How coaching conversations contribute to organisational development

This thesis focuses on the coaching conversation.

This inquiry explores, through action research methodology, the author’s own practice as a coach and produces a revised framework and model.

The study seeks to understand the potential of the coaching conversation to support organisational learning. It involves leaders and managers from the BBC who had taken up coaching as part of an organisational wide leadership development initiative. The focus of this inquiry was not the evaluation of coaching but rather an understanding of how coaching can help change the conversation in organisations. Using a methodology called Co-ordinated Management of Meaning
(CMM), this inquiry begins to capture the complex nature and the richness of the coaching conversation process.

This improved understanding has led to the development of a model, a framework which positions coaching as an organisational development intervention. It draws from the organisational context and culture as well as the current challenges to inform the organisational coaching proposition. CMM methodology provides the means to explore and discover the individual, and collective, learning as result of coaching as well as the shifts in practice. This can then be used to inform subsequent coaching propositions.