Coaching in Adult Education Context Education Term Paper

Coaching in Adult Education Context
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Coaching in Adult Education Context
Introduction
Coaching is considered both complex and straightforward. Its simplicity tenets are anchored on arguments that entail just two individuals engaging in a conversation concerning learning and transformation. However, coaching has developed to be a complex phenomenon in the last few decades. It could embrace individuals, groups or teams, as well as could involve engagements centered on exploring goals and issues of morality, personal dilemmas, and identity. Research indicates that coaching could also act as an approach to realize improvements in terms of interpersonal relationships, wellbeing, or performance (Turner & Passmore, 2018). In such complex spheres, it is increasingly essential to address the approaches coaches employ to make decisions when faced with challenges that constrain their boundaries of values, national laws, ethical codes, and experience. Supervision could seem a feasible strategy in the coaching process. However, it is essential to critically evaluate whether legislation, supervision, professional, ethical standards, or values could assist coaches in navigating such challenging environments. This reports critically evaluates theoretical underpinning that facilitates adult education, learning, and coaching excellence, benefits of coaching to people and organizations, the conditions supporting coaching excellence, and the barriers and challenges to excellence and professionalism in adult coaching.
Benefits of Coaching to Organizations and Individuals
Regarding the benefits of coaching on enterprises, the picture appears less precise compared to individuals’ training outcomes. Despite the existence of a vast pool of coaching literature, a lot of published research papers incorporates survey-based on contextual research, providing using knowledge concerning, for instance, coaching services delivery rather than concerning coaching effectiveness. Beneficial individual implications of coaching include improvements in skills or performance, copying, goal-centered goal regulation, wellbeing, and work attitudes. Depending on how coaching is employed in an organization, it could impact several facets of working contexts. The identified benefits include improvements in job-satisfaction, teamwork, communications, flexibility, ownership, performance, quality, career planning, and succession planning (Losch et al., 2016). In order to nurture and develop talent for future enterprises, it is essential to hire personnel that develop and grow into roles, advancing not only their job performance and technical skills but also interpersonal competencies. In this vein, coaching is one of the practical approaches to developing adults’ “soft skills.” However, as is the case for skills development intervention, coaching does not nearly work effectively for all individuals as well as within all situations (Leonard-Cross, 2010).
Coaching is a development method that enables individuals (particularly coaches) to have an improved self-belief and self-understanding in the coachee. Research indicates that coachees and coaches attain agreement on goals and tasks, thus creating a deeper level of common psychological understanding as well as new insight (de Haan, 2019). In this vein, the coaching process enables adults to discover their true self, including aspects of values, motivators, beliefs, emotions, as well as encouraging self-regulation. The identity concept of coaching is conceptualized into assisting individuals in determining their inner self. Accordingly, the coaching process enables instructors to consciously understand their inner voices, particularly when immersed within the coaching conversations (Leggett & James, 2016). Through listening and recognizing internal dialogue, enables coaches to engage in reflective moments, utilizing their intuition when engaging others as well as identifying what is happening beneath the conversation’s surface (Gray, Garvey & Lane, 2016). The inherent awareness is also essential, particularly in enabling the coach to surface their motivations and unconscious biases that underlie their behavioral inclinations; enabling him or her to be more aware concerning self-influence within the training conversation (Leggett & James, 2016).
When an organization plans for the coaching processes after determining employee’s needs, developing objectives, as well as facilitating and supporting the process implementation, there is competences and knowledge transmission that improves the individual productivity of the coachees. Coaching is a tool that creates value that consequently enhances human resources’ capabilities. It transforms workforces into assets that valuable and unique to the firm, and that is challenging for business rivals to copy. A coachee applies her or his new competence to routine tasks at the workplace, thus positively impacting their performance. As a result, it is expected that organizational productivity improves. However, in order to ensure that such performance happens in practice, it is necessary to initially demonstrate the association between individual productivity and organizational productivity and thus evade making conclusions from one level to the next. Such decisions frequently result in so-called “wrong level” fallacies (Utrilla, Grande & Lorenzo, 2015). Therefore, there is a need for scholars to evaluate the relationship between individual performance and organizational productivity.
