The evolution of one practitioner's coach approach: taking the coaching turn

This largely autoethnographic paper explores the early trajectory of one consultant’s career through the seventies and eighties, seeking to detect the point at which this practice took the ‘coaching turn’. The purpose of conducting this piece of personal exploration is to discover what the core of a ‘coach approach’ might have comprised before coaching become professionalized and codified; and perhaps to ask what of the original inspiration behind the coaching impulse might have been lost in the process of professionalization. Comparisons are then drawn between this historical evolution of coaching practice and the choices facing coaches currently setting out to establish their practice in a contemporary setting; and to ask what they might take from this history.