Exploring the events that lead to insight within coaching sessions: Identifying structures through experiences
This research paper explores the events containing insight within coaching sessions in order to identify structures and mechanisms through the lived experiences of coaches and clients. There does not appear to be currently much information to draw upon in terms of understanding the mechanisms of coaching sessions. This thesis provides an understanding of the events containing insight and the structure within to assist coaching that recognises these significant occurrences. The thesis also provides a foundation for future researchers to gain an understanding of a coaching session and to assist them to add to the research. With a critical realist epistemological underpinning, the ontological approach and method of analysis is based upon a relativist phenomenological approach. This provides an understanding of the experience of both coach and client in-session, and as such provides a gateway to discover the structures of actuality in the main coaching event at the moment of insight manifestation. This research suggests that at the moment of insight there is a coming together of coach and client in terms of physiological response and suggest that coaches should trust their instincts when in a coaching conversation, especially when they intuitively ‘feel’ that an insight moment is about to occur. The results suggest that the client’s verbal reflections occur after the coach has deepened the understanding by providing an example from their own or other’s experience. Before and after the moment of insight is a pause. After the moment of insight, both coach and client share a moment of validation of the coaching. The findings also provide a number of secondary contributions that suggest that perhaps coaching training could move towards an understanding that perhaps coaches should be experts in their own professional field, as well as experts of the coaching process.
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