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Author(s):      Anthony M Grant
Document types: General_Information
Publication title:      Social Behavior and Personality. Palmerston North:
2003. Vol. 31, Iss.  3;  pg. 253
Source type:    Periodical
ISSN/ISBN:      03012212
ProQuest document ID:   356614341
Text Word Count 3857
Document URL:
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ame=PQD

Full Text (3857   words)
Copyright Society for Personality Research, Incorporated 2003
[Headnote]

Despite its high media profile and growing popularity there have been no
empirical investigations of the impact of life coaching on goal attainment,
metacognition or mental health. This exploratory study used life coaching as
a means of exploring key metacognitive factors involved as individuals move
towards goal attainment. In a within-subjects design, twenty adults
completed a life coaching program. Participation in the program was
associated with enhanced mental health, quality of life and goal attainment.

In terms of metacognition, levels of self-reflection decreased and levels of
insight increased. Life coaching has promise as an effective approach to
personal development and goal attainment, and may prove to be a useful
platform for a positive psychology and the investigation of the
psychological mechanisms involved in purposeful change in normal,
nonclinical populations.

In working with individuals to improve the quality of their lives,
psychology has traditionally focused on alleviating dysfunctionality or
treating psychopathology in clinical or counseling populations rather than
enhancing the life experience of normal adult populations.
However, it is clear that the general public has a thirst for techniques and
processes that enhance life experience and facilitate personal development.

The market for personal development material has grown rapidly worldwide
since the 1950s (Fried, 1994). Although psychologists feature infrequently
as producers of this material, psychology has a genuine and important
contribution to make in terms of adapting and validating existing
therapeutic models for use with normal populations, and evaluating
commercialized approaches to personal development to ensure consumer
protection and inform consumer choice (Grant, 2001; Starker, 1990).

A recent development in the personal development genre is the emergence of
life coaching. Life coaching can be broadly defined as a collaborative
solution-focused, result-orientated and systematic process in which the
coach facilitates the enhancement of life experience and goal attainment in
the personal and/or professional life of normal, nonclinical clients.

ISSUES IN THE GROWTH OF LIFE COACHING PRACTICE
The coaching industry, and particularly life coaching, has grown
substantially since at least 1998. There have been claims that the number of
executive and life coaches number in the tens of thousands in the USA, and
coaching has received widespread attention in the popular Western press
(Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999).

Despite often over optimistic claims as to its effectiveness there has been
little empirical research into the effectiveness of life coaching (Grant,
2000), with anecdotal and marketing claims from the coaching industry itself
forming the bulk of the evidence. An overview of the peer-reviewed academic
psychology literature on coaching, in normal adult populations, as
represented in the database PsycINFO shows that there are only 98 citations,
with only 17 of these being empirical evaluations of the effectiveness of
coaching interventions. All of these are concerned with evaluating
work-related or executive coaching within work or organizational settings.
This is an exploratory study; the first to investigate the effectiveness of
life coaching (i.e., coaching in a nonwork or organizational setting), and
to investigate the impact of solution-focused, cognitive-behavioral life
coaching on key sociocognitive and metacognitive factors.

A SOLUTION-FOCUSED, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL MODEL OF COACHING
The life coaching program used in this study is adapted from a self-help
book, Coach Yourself (Grant & Greene, 2001). This program is based on
principles drawn from cognitive-behavioral clinical and counseling
psychology (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979), brief solution-focused therapy
(O'Hanlon, 1998), and models of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1989).

Cognitive-behavioral approaches to counseling and coaching psychology
recognize the quadratic reciprocity between the four domains of human
experience: behavior, thoughts, feelings and the environment. From a
cognitive-behavioral perspective, goal attainment is best facilitated by
understanding the relationship between these four domains of human
experience and structuring them so as to best support goal attainment.

However, possibly because its roots are in the treatment of psychopathology
within a medical model, the cognitive-behavioral approach tends to emphasize
psychopathology, an approach which is often alienating for nonclinical
populations.

Thus, the Coach Yourself program incorporates aspects of brief
solution-focused therapy. Solution-focused therapy is a constructivist,
humanistic approach that concentrates on the strengths that clients bring to
therapy, and emphasizes the importance of solution construction rather than
problem analysis.

SELF-REGULATION, SOCIOCOGNITION, METACOGNITION AND COACHING
Goal-directed self-regulation consists of a series of processes in which an
individual sets a goal, develops a plan of action, begins action, monitors
his or her performance (through self-reflection), evaluates his or her
performance by comparison to a standard (gaining insight), and based on this
evaluation changes his or her actions to further enhance performance and
better reach his or her goals. The coach's role is to facilitate the
coachee's movement through the self-regulatory cycle towards goal
attainment. Hence, coaching is a useful means of furthering our
understanding of the sociocognitive and metacognitive factors involved in
purposeful behavior change as people move through the self-regulatory cycle.

