What a coach does, where the methods come from, and whether they work. The core competencies, the arc of an engagement from the first contract to the closing review, GROW and the other conversation models, the psychology behind them, the niches, the professional bodies and their credentials, and the research with its debates. For a coach in training, a manager asked to coach, or a client deciding what to buy.
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Coaching has a problem that comes from its own success.
Anyone may call themselves a coach, so a serious newcomer cannot tell from the outside which of the dozen books and the hundred acronyms are the discipline and which are the marketing.
There is a discipline.
It has competency frameworks written by professional bodies, a research literature with its own journals and meta-analyses, a century of psychology behind its methods, and a well-understood arc from the first chemistry session to the closing review.
The trouble is that these live in different places, and nobody draws them on one page.
Here they are together.
What a coach does in the room: listening at its several levels, the powerful question, direct communication, the move from insight to action.
How an engagement runs from start to finish: contracting and discovery, goal setting, the conversation models (GROW, CLEAR, OSKAR), accountability, review and closure.
Where the methods come from: humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, Gestalt and positive psychology, the theories of learning and change, the named approaches built on each, and the history from Gallwey’s Inner Game to the first meta-analyses.
Who gets coached, from executives to anyone wanting a better life.
How the profession is organised: the bodies, the credential levels, ethics, supervision, the business of it.
And what the evidence says, including the arguments about regulation and pseudoscience that the field has with itself.
Start wherever you already stand.
A coach in training will recognise the competencies and find the psychology they were quietly borrowed from.
A manager asked to coach their team will find the conversation models and the handful of techniques that cover most of what the role needs.
A client wondering what they are buying can read how a well-run engagement goes and judge the one on offer.
Anyone preparing for a credentialing exam can hide the competencies and the models and test whether they have stuck.
It is a survey of the field, not a training in it.
Each concept gets a paragraph, enough to place it and to know what to read next.
What's in this graph
The map opens on Coaching. These are the concepts branching from it — open one to
see the concepts inside it.
written article or notes
conversation with the AI assistant
Core Competencies
The set of capabilities a coach must demonstrate in a coaching conversation, as described in the competency frameworks of the main coaching bodies.
9 children · 43 grandchildren · 10 neighbours
Evoking Awareness
The competency of using questions, observations, and other tools to help the client see their situation in new ways.
Peer-reviewed academic periodicals dedicated to coaching research.
3 children: Coaching: An International Journal, International Coaching Psychology Review, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring
4 neighbours
Mechanisms of Change
Research that asks how coaching works: which elements of the relationship and process produce change.
2 children: Client Readiness, Coach-Client Match
1 grandchild · 4 neighbours
Coaching Psychology
The academic field that applies psychological theory and research to coaching practice, established as a discipline in the early 2000s.
1 child: Evidence-Based Coaching
1 grandchild · 4 neighbours
History of Coaching
The development of coaching from its roots in humanistic psychology and sport to an organised profession and research field, told through its dated milestones.
9 children · 12 grandchildren · 11 neighbours
Coach U Founded (1992)
The founding by Thomas Leonard of the first coach training school, which began the coaching industry and the profession of life coaching.
5 neighbours
Coaching for Performance (1992)
The publication of John Whitmore's Coaching for Performance, the book that carried coaching into business and spread the GROW model.
5 neighbours
Coaching Psychology Unit (2000)
The founding of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney, the first academic unit devoted to coaching, by Anthony Grant.
5 neighbours
Credentialing Exam Launched (2022)
The introduction by the International Coaching Federation of a situational-judgement examination as a requirement for its credentials.
3 neighbours
EMCC Founded (1992)
The founding of the European Mentoring Centre, which became the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.
3 neighbours
First Meta-Analyses (2014)
The publication of the first large meta-analyses of coaching outcomes, which established that coaching has measurable positive effects.
4 neighbours
Human Potential Movement (1960s)
The 1960s cultural movement, centred on places such as the Esalen Institute, that promoted the belief that people have untapped capacity for growth.
3 neighbours
ICF Founded (1995)
The founding of the International Coaching Federation as the first global professional body for coaches.
