Title: Individual and Group Life Coaching Findings from a Randomised, Controlled Trial
1Individual and Group Life Coaching Findings
from a Randomised, Controlled Trial
Gordon Spence Dr. Anthony Grant Coaching
Psychology Unit University of Sydney 1st
Australian Evidenced-Based Coaching
Conference 7th 8th July, 2003
2Acknowledgements
- Justin Court, Anna Reader, Kate Lloyd, Kirsten
Enerson, Rebecca Pearce, Nickolas Yu and Peter
Webb - for giving freely of their time, energy
and enthusiasm - Michael Cavanagh
- Suzy Green and Dr. Lindsay Oades (University of
Wollongong) - Philip Goldstein - Director, Future Prospects
International.
3The Life-Coaching Evaluation Objectives
- To assess the effectiveness of individual and
group-based life coaching interventions - To observe effects of coaching on measures of
psychological well-being, personality,
metacognition and goal striving - To understand more about the practicalities and
challenges associated with conducting rigorous
scientific research into coaching.
4Randomised, Controlled Trials (RCTs) - Gold
standard research?
- Good experimental designs will improve the
credibility of coaching - When we coach, we are all conducting trials. If
successful, it may be that coaching made the
difference, however this difference may have
little or nothing to do with the coaching - For many researchers, RCT represents the best
means for determining whether an experiment has
worked. (1)
5RCT What are they? Why use them?
- In RCTs participants are randomly allocated to
two or more experimental groups - Importantly, one group does not receive the
treatment (i.e. coaching) and acts as a base-line
for comparisons. This group is the control group
- Random allocation seeks to create the best
possible comparison group with which to assess
the effectiveness of a treatment ? greater
confidence in accepting results.
6Lit.review Goals, Well-Being Coaching
- Empirically, there is considerable evidence that
personal goals play a central role in determining
the quality and intensity of affective
experience (2) - However, goal attainment isnt everything
- As Emmons (1996) observed
- "goal attainment per se will not lead to
subjectively satisfying long-term states unless
these goals are intrinsically meaningful and
integrated within an overall structure of the
individual" (p. 333, italics added).
7Goals, Well-Being Coaching (contd)
- Thus, some researchers have focused on the
quality of personal goals (3) - If life coaching aims to assist clients in
clarifying, adopting, striving towards and
attaining self-integrated goals, then we might
expect coaching to have an impact on well-being
on more than one level - For example, short-term happiness and
longer-term meaning. (4)
8Two perspectives on well-being Hedonic
Eudaimonic
- Coaching towards a change for the better,
raises questions about what represents better.
For example, is it happiness or meaning? (4) (5)
(6) (7)
- Hedonic pleasure attainment, pain avoidance
- Eudaimonic self-realisation, fully functioning
person - These different conceptualisations have led to
different approaches to measuring well-being. (7)
9Life Coaching A (very short) lit.review
- Grant (2003) reported that group-based coachees
reported improved mental health, well-being and
goal attainment - Green, Oades and Grant (2003) reported similar
findings (using a RCT), along with increased
hope - Individual life coaching? No studies reported to
date - Is individual life coaching associated with
greater improvements in self-reported well-being
and goal striving?
10Lit.review Individual vs. Group treatments
- Numerous comparison studies have been conducted
in clinical settings - Several studies and meta-analyses have reported
little difference between individual and group
forms of psychotherapy in reducing symptomatology
(including CBT) (8) (9) - No studies published assessing differences
between individual and group-based life coaching.
11Lit.review Metacognition Coaching
- Self-reflection The ability to reflect upon and
evaluate thoughts, feelings and behaviour (10) - Insight The clarity of understanding derived
from those same thoughts, feelings and
behaviours (10) - These metacognitive factors appear central to
the process of human behaviour change - Grant (2003) found that coaching resulted in an
increase in insight but a decrease in
self-reflection.
12Hypotheses
H1 Individual coaching will lead to greater goal
attainment than both group coaching and
control H2 Individual coachees will report
higher levels of eudaimonic well-being, whereas
group-based coachees will report higher levels of
hedonic well-being H3 Both forms of coaching
will result in increases in self-reflection and
insight.
13Sampling Procedure
- Advertisements placed in the local media and on
the CPU internet homepage - 131 expressions of interest received, with 89
participants completing pre-program screening
questionnaires (incl. Brief Symptoms Inventory
(BSI)) - Exclusion criteria set at 2 SDs above mean on
BSI and 13 participants (15) were excluded on
this basis - n 64, randomly assigned to one of three
groups individual coaching (Group 1, n21),
group-coaching (Group 2, n22) or control (Group
3, n21).
14The design
- Phase I was conducted between February-April
2003 - Phase II commenced in May and concludes at
approx. 7.30pm this evening (with wine
nibbles!!)
15Experimental conditionsIndividual coaching
- 10 weekly x 45min. coaching sessions, with coach
and coachee meeting at same time/same place each
week - All coaches were trained within CPU and used
combined CBT/SF approach - Regular supervision meetings were held to
discuss specific concerns or issues related to
the coaching. Meetings were facilitated by a CPU
graduate with 750 hrs coaching experience.
