Melvin L. Smith

Coaching With Compassion: Inspiring Health, Well-Being, and Development in Organizations

Compassion involves noticing another’s need, empathizing, and acting to enhance their well-being. In response to another’s pain, the motivation is to increase hedonic well-being or the absence of pain. In response to another’s desire to grow, the motivation is to increase eudaimonic well-being or helping them develop. We argue that compassion includes both. Our expanded view suggests that coaching with compassion will lead to desired change, enhanced health, and well-being. We propose a model saying coaching with compassion invokes a psychophysiological state that enables a person to be open to new possibilities and learning. In contrast, coaching for compliance (i.e., toward how the coach or the organization believe the person should act) and deficiency-based coaching invoke the opposite state—resulting in a person being defensive, reducing cognitive functioning. We theorize how coaching with compassion can enhance adaptability of the organization through creating norms and relationships of caring and development.

Social capital and intentional change

Purpose – Better understanding the mechanisms through which individuals engage in sustainable change efforts has been an ongoing concern of both researchers and practitioners. While dyadic interactions with others can play a significant role in individual change efforts, the purpose of this article is to explore how the networks of relationships in which individuals are embedded are likely to impact their efforts to engage in sustainable change.Design/methodology/approach – This article develops a conceptual framework and offers propositions regarding the suggested impact of bridging and bonding social capital on each of the discovery phases of the intentional change process.Findings – Drawing on a variety of literatures, It is argued that the bridging and bonding forms of social capital may each significantly influence the intentional change process, but in different ways. Also provided is an example of how the intentional change process can, in turn, be utilized to build ones social capital.Originality...

Coaching for sustained desired change

In this chapter, we offer a definition of a particular type of coaching, one focused on achieving sustained, desired change in the individual being coached. We also discuss a theory of intentional change, which we suggest explains why coaching in this manner indeed leads to sustained, desired change in individuals. We explore the coaching relationship in terms of the quality of the relationship and the competencies required by those who create that relationship. We also suggest that coaching has two faces: coaching with compassion and coaching for compliance. The latter often takes the form of trying to help someone in need. In these situations, the desire to help overcomes the knowledge that arousing motivation to change is more important than a short-term fix. We further offer that potential benefits exist in terms of the compassion one experiences from coaching others and we address the risk of not doing so. We provide a guide for the coaching process. And finally, we conclude with a discussion of the implications for future research on coaching and leadership development.

Illuminating the Scholarship of Coaching

The intellectual integrity of coaching depends on research. However, the popularity of the practice of coaching began to dramatically increase at least 20 years before scholars designed studies to test its efficacy (Van Oosten, 2013). Coaching, like many other forms of helping, is most likely effective (i.e., producing sustained changes in a person’s behavior, attitudes, mental models, dreams of the future, etc.) less than 20% of the time when comparing the few performance statistics to other professions (Boyatzis, 2005; Spencer & Spencer, 1993). This would be consistent with research on impact from other helping professions. Therefore, there is a need for more research to help us determine, among other things, what coaching methods and processes work the best and for whom, which coaches are more effective and with whom, and when is the use of coaching likely to be most effective. To continue the dialogue and to increase the level of rigor of thought and evidence, we issued the call for abstracts and papers for a special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. We were delighted in the substantial response to our call for abstracts for this special issue on coaching. We received over 30 abstracts for empirical and conceptual papers from scholars representing a variety of countries spanning North America, Europe, and Asia. The number of deserving papers exceeded the space limits of the special issue, so some of them will appear in future issues of this journal. The collection of articles presented here cover a broad spectrum of topics on coaching and its effects in a variety of contexts. The first article looks at coaching within the context of the manager–subordinate relationship. Sewon Kim and Minhsun Kuo from Korea, in their article titled “Examining the Relationships Among Coaching, Trustworthiness and Role Behaviors: A Social Exchange Perspective,” examined 280 manager–subordinate coaching dyads

Call for Abstracts for a Special Issue on Coaching

In its various forms, the practice of coaching has become an integral part of the study of helping relationships. Examples of such relationships include doctor/nurse/therapist-patient, teacher-student, manager-subordinate, parent-child, and coach-coachee. Coaching has also become an integral element of the development processes used in many, if not most organizations. JABS is based on the study and improvement of practice in helping individuals and organizations (including dyads, teams and community systems) improve through intentional efforts. As such, we will devote a special issue to the latest in thinking and research on coaching in its many forms, whether that is executive, life, career, health, and/or other forms of coaching, and developmental helping relationships. Possible topics include: