Learning Through Reflection: A Team’s Reflection on a Digital,Text-based Positive Health Coaching Intervention for Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

Digital coaching has accelerated in recent years, expanding to encompass self-administered, coach-led, and automated coaching through video, email, and text. This article explores a coach’s reflections during a recent Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) that examined the feasibility of text-based digital coaching for healthcare workers. In that study, twenty-three participants were randomised into a wait-list control (n=12) or intervention group (n=11) engaged in a 12-week text-based coaching intervention. The coach’s reflective journal, analysed via Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) shows the potential scalability of text-based coaching, in addition to connection and significant rapport building despite nonverbal cues. However, technology instability and tech literacy can hinder digital coaching.

Keywords

Digital coaching text-based coaching digital interventions coaches reflection communication

Introduction

The Internet has become the primary form of communication and information exchange globally (Oana et al., 2018). In recent years, the rapid advancement of technology has transformed how we learn, communicate, and socialise (Ancis, 2020). For coaching, these technologies have allowed for significant expansion within the field to meet growing demands. Using technology to facilitate coaching adds flexibility and accessibility and expands reach to different locations and time zones (Kantouri, 2020). Now, more people than ever can access quality coaching online, regardless of geographical location (Passmore et al., 2021; Kantouri, 2020). This substantial growth of coaching through digital space has led to an entire subfield of coaching and coaching research: digital coaching.

Digital coaching is a "technology-mediated relationship between coach and client to facilitate growth" (Geissler et al., 2014, p. 166), and is interchangeable with e-coaching, virtual coaching, online coaching, and remote coaching. Digital coaching broadens how we can engage with our clients. Coaches now wield the opportunity to communicate with clients by video, email, voice message, and text chat, as well as offering self-coaching programmes (Kantouri, 2020; Ribbers & Waringa, 2015). Digital coaching research focuses largely on the mechanisms of coaching through digital spaces and the feasibility and efficacy of this newly developed field.

However, what is often overlooked is the unique voice and experiences of coaches on the ground, practicing in and shaping the new field of digital coaching. While our previous research (O’Donovan et al., 2024) examined the clients' experiences with text-based coaching, this paper aims to address the gap by focusing on the perspective of the coaches themselves. By bringing the coaches' voices into research, this paper seeks to elucidate their first-hand experiences and learnings of coaching through digital platforms, and how they navigate new modes of communication like text-based communication.

Text-based Communication and Digital Coaching

While video-based coaching has dominated the digital coaching sphere, other forms of digital coaching have sparked interest, like text-based coaching. Text-based communication includes but is not limited to online forums, email, text messages, and in-app or web-based instant messaging which can occur asynchronously (unscheduled communication. With pauses or breaks between messages) and synchronously (real-time, scheduled chat) (Geissler et al., 2014; Hall, 2020). Text-based coaching is still largely under-researched. As a result, this paper will draw from technology-mediated communication research and existing digital coaching research to bring valid and peer-reviewed theoretical background to the growing phenomenon of text-based coaching.

Text-based communication is growing in popularity because of its reachability, accessibility and scalability, in addition to being low-cost, and easy to use (Battestini et al., 2010; Crawford et al., 2014; Hall, 2020; Marcolino et al., 2018). Some research has shown that asynchronous text-based coaching is a time-efficient and cost-effective additive to coaching (Geissler et al., 2014; Poepsel, 2011). However, no research currently investigates the feasibility of synchronous text-based coaching as a stand-alone intervention on a digital platform. To add, text-based coaching has been perceived as limiting for coaches due to the lack of nuance and nonverbal cues (i.e., tone of voice, body language, gestures) present in this mode of communication. Thus, potentially hindering rapport building and creating connections with clients, and leading to misunderstanding and frustrations (Mitchell, 2021; Van Coller-Peter & Manzini, 2020).

Yet, growing research suggests that individuals can actually adapt to the absence of nonverbal cues by utilising the cues available (i.e., writing style, language) to form close relationships and connections by text (Arsi et al., 2020; Bii, 2013; Grebe & Hall, 2012; Kantouri, 2020; Ribbers & Waringa, 2015; Walther, 1995; Walther et al., 2015). As a consequence, language and communication skills become pivotal in the context of text-based digital coaching. Through careful construction and interpretation of messages, and enhanced reading and writing skills it becomes possible for connection and co-presence to develop between coaches and clients through text (Arsi et al., 2020; Grebe & Hall, 2012; Hwang & Park, 2007; Kanatouri, 2020; Walther, 1995). For example, Asri and Colleagues (2020) reported an immediate positive effect in establishing connection and partnership through the intentional translation and integration of skills such as open-ended questions, reflecting and paraphrasing, positive regard, empathy, clarification, and interpretation into text-based communication.

While Coaches may be competent in the skills mentioned above during face-to-face (FTF) coaching conversations, it is not directly transferable to text-based coaching on digital platforms (Arsi et al., 2020). To effectively translate these skills from face-to-face to text-based interventions, the coach requires proficiency in typing and confidence in using technology. It also requires coaches to effectively express warmth, empathy, and tone through written communication (Arsi et al., 2020). Thus, making it essential to support coaches in translating their skills to text-based coaching. While empirical research can give coaches an understanding of what factors contribute to positive outcomes for clients, there is very little research highlighting how coaches maintain and further develop the skills obtained from empirical research to achieve positive outcomes (Hullinger et al., 2019). Reflective practices (i.e. journaling or diary keeping can provide the insight to maintain and develop skills that may not be captured in empirical research. Reflective practice is a core component of any coach’s professional development. Such practices are essential for getting a deeper understanding of a concept or experience, providing new learnings, and motivating change in a way that empirical research may not capture. We believe that coaches and the coaching profession can benefit from sharing the insights and learnings that emerge from reflective practices. This not only promotes sharing the exchange of ideas and experiences but can actively shape emerging fields like digital coaching.

This paper examines a reflective diary maintained by a coach engaging in a synchronous text-based digital coaching platform aimed at reducing burnout in healthcare professionals and increasing their health and wellbeing. Through the reflective diary, the research team explores the coach's first-hand experiences, lessons learned, challenges, and opportunities the research team faced collectively. Lastly, this paper discusses the implications of text-based digital coaching for the coaching profession and community.

Method

This reflective paper explores a coach's experience of text-based coaching via a digital health platform over 12 months. Reflections were recorded during each part of a broader randomized waitlist control project called Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Coach Connect designed to measure uptake and engagement by frontline staff (n=24) on a digital health platform and to observe changes in participants' burnout, wellbeing, and lifestyle changes (i.e., sleep, exercise, diet, and stress). The Coach Connect project was a mixed-methods research design using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) (Hong et al., 2019), incorporating qualitative research assessment through structured interviewing and reflection.

Ethics

This study obtained ethical approval from the Human Research Committee at the RCSI, University of Medicine and Health Sciences. All participants provided written informed consent before the coaching intervention commenced. Participants and the coach used a pseudonym to protect anonymity throughout the project. The coach's reflective diary had no identifiable data relating to the participants or any sensitive information communicated by participants through the digital platform.

Setting

The research team conducted this project on an online digital health platform that featured human-coaching support and education content.

Design

Consenting participants were onboarded onto the digital support platform developed by our technology partners at Empeal. All data was stored securely and virtually on Amazon Web Services platforms. This platform includes a mobile app for participants to download on the App Store and Play Store. This app is a multisided platform that enables text-based digital communication between the coach and participants. The platform also stored evidence-based content (in video, audio, and pdf format) related to the pillars of lifestyle medicine (exercise and movement, eating well, sleep, mental health, relationships, meaning, and substance control). The coach could send this content to participants based on their chosen goals.

Coaching Approach. Participants were asked to 1) sign up and log in to the digital platform (a mobile app), 2) complete wellness assessment surveys measuring the pillars of lifestyle medicine, wellbeing, and burnout, 3) work with their coach to set SMART (specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, time-bound) short, medium- and long-term goals and 4) attend review sessions to assess and track their progress. All interactions between the coach and participants were done through text-based communication only. A Positive Health Coaching approach was used to deliver coaching. Positive Health Coaching is a dialogical approach to coaching that lies between facilitative and directive conversational interventions (van Nieuwerburgh and Knight, in press). Positive Health Coaching, encompasses a patient-centred approach that encourages self-discovery, active learning, accountability, and behaviour goals and requires specific education as well as coaching processes. The coach was a fully qualified coach, accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC).

Coaching Reflection. Written reflections and team analysis of the reflections serve as the data for this paper. The coach kept a reflective diary for the duration of the two parts of the RCT (two 12-week interventions: one for the initial experimental group and another for the waitlist control group). This reflection focused on capturing initial impressions of digital coaching, the growth of the platform, challenges and hesitations, and moments of learning or change. Journal entries were dated and stored by month in a Microsoft Word document on a password-protected computer. Journal entries were reviewed, followed by an in-depth analysis to identify key themes related to conducting digital coaching.

Analysis

An inductive approach was used to capture themes emerging from the coach’s reflexive journal entries. The research team used Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) to code journal entries and identify themes. Unlike traditional Thematic Analysis, RTA uses the subjectivity of the researcher as a source of knowledge and analytic resource (Braun and Clarke, 2019) such that reflexivity is built into the process. Affirming that meaning and knowledge are contextual and sculpted by the researcher's subjectivity (Braun and Clarke, 2021). RTA relies on the subjectivity and active engagement of the researcher with the data concerning the research question (Terry & Hayfield, 2020). Themes don’t emerge strictly from the data but rather are “constructed, tested, and refined” in iterative phases (Terry & Hayfield, 2020, p. 430). Likewise, themes are meaningful entities that capture recurrent meanings across the dataset. Because the lead coach is an author of this paper, RTA allows the subjectivity accompanying this relationship to the data to evolve into a deeper understanding and development of the themes generated from the journal entries.

Two researchers engaged in RTA of the diary entries. Following the six phases of data engagement, coding, and theme development (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Braun and Clarke, 2019), the first researcher (C.L) began engaging with the data by reviewing and reflecting on diary entries over the project, refamiliarising with older reflections, and making notes of initial ideas. Researchers also incorporated a narrative summary in the early stages of reflexive thematic analysis. Narrative Summary can vary from recounting a description of findings to more interpretive reflexivity, commentary, and higher abstraction (Dixon-Wood et al., 2005). The Narrative Summary of this paper will take the latter approach. Given the reflexive approach to Thematic Analysis, data analysis took a more interpretative and reflexive approach where coding integrated with theme development (Braun and Clarke, 2019). Therefore, phases two and three of RTA happened simultaneously (generating initial codes and searching for themes). Once the primary researcher developed potential themes, the second researcher (R.OD) reviewed themes to assess the correlation of the themes with the data.

Reflexivity

This paper's primary author was the project's lead coach, which means that reflexive subjectivity during data analysis was built into the process. This paper's second author and researcher assessed data analysis for consistency in analysis and for subjectivity to validate that reflections felt resonant with both researchers’ experiences with the project. Moreover, the primary authors' link to the project as lead coach was beneficial in developing a deeper understanding of the largely experiential phenomenon that this paper captures.

Before engaging with this project, the coach and primary author had experience with text-based therapeutic interventions and with digital coaching. Although prior experience did influence or overlap with the protocols or processes developed during this project, prior experiences strengthened the coach's buy-in to the approach before engaging with this project. Additionally, the coach was interested in understanding the nuances of text-based communication and the difference from FTF communication coming into this project. Finally, since the coach and participants' demographics were unknown to either party throughout the project, demographic biases were minimized.

Results

Themes generated from the coach’s reflections have been categorised into three headings: (1) Space and Time, (2) Building Relationships, and (3) Language and Discourse. We address opportunities to use results to engage participants to earn their buy-in to Digital Coaching. Below are the three presented themes.

Time and Space

Time and space function differently when coaching through a text-based digital platform. Unlike FTF, there is time and space between each message and response between the coach and participant. Built-in response time creates space for the coach to reflect and carefully craft messages to the participant, but it also has implications for time management and time in conversation. The Coach found challenges in adapting the time management of FTF coaching to text-based coaching (i.e., length of the coaching session and response time). Although through these challenges, she found opportunities in the space text-based communication creates.

Time. The coach highlighted differences in time commitment and the content covered on the platform compared to in-person coaching:

… I’m only getting halfway through goal setting in this time [1 hour]. Sessions are lasting anywhere between an hour and a half to 2 and a half hours. Really this is boiling down to one thing - response time. I usually aim to respond to users within 4 minutes... But you can expect a response time anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes from users. So, there is a far larger time commitment over the app… this drastic difference to the exploration that’s possible in a 1-hour face-to-face session, but I’ve also noticed opportunity within the space between messages to be more thoughtful and nuanced.

Coaches who develop face-to-face (FTF) coaching protocols assume immediate responses and feedback from participants. The coach's reflection highlighted that the absence of immediate response and feedback in text-based coaching has implications for time in response.

When considering response times (including opening messages, reading, interpretation, and message construction), progression through goal setting via text was considerably longer than in FTF coaching. Factors like technology literacy, internet connectivity, typing speed, and environmental distractions (such as receiving phone calls during text-based conversations or walking away while messaging) influenced participants. Although coaches should have fewer influencing factors impacting their response time (i.e., environmental distractions) than participants, internet connection, typing speed, and tech literacy still play a role in coaches’ response time. Overall, the content covered in 1-hour FTF coaching cannot directly translate to the content covered in 1-hour text-based coaching.