16Experimental conditionsGroup co-coaching
- Commenced with a facilitated 1-day workshop
where participants worked through a self-coaching
manual (11) (12) - Participants attended 10 weekly x 75min. group
coaching sessions, consisting of a 15min.
mini-lecture / discussion and 2 x 30min.
co-coaching sessions (in dyads) - Co-coaching was structured using a Guide to
RE-GROW, which included a series of suggested
coaching questions and note-taking sheets.
17Dependent measures
- Goal striving
- Attainment Commitment
- Meta-cognition
- Self-Reflection Insight Scale (SRIS) 35
items - Well-Being
- Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) 5 items
- Positive Negative Affect Scale (PNAS) 10
items - Scales of Psychological Well-Being (PWB) 54
items - Depression, Anxiety Stress Scale (DAS-21) 21
items - Personality
- NEO-FFI 60 items
18Data Analysis
- One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) on Time 1
scores confirmed effective randomisation - Reliability analysis revealed good-to-satisfactor
y reliability coefficients for all measures - Within-subjects differences assessed using
paired-samples t-tests between-subjects
differences assessed using GLM univariate
analyses (using Time 1 scores and sex as
covariates).
19ResultsCoaching Attendance
- Individual coaching 189 of 200 sessions 94.5
- Group coaching 142 of 210 sessions 72.4
20Results Goal commitment
21Results Goal attainment
22Results Well-Being
- No significant differences noted for depression,
stress, anxiety, positive affect or negative
affect - Satisfaction with Life Significant increases
for individual coachees (plt.05), approached
significance for group coachees (p.052) - PWB no significant differences noted on 5/6 PWB
sub-scales, however - Environmental Mastery significantly increased
for individual coachees (plt.001, d0.29) but not
the other groups.
23Results Environmental Mastery (PWB)
24Results Openness to Experience (Personality)
- No significant differences noted for Neuroticism
or Agreeableness - Extroversion Significant increases for group
coachees only (plt.05) - Conscientiousness Significant increases for
both individual and group coachees (plt.05) but
not control group (p.835) - Openness to Experience Increased for group
coachees (plt.001), decreased for control group
(plt.05). Large effects noted for all coachees vs.
control group (G11.38 G20.97).
25Results Openness to Experience (Personality)
26ResultsSummary
- Coaching positively impacted on the Goal
Attainment ratings of both groups, although Goal
Commitment decreased for group coachees - Limited impact on well-being
- Coaching appears to have bolstered the
self-efficacy of coachees, whilst enhancing
imagination, creativity and curiosity - Though self-reflection and insight did increase
for coachees, these differences were not
significant.
27An important question for coaching research
- Given that
- coaching appears best directed towards
non-clinical populations and - it seems ethical to screen for advanced levels
of psychological distress, - are existing measures of well-being sufficiently
sensitive to pick up coaching-related changes in
coachee well-being? - Mental health screening reduces MH variability
in the data set, leaving a relatively happy
group ? ceiling effect.
28Individual vs. Group
- Perhaps clinical groups are relatively more
homogeneous than life coaching groups, and thus,
derive greater benefits from shared experience? - If so, life coaching in groups might require
greater structure and facilitation than offered
by a co-coaching program - Qualitative analysis is likely to suggest an
answer (still to be completed).
29Shifting attention?
- The results suggest that Group 1 coachees began
to think more imaginatively, show greater
receptivity to novel alternatives and/or greater
resourcefulness in service of their goals - Can it be claimed that these participants became
better at controlling their attention becoming
more solution-focused? - No, not really!
30Directions for Future Research
- Studying attentional control offers the
potential of explaining how coaching works - Attentional training programs have had some
success in clinical settings, as a treatment for
affective disorders and health anxiety (14) (15) - Exploration of the relationship between the
control of attentional and coaching outcomes - Reliable measures of SF thinking needed to test
whether attentional training techniques can be
effectively coached - Another RCT is planned for 2004.
31General comment
- Life coaching research is full of challenges,
particularly when conducting a RCT involving
individual coaching - Adequate sample sizes and coaching timeframes
lots of coaching hours - The logistics are very important. Essentials
include - a set location and fixed session times
- peer supervision
- enthusiastic others!
- Studies of this sort appear better suited to
life coaching rather than executive coaching.
32Conclusion
- In light of these results
- Coaching does appear to be better than no
coaching - Individual coaching appears to deliver larger
benefits than group-based coaching (contrary to
findings from clinical psychology) - Pre-program screening appears to render some
measures of well-being unsuitable for coaching
research - Measures of attentional control may prove
fruitful for measuring change in non-clinical
samples.
33References
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34 Individual and Group Life Coaching Findings
from a Randomised, Controlled Trial Gordon
Spence Dr. Anthony Grant Coaching Psychology
Unit, University of Sydney
Thank you for listening. Questions?