Research

The OneWorld Consulting team carries out research in relevant fields. On these pages we share some of this research. For further information you can always contact us directly via our Contact Us page.

In 2015 Tim Bright completed an MA in Professional Development (Executive Coaching) at Middlesex University, working with the Professional Development Foundation. The subject of his Masters research project is "Working towards a tool to help define the roles of an executive coach."

The aim of this research is to develop a tool to be used by coaches, coachees and programme sponsors (e.g. Human Resources professionals) to help the coachee reflect on and describe the role(s) they would like their coach to play.

This is a simple tool, which can be modified by users, and can be used before, during and after a coaching engagement. It can also be used as part of a coach-coachee matching process and to review an ongoing coaching relationship.

The research process included an extensive literature review of the evidence for the importance of reflection and the coach-coachee relationship, which are both key to the success of coaching engagements. The tool should help people reflect on and discuss the role(s) they want their coach to play and this should support the building of an effective working relationship between coach and coachee.

As part of the research Tim surveyed 75 HR professionals and coachees and gathered their feedback on an initial version of the tool. Based on their responses the tool has been revised and an adjustable version has been prepared in which users can modify the roles and wordings to fit their own context.

We see this as a continuing research project and plan to continue to develop the tool in future, based on further experience and feedback.

Tim presented the research project at the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Annual Conference in Istanbul in November 2015, this presentation is available here.

A summary of the research is available here.

The most recent version of the tool, which is freely available for use is here.

An adjustable version of the tool, which allows you to select just the roles you would like to include, to alter the wording of the roles, and to add new roles, is available here.

The full research project submission, including the full survey results, literature review and bibliography is available here.

If you do use the tool, please credit the source, with a link back to this website.

We would be very interested to hear people's comments and suggestions regarding the tool and how it may be improved and developed in future and for use in different contexts.