Third generation coaching: Reconstructing dialogues through collaborative practice and a focus on values

Abstract

Third generation coaching unfolds a new universe for coaching and coaching psychology in the framework of current social research, new learning theories and discourses about personal leadership. Third generation coaching views coaching in a societal perspective. Coaching has become important as a form of dialogue because the (hyper)complexity of our society. Today, knowledge has to be shaped and applied in specific contexts and situations, and both in our personal lives and in the public space we have to learn to negotiate. Coaching can help us generate new knowledge and manage social transformation. Coaching thus facilitates new reflections and perspectives, as well as empowerment and support for self-Bildung processes.Third generation coaching focuses on the coach and the coachee in their narrative collaborative partnership. Unlike first generation coaching, where the goal is to help coachee achieve a specific objective, and unlike second generation coaching, where the coach assumes that the coachee implicitly knows the solution to particular challenges; third generation coaching has a less goal-oriented agenda but a more profound and sustainable focus on values and identity work. Coach and coachee create something together: They generate meaning together in the conversation, where both parties are on a journey, and where new stories gradually take shape. Third generation coaching integrates the experiential and subjective-existential dimension with the relational and discursive.It is the author’s ambition to elevate coaching and coaching psychology to a new professional level with a new agenda. The term ‘third generation coaching’ may be understood as a sort of manifesto – not in a normative sense but as an invitation to reconsider the main objective of coaching in late- or post-modern society.