Theoretical Framework in Adult Learning and Education
Adult Education Theoretical Overview
Several adult education and learning models can be employed to explain coaching excellence. The role of the fundamental coaching perspectives is to inform the process which the client and the practitioner make together. These perspectives provide avenues to comprehend what emerges as well as process guidance. The respective parties to the process bring their distinct perspectives into the journey. The sponsors have their viewpoints on the coaching process and why it is occurring. The sponsors introduce their views. The practitioner and the client also come with their respective perspectives concerning the entire coaching process. In this vein, there emerges a wide range of theoretical positions impacting coaching practice. These include cognitive or behavioral models, psychoanalytic models, and humanistic models. Coaching complements other occupational groups in embracing competence models (Gray, Garvey & Lane, 2016). Instead of having separate professional institutions going their diverse ways, an increasingly productive approach could have an executive coaching (one international institution) that encompasses all professionals operating within the field (Cox, 2006).
Adult Learning Theory and Coaching
Adult learning theory underpins excellence in lifelong coaching and learning. The processes and framework in which coaching happens align well with lifelong and adult learning model. Working through self-directed, active, and goal-oriented connection between life experience and new learning, as is the case for adult learning, coaching recognizes an individual’s necessity to be informed and preparedness to learn. By operating from the responsive goal-based framework, the adult learning theory enables learners to understand the reason for the benefits, and value of learning, therefore, facilitate the understanding of paramount real-life issues. Like coaching, problem-based and centered on immediate objectives, concrete situations and needs, integrated into direct employment of “learning activity short bursts”, adult learning considers various learning approaches including trial and error, analogical thinking, and creation of an evocative whole (Griffiths, 2015). Ingrained within such procedures including respecting adults’ preconceived knowledge and experiences as well as the value of feedback, the former of which has been cited within various studies from coachee’s perspectives (Muriithi, 2016).
Various adult learning theories contribute towards the development of goal-centered coaching processes and framework within which it is employed. The learning cycle model illustrates the cyclical interrelationships between concrete observation, conceptualization, experimentation, and experience, as adults meet purposeful, self-directed, and meaningful learning (Gray, 2018). This happens both within coaching and adult learning experiences. Further, other adult learning theorists, including Habermas’ arguments, are significantly reflected within the coaching processes. Habermas learning domains seem to mirror in the coaching outcomes, as coachees encounter technical learning of content and skills to attain their objectives and practical knowledge to become increasingly aware of and improve their emancipatory learning and interpersonal relationships (Griffiths, 2015). In this vein, the clients developed high self-understanding, self-awareness, and transformation in terms of changes in perspectives (Mukhalalati & Taylor, 2019).
Coaching Excellence Prerequisites
The key areas of coaching competence categories include understanding self, self-development commitment, contract management, cultivating relationships, enabling learning and insight, results and action orientation, utilization of techniques and models, as well as evaluation. Understanding self empowers the coach to demonstrate knowledge concerning own beliefs, behaviors, and values, recognize how such factors impact their practice and utilizes such self-awareness to enhance their effectiveness in engaging the clients and the sponsor’s demands where relevant. In this way, the coach behaves ad communicates in a way that supports the coaching process. This cultivates self-understanding centered on the established human behavior model as well as practice reflection. Self-development commitment explores and enhances their practice standards and maintain a professional reputation. Senior practitioners should continuously evaluate, reflect on, as well as inform personal skills, attitudes, and beliefs to enhance their coaching capabilities (European Mentoring & Coaching Council, 2015).
The coach needs to maintain the contract by creating and managing boundaries and expectations of the coaching contract, and where necessary with sponsors. This creates an ethically-centered coaching contract in conflicted or ambiguous circumstances with the coachee. In this vein, it is possible to determine clients who could have therapeutic or emotional needs that are beyond the coach’s professional capability (European Mentoring & Coaching Council, 2015). Members in the coaching process are responsible for developing and maintaining culturally sensitive, clear, and appropriate, sensitive boundaries which govern all virtual and physical interactions with sponsors and clients (Global Code of Ethics, 2018). This ensures that the coaches and coaches do not create inappropriate interactions with the coaching process.
Accordingly, the coaching process needs to be centered on functional relationships. In this way, the coach needs to cultivate and maintain an effective relationship with the coachee, as well as where essential, with the sponsor. This demonstrates genuine support and empathy for the coachee, ensures requisite thresholds of trust is established, recognizes and operates effectively with coachee’s emotional state, and adopts behavior and language to ac...