Some of the key metacognitive factors in the self-regulatory cycle are found
within the construct of private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheier, &
Buss, 1975), specifically, the processes of self-reflection and insight.

Both clinical and nonclinical change programs often encourage candidates for
change to spend time in self-reflection on the assumption that this will
lead to insight, and insight will facilitate goal attainment and behavioral
change (Sedikides & Skowronski, 1995). However, it is important to note that
self-reflection and insight are logically two separate processes. One may
spend time in self-reflection without necessarily developing insight.

METACOGNITION AND COACHING: PAST RESEARCH
SELF-REFLECTION, INSIGHT AND MENTAL HEALTH
Research into private self-consciousness has focused on how self-reflection
and internal state awareness (and the associated construct of insight) are
related to mental health, rather than to goal attainment through the
coaching process. In general self-reflection has been found to be correlated
positively with measures of psychopathology with internal state awareness
being negatively correlated with measures of psychopathology (Creed &
Funder, 1998). Investigations into the relationship between self-reflection
and insight using the Private Self-Consciousness Scale (PSCS; Fenigstein et
al., 1975) have produced inconsistent findings, and there have been calls
for the PSCS to be revised.

A new measure of private self-consciousness, the Self-Reflection and Insight
Scale (SRIS; Grant, Franklin, & Langford, 2002), comprises two orthogonal
subscales, self-reflection (SRIS-SR) and insight (SRIS-IN), and initial
findings suggest that the SRIS is a valid and reliable measure of
self-reflection and insight which represents an advance on the PSCS (Grant
et al., 2002).

Little is known about how the metacognitive factors of self-reflection and
insight change as individuals move purposefully towards goal attainment
through a change program. Grant et al. (2002) found that individuals who
regularly kept journals in which they wrote about their life experiences had
higher levels of self-reflection, but lower levels of insight than did
individuals who did not keep journals. Grant et al. suggested that the
journal-keepers were in some way stuck in a process of self-reflection, and
were primarily engaged in a process of understanding their personal
behavioral, cognitive and emotional reactions, rather than moving towards
goal attainment. If this is the case then it can be predicted that
individuals' levels of insight should increase as they move through the
self-regulatory cycle towards attaining goals that had previously eluded
them.

The study also investigated the impact of life coaching on individuals'
ability to reach their goals. It was predicted that participation in the
life coaching program would be associated with increased goal attainment.
Making successful purposeful change and reaching one's goals can have a
positive impact on individuals' mental health (Sheldon & Kasser, 2001). Thus
it was further hypothesized that participation in the program would enhance
mental health and increase participants' quality of life.

METHOD
PARTICIPANTS AND MATERIALS
Twenty mature-age postgraduate students from the Faculties of Science,
Economics and Business in a major Australian university (15 women and 5 men,
mean age = 35.6 years) took part in this study.
The Coach Yourself (Grant & Greene, 2001) life coaching program is a
structured life coaching program. The present study used the Coach Yourself
program as a basis for group life coaching facilitated by an external coach.

DESIGN, PROCEDURE AND THE COACHING PROGRAM
The study utilized a within-subject design. Participants initially completed
a life inventory task from the Coach Yourself program in which they examined
the main areas of their lives (e.g., work, health or relationships) and then
developed three specific, tangible and measurable goals which could be
attained, or towards which significant progress could be made, within a
13-week time frame. Participants were able to select any goal that they had
wanted to achieve in the past, but had been unsuccessful in achieving.

Participants met in a group for ten, 50-minute weekly group coaching
sessions, and were coached in the application of cognitive-behavioral
coaching techniques, including self-monitoring, cognitive restructuring,
behavioral modification and environmental structuring, and solution-focused
techniques such as the "Miracle Question" (de Shazer, 1988).

The Miracle Question is a technique which facilitates the generation of
options and action plans. The client is asked to respond to a question such
as; "if you woke up tomorrow, and a miracle had happened and the solution
was somehow present, what would be happening?". Although a relatively new
modality, preliminary studies have shown solution-focused approaches to be
effective in a range of applications (Gingerich & Eisengart, 2000).

The role of the coach was to facilitate this process, and to help the
coachees to systematically work through the self-regulation cycle,
monitoring and evaluating their progress towards their goals during the
preceding week, and developing action plans for the coming week.
Measures

Participants completed the questionnaires in a group setting before and
following completion of the Coach Yourself program.

