Individual and Group Life Coaching Findings from a Randomised, Controlled Trial

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Individual 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
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Acknowledgements

• 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.

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The 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.

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Randomised, 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)

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RCT 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.

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Lit.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).

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Goals, 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)

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Two 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)

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Life 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?

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Lit.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.
  

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Lit.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.

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Hypotheses
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.
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Sampling 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).

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The 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!!)

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Experimental 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.

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Experimental 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.

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Dependent 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

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Data 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).

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ResultsCoaching Attendance

• Individual coaching 189 of 200 sessions 94.5
  
• Group coaching 142 of 210 sessions 72.4

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Results Goal commitment
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Results Goal attainment
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Results 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.

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Results Environmental Mastery (PWB)
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Results 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).

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Results Openness to Experience (Personality)
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ResultsSummary

• 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.

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An 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.

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Individual 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).

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Shifting 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!

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Directions 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.

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General 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.

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Conclusion

• 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.

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References

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• Sheldon, K.M. Elliot, A.J. (1998). Not all
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• Cavanagh, M. (PhD thesis submitted, 2003).

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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?