6 neighbours
The Inner Game (1974)
The publication of Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis, which reframed coaching as helping a person quiet their inner critic.
7 neighbours
Coaching Niches
The specialised areas of coaching practice, defined by the kind of client served or the kind of goal pursued.
9 children · 11 grandchildren · 10 neighbours
Internal Coaching
Coaching delivered by a coach employed by the same organisation as the client.
1 child: Manager as Coach
1 grandchild · 2 neighbours
Team Coaching
Coaching of an intact team as a single client, aimed at improving how the team works together and delivers results.
2 children: Team Contracting, Team Dynamics
6 neighbours
Business Coaching
Coaching of business owners and entrepreneurs on growing and running their business.
1 neighbour
Career Coaching
Coaching on choosing, changing, or advancing in a career.
1 neighbour
Executive Coaching
Coaching of senior leaders, usually sponsored by their organisation, aimed at effectiveness in their role.
3 neighbours
Group Coaching
Coaching delivered to several unrelated individuals at once who share a theme but each pursue their own goals.
1 neighbour
Health and Wellbeing Coaching
Coaching that supports clients in making and sustaining changes to their health habits and wellbeing.
2 neighbours
Leadership Coaching
Coaching focused on developing a person's capacity to lead others, at any level of an organisation.
2 neighbours
Life Coaching
Coaching of individuals on personal goals such as relationships, purpose, balance, and life transitions.
2 neighbours
Pioneers
The individuals whose work created coaching as a practice and as a field of study.
8 children · 11 grandchildren · 9 neighbours
Anthony Grant
The Australian psychologist who founded the first university coaching psychology unit at the University of Sydney in 2000.
2 neighbours
David Clutterbuck
The British author and researcher who shaped the theory and practice of mentoring and team coaching.
3 neighbours
John Whitmore
The British racing driver turned coach who brought the Inner Game to Britain and popularised the GROW model through his book Coaching for Performance.
2 neighbours
Marshall Goldsmith
The American executive coach known for stakeholder-centred coaching of senior leaders and the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
2 neighbours
Peter Hawkins
The British professor who developed systemic team coaching, the CLEAR model, and much of the theory of coaching supervision.
4 neighbours
Stephen Palmer
The British psychologist who established coaching psychology in the United Kingdom and co-founded its professional group within the British Psychological Society.
2 neighbours
Thomas Leonard
The American financial planner who founded Coach University in 1992 and the International Coaching Federation in 1995, creating the coaching industry.
3 neighbours
Timothy Gallwey
The American tennis coach and author whose 1974 book The Inner Game of Tennis introduced the idea of coaching as removing a person's internal interference.
2 neighbours
The shape of this map
A tree linking 230 ideas would need 229
connections. This map has 301. The extra 72 open alternative routes throughout.
The map runs 4 levels deep from its root. Any two ideas are about 5 steps apart, and the two most distant are 8.
Neighbouring ideas are linked to each other 8% of the time — the map branches outward rather than weaving back on itself.
Connections are typed, not plain lines. They come in 3 kinds: Composition, Generalization, Sequence.
Most routes through the map pass through Core Competencies, Foundations, The Profession, The Coaching Engagement, Coaching Approaches, Coaching Research.
One node from the map
Coaching
Somewhere in the late twentieth century a new kind of helping conversation appeared, and it was odd from the start. The person being helped was assumed to be well, not ill. The person helping was assumed to know less about the problem than the person with it. And the whole point of the exchange was that the helper would refuse to give advice. Put that way, coaching sounds like a joke about professionals who are paid not to do their job. Yet by the 2020s there were well over a hundred thousand practising coaches in the world, a global body with its own credentials and ethics code, university departments devoted to the subject, and a scattering of peer-reviewed journals. Something that strange and that large deserves an explanation.
The cleanest definition is a negative one. Coaching is not therapy, because the client is not being treated for anything. It is not mentoring, because the coach is not passing on experience from the same field. It is not consulting, because the coach does not diagnose the problem and prescribe the fix. It is not training, because there is no curriculum. What remains when you subtract all four is a conversation with a single peculiar purpose: to help a person think more clearly about something they want, and then act on it, using their own resources. …
This continues inside the graph, along with 229 other nodes.