Goal Attainment Scale. Participants were asked to identify three goals.
Participants rated each goal for perceived difficulty on a four point scale
(1 = very easy, to 4 = very difficult), and also rated their degree of past
success in attaining the goals on a scale from 0% (no attainment) to 100%
(total attainment). Goal attainment scores were calculated by multiplying
the difficulty rating by the degree of success, and dividing by the number
of chosen goals to find a mean score. Participants also rated the length of
time they had sought to attain these goals.

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The DASS-21 (Lovibond &
Lovibond, 1995) was utilized as a measure of psychopathology.

The Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI). The QOLI (Frisch, 1994) is a 32-item
self-report questionnaire that assesses individuals' perceptions of their
quality of life in 16 life domains: health, self-esteem, goals and values,
money, work, play, learning, creativity, helping others, love, friends,
children, relatives, home, neighborhood, and community.

The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS). The SIRS (Grant et al., 2002)
is a 20-item self-report scale which comprises two subscales: a
self-reflection scale (SRIS-SR) and an insight scale (SRIS-IN). The SRIS
assesses individuals' propensity to reflect on, and their level of insight
into, their thoughts, feelings and behavior.

Self-reflection items include; "It is important to me to try to understand
what my feelings mean", and "I frequently take time to reflect on my
thoughts". Insight items include; "I usually know why I feel the way I do",
and "My behavior often puzzles me" (reverse scored).

RESULTS
To assist interpretation effect sizes are reported and t tests were used to
assess statistical significance. Alpha was set at 0.05. Results of the
intervention are presented in Table 1.

Participation in the life coaching program was associated with increased
goal attainment, with a large observed effect size (d = 2.85; Cohen, 1992).
The average length of time that the participants had been trying to reach
their goals was 23.5 months.

Participants' reported levels of depression, anxiety and stress were
significantly reduced, with statistically significant effect sizes of d =
0.82, 0.48 and 0 .69 respectively. Participants reported a significantly
enhanced quality of life with an observed large effect size of d = 1.62. As
predicted, participants' levels of insight significantly increased following
the life coaching program with a medium effect size being observed (d =
0.59), and participants' levels of self-reflection significantly decreased
(d = 0.76).

TABLE 1

MEAN PRE- AND POST-COACHING PROGRAM SCORES
 

There was no significant positive correlation between the self-reflection
scale of the SRIS and the insight subscale either before (r = .10) or
following the life coaching program (r = -.22). A significant negative
correlation between postprogram SR-SRIS scores and goal attainment was found
(r = -.35, p = .03), and the positive correlation between postprogram
IN-SRIS and goal attainment was significant with a one-tailed test (r = .28,
p = .04; one-tailed).

DISCUSSION
THE IMPACT ON GOAL ATTAINMENT AND WELL-BEING
This exploratory study provides preliminary empirical evidence that a life
coaching program can facilitate goal attainment, improve mental heath and
enhance quality of life. This study also sheds light on the metacognitive
processes of self-reflection and insight, and how these change following a
program of purposeful directed change.
It appears that the life coaching program was indeed successful in terms of
goal attainment. The participants chose to work towards attaining a wide
range of goals. These included; establishing a new business; extending
social life; balancing work/life and attending to neglected financial
affairs. On average these individuals had been trying to reach their goals
for 23.5 months. The goal attainment scale effect size was large (d = 2.85)
and this compares favorably with meta-analytic reports of the efficacy of
bibliotherapy where the mean estimated effect size was d = 0.56 (Marrs,
1995).

However, it should be borne in mind that the goal attainment scale used in
this study was self-report. Although it was not possible for the
investigator to objectively determine the veracity of reported goal
attainment, nevertheless, it appeared from the discussions in the weekly
group coaching sessions that the participants were making genuine progress
towards their goals. For example, several of the participants' goals were to
establish new businesses and have paying clients by the completion of the
life coaching program, and they spoke enthusiastically about the development
of their new businesses.

The life coaching program appeared to enhance quality of life and mental
health, even though the enhancement of mental health and life quality were
not specifically targeted in the life coaching program. The observed effect
sizes for mental health were d = 0.82 for depression, d = 0.48 for anxiety
and d = 0.69 for stress. The magnitude of this study's impact on mental
health is noteworthy given that Ergene (2000) found a mean effect size of d
= 0.65 for cognitive-behavioral psychological treatment for anxiety
programs, and effect sizes for psychological treatments for depression range
from d = 0.28 to d = 1.03 (e.g., Febbraro & Clum, 1998; Reinecke, Ryan, &
DuBois, 1998).

The program also appeared to enhance general life satisfaction. The QOLI
(Frisch, 1994) assesses 16 different life domains and there was an observed
large effect size (d = 1.62). This finding suggests that although the life
coaching program was directed at the attainment of specific goals, the
benefits generalized to participants' broader life experience, and this
provides preliminary evidence of the general value of life coaching in
enhancing well-being, in addition to its more specific impact on goal
attainment.

