types” of coaches, here are these simplified four stages of adult development from least to most complex:

  1. Self-Centered
  2. Culture-Centered
  3. Value-Centered
  4. Principle-Centered

Regardless of the role (coach, friend, parent, etc.) how we construct meaning and interact with the environment comes from who we are—our present way of constructing and knowing. Let’s take a brief look at each of these stages:

The Self-Centered Coach: Coaches in this stage of development are centered on their own needs. They understand that others have needs but can only think from one point of view. While these coaches can be knowledgeable and effective, others are seen as either helping or hindering their progress towards their personal goals. An actual quote from a coach in this stage at a team meeting which included players’ parents: “I don’t lose.” These coaches focus on externals and internally lack a sense of shared reality.

The Culture-Centered Coach: In this stage, coaches identify with whatever the organization values, and what they have learned about coaching from mentors and other authoritative sources. These coaches are loyal to players and programs, and conform to the rules (both implicit and explicit) that define the organizational culture. These coaches identify with the role and cannot separate their sense of self from the relationships to and within the organization. These coaches are their relationships.

The Value-Centered Coach: For the first time, coaches developed to this stage are self-aware and self-defining. They are able to hold the needs of the players, the programs, and their own needs in mind at the same time in order to make sense of experience. In other words, these coaches have relationships because they can separate their identity from players, programs, and culture. While, at times, their actions may look similar to the previous stages, the difference is that they are consciously choosing from the values underlying the choice. These coaches can think in terms of systems. They can act counter to the culture if it makes sense to them.

Principle-Centered Coaches: At this point in development, coaches function from universal principles. They can think in a system of systems, and one of these systems is their sense of self. This level of awareness matters because these coaches can transform and adapt their self to the role based on the underlying principle. In a way they are “self-less” because the self transforms to serve a larger cause.

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These stages are on the arc of human development, but at some point for adults growth is optional. Interestingly, nearly 60% of the adult population has not developed cognitively and social-emotionally to the stage described here as Value-Centered. While approximately 6-7% are in transition to the stage outlined as Principle-Centered, less than 1% fully reach this level of consciousness (and these adults are typically aged 40 or older). From this, we can suppose that many coaches are in the first two developmental stages of Self-Centered or Culture-Centered.

 While this is extremely important, rarely is the vertical aspect of development talked about or considered in coaching. Why and why is it important?

We take a closer look in the next post.


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