Coaching Psychology Coming of Age: The challenges we face in the messy world of complexity

Abstract

Coaching is a rapidly emerging discipline in a world in constant change. Many of the issues facing coaches and their clients fit within the rational linear models that have served psychology well in the past. However, coaches and clients are also called upon to deal with novel complex and even chaotic challenges for which linear frameworks offer little value. Between the linear and the chaotic, the space on the edge of chaos creates possibilities for emergent creativity. Each of these spaces, the simple, complex and chaotic, has implications for us as practitioners, researchers and as a profession. This paper explores each of these. If coaching psychology is to come of age we need to find a way to create a discipline that can build on our foundations yet work comfortably with cross disciplinary ideas and colleagues. It may be that coaching psychology will emerge as a new kind of discipline one that can embraces rigour and the chaotic in the service of its clients, science and the profession.