How meaningful and useful is the concept of the life space in executive coaching?

Kurt Lewin argued that the life space is the totality of psychological and social facts of an individual in their environment at a certain moment. The life space determines behaviour. This is the first study into how meaningful and useful the theory and concept of the life space are to executive coaching, and it explores the challenges of building coaching theory accordingly. From a critical realist perspective, and by using a conceptual encounter and thematic analysis research methodology, the study explicates for the first time what the life space offers executive coaching, which until now has been largely overlooked in the coaching literature. The life space is meaningful to coaches because it is experienced as a new, naturalistic, dynamic, heuristic, yet familiar concept. The life space is useful because it brings a new language and perspective that sensitises and orients coaches to important practical implications of perceiving the client, the coach and the coaching process as indivisible from the psychological context in which they are situated. This study presents the first empirical and evidence-based conceptual map of the life space in executive coaching. This map invites coaches to coach with the life space in mind, to create a new, meaningful and useful understanding of the properties and characteristics of the phenomenon. The study then explores the complexities of the relationship between coaching theory and coaching practice. The findings from this study extend the understanding of the contribution of Lewin, offer a new conceptualisation of the life space to be built on, and make recommendations for further research. The study argues that any understanding of the contribution of knowledge of the life space to coaching theory must accommodate the position that any suggested causal link to practice is hard to prove. Keywords: Lewin, life space, field theory, force-field, coaching, executive coaching, Gestalt, systems, constellation

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Author dc:creator

• Livingstone, Michael William

Contributors dc:contributor

• Myers, Adrian

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/xqhm-mp12

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:5ff7f85e-6beb-4efd-87cf-54e8c4146826:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1