THE IMPACT ON SELF-REFLECTION AND INSIGHT
The life coaching study also impacted on the participants' levels of
self-reflection and insight. Following the program participants' levels of
self-reflection decreased while their levels of insight increased.

These findings lend support to the notion that high levels of
self-reflection may be more akin to a self-focused rumination, rather than a
reflective processes associated with goal attainment. Indeed, Lyubomirsky,
Tucker, Caldwell, and Berg (1999) found that dysphoric self-reflection led
participants to rate their own problems as severe and unsolvable, and to
report a reduced likelihood of actually implementing their solutions.

These findings also suggest that as individuals move through the
self-regulatory cycle towards goal attainment they become less engaged in
self-reflection and experience greater insight. This suggests that the
constructs measured by the SRIS may be malleable as a result of coaching,
and this notion is somewhat at odds with previous research which has
identified private self-consciousness as a trait facet (e.g., Trapnell &
Campbell, 1999). The items on the SRIS are presently expressed in a global,
trait-like fashion. Exploration of the malleability of self-reflection and
insight may be further facilitated by the inclusion of process-related or
goal-specific items in the SRIS.

LIMITATIONS
There are a number of limitations to the present study which should be taken
into account when interpreting these findings. This exploratory study used a
within-subjects design. The lack of a control group means that the effects
could have occurred naturalistically, rather than being caused by the
intervention. In addition, the participants were self-selected mature-age
university students, who may not be representative of the general
population, and who may have been especially motivated to achieve their
goals. Further, the design may have induced a demand effect; that is, the
participants may have felt that they had to report making progress and
enhanced well-being in order to please the experimenter. Nevertheless, this
study has begun the process of evaluating the effectiveness of life coaching
and has further advanced our knowledge of a psychology of life coaching.

IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE COACHING PRACTICE
This study has indicated that solution-focused, cognitive-behavioral life
coaching can facilitate goal attainment, improve mental health and enhance
general life experience.

This study also found that over the course of participation in the life
coaching program levels of self-reflection decreased and levels of insight
increased. This has been interpreted as an indication that as individuals
move through the self-regulatory cycle towards goal attainment they are less
engaged in self-reflection. The implications of this finding for life
coaching practitioners emphasize the fact that an excessive focus on
self-reflection may be counterproductive in terms of goal attainment. Use of
the solution-focused approach may be useful in counteracting tendencies to
engage in prolonged self-reflection, and may serve to remind coaches to
ensure that life coaching is conducted as a solution-focused, goal-directed
process.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research should employ random assignment to treatment and control.
The construction of process-specific or goal-specific items to complement
the existing global items on the self-reflection and insight subscales of
the SRIS would be a valuable step in developing an understanding of the role
of metacognition in purposeful change, and would further explorations of the
relationship between insight and goal attainment. Given the apparent
positive impact on participants' mental health, future research should
investigate also the utility of life coaching as a means of enhancing
well-being.

SUMMARY
This study has shone some light on the roles of self-reflection and insight
in the self-regulatory cycle. It appears that overengagement in
self-reflection may not facilitate goal attainment. This finding serves to
remind coaches that life coaching should be a results-orientated
solution-focused process, rather than an introspective, overly-philosophical
endeavor.

This study has shown that solution-focused, cognitive-behavioural life
coaching can indeed be an effective approach to creating positive change,
enhancing mental health and life experience and facilitating goal
attainment. In addition to these therapeutic aspects, life coaching and
coaching psychology provide a useful framework from which to further develop
our kowledge of the psychological processes involved in purposeful change in
normal, nonclinical populations.
[Sidebar]

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2003, 31(3), 253-264

(C) Society for Personality Research (Inc.)
 

[Reference]

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[Author Affiliation]

ANTHONY M. GRANT

University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
 

[Author Affiliation]

Anthony M. Grant, PhD, Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology,
University of Sydney, Australia.

Appreciation is due to reviewers including Kennon M. Sheldon, PhD,
Psychology Department, University of Missouri Columbia, McAlester Hall,
Columbia, MO 65211, USA.

Key words: life coaching, private self-consciousness, metacognition,
self-reflection, insight, mental health, personal development, positive
psychology, coaching psychology, well-being.

Please address correspondence and reprint requests to Anthony M. Grant, PhD,
Coaching Psychology Unit, School of Psychology, University of Sydney,
Sydney, Australia NSW 2006. Phone: +61 2 9351 6792; Fax: +61 2 9351 2603;
Email:<anthonyg@psych.usyd.edu.au>

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