Space. The coach gave a maximum of four minutes for their response to each participant. This time gave space to understand what the participant said and ensure that their response reflected and validated their narrative and experiences. In one journal entry, the coach reflected on her intentions to “make sure that the empathy and compassion inferred in body language, tone of voice, and expressions are put into the text as much as possible” in digital responses. Since nonverbal cues were absent during goal setting, validation and reflection were key to optimising participants’ experience. Additional focus on language and discourse are addressed later in this paper, in addition to empathy and compassion in time and space.

The coach reflected on opportunities and advantages of time and space. The space to think and respond (reflexivity) was a prominent theme throughout the coaches’ reflections. A practical implication of time and space in the digital platform was the capacity to reach multiple participants at once. As the coach wrote,

One very clear opportunity is to expand the volume of users that are coached at once. The space I have between responses on the platform makes it clear that it’s possible to coach multiple users without impacting the quality of the coaching experience.

Text-based coaching can utilise response times to the advantage of scalability Through reflection and reframing, the coach found potential in the setback of longer time commitments by using this space between responses received to increase the number of participants’ goal-setting at once, proving beneficial for the platform's scalability.

Building Relationships

The relationship between the coach and participants was a reoccurring theme in the coach’s journal entries and, particularly, how relationships are established and built through the text-based digital platform. Firstly, thoughtfulness about space and time was vital for building relationships and rapport through text-based coaching. The coach needed space; to read, dissect interpret, and carefully construct replies to the participant’s messages. Utilising the space between stimuli and response helped the coach to adequately respond so participants felt heard, understood, and supported. Secondly, “human-centredness” and “flexibility” were additional concepts that the coach found pivotal in building relationships on the digital platform:

It’s worth recognising that there is a degree of flexibility needed going into these… goal setting is not a one-size fits all phenomenon… users’ needs to feel heard and understood for a relationship to build, so staying flexible to find what works for the user has really helped with this.

The coach found that flexibility allowed the participant to feel autonomous in the conversation. Flexibility also helped the coach find a communication style and goal-setting strategy that suited the individual participants. It is important to look at the implications of coaching without the flexibility to understand further how this enhanced relationships between the coach and participants:

Thinking about the protocol and becoming more familiar with it and how I work with it, I can see how doing nothing but working with it can come across robotic. Solely depending on this makes it a one side conversation. You have to be willing – to a degree – to become flexible… [to] have control while being with the user.

Human interaction is an integral part of coaching and was a priority for the coach on the platform. Remaining open and fluid in the coaching conversation allowed the coach to bring a humanistic aspect to the digital platform. While a protocol was in place to provide structure to the coaching conversions, the coach always prioritised the participant's individual needs and gently guided them through the protocol structure at their own pace. This way, the coach stayed with the participant rather than trying to move the conversation to the finishing point. Taking this participant-centred approach gave autonomy back to the participants and allowed them space to build rapport with the participants.

Language and Discourse

The coach found that with the absence of nonverbal cues during text-based coaching, written language became a vital part of the coaching session and was a prominent theme in the coach’s reflection: “If we don’t have body language or visual cues, then relationships are built only on the language and words that we use”. After all, language and discourse used between participants and the coach were the only cues present on the digital platform:

Language is also such an important part of this coaching experience. Of course, language is essential in all coaching, but the words you choose and how you write is everything in text-based coaching. Words are not just words, they are your tone, your body language, and your emotions. So it’s important that every message is sent with care.

The coach was aware of the integral role played by language in communication. She found that having the space in text-based coaching allowed her to “really look at / consider what the person is saying, understand the tone, spot hesitancies in their language etc., and… responding appropriately to this”. This reflection affirmed the theories found in the literature and supported them with first-hand accounts and practices of using language to adapt to the absence of nonverbal cues.

Additionally, the coach reflected on the importance of finding her voice and individuality within the protocol. Ensuring originality and tone in text-based conversation was essential in compensating for the lack of nonverbal cues. The coach found that rigidly sticking to protocol risked losing their voice and originality and, as a consequence coming across as “robotic”:

Earlier on in the project when I was still getting comfortable with the protocol – I feel like my communication style was a bit more rigid. With this second group, however I’m a lot more comfortable with the protocol we work by and it’s become secondary to the communication between me and the user… I’m confident that I will work through the protocol in a natural manner, and I’ve woven it into my way of coaching on the platform, rather than breaking the flow of the conversation to make sure I follow this word by word.

This ties closely with the coach’s reflection on flexibility. Depending on the participant, the coach may need to change communication style (i.e., more or less formal writing, more straightforward language, matching participants’ words), explore a specific situation further, brainstorm, or move around protocol stages to keep the flow in the conversation. The subthemes below outline ways in which