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HEIDI MOLLER — KATRIN OELLERICH — DENISE HINN — SILJA KOTTE The impression arises that some coaches have had poor experiences with qualitatively questionable coaching research. This would correspond to the accounts given by very experienced coaches who we encountered multiple times during the course of personal conversation. These coaches in particular are virtually flooded with coaching research requests relating to Bachelor and Master theses. In the online survey, many participants expressed the wish (in a surprisingly explicit manner) for “theoretical foundation”, “intelligent designs” and “integrity on the part of those conducting the study”. There is indeed a need here for action on the part of the researchers and it requires the willingness of experienced researchers to enter into dialogue and cooperation with coaching practitioners and to develop and implement systematic research programmes instead of merely sending Bachelor and Master students to do the job. We encountered however a contradiction: while practitioners at the workshop wished for “hard facts” like field observations and written documentation or video analysis, which would also be desirable from a scientific-methodological point of view, many coaches in the online study explicitly mentioned these methodical approaches as exclusion criteria for their own participation. Together with the oft-mentioned concerns that the coaching process might suffer interference, coaches seem keen to have such research but (to phrase it somewhat provocatively) are unwilling to take part in it themselves. This leads us to ask the critical question as to whether coaches — akin to what Vaughan and colleagues** suspected about psychotherapy research — are concealing their own discomfort and holding their cards close to their chest while using concerns about client protection as a smokescreen. As scientists, we want to challenge ourselves to develop high-quality research concepts and at the same time encourage practitioners to engage themselves more fully in coaching research. BIBLIOGRAPHY ALVESSON, M. — KARREMAN, D., Unraveling HRM: Identity, Ceremony, and Consulting in a Management Consulting Firm, Organization Science, 18 (4) (2007) 711-723. 4 Vaughan et al., Can we do psychoanalytic outcome research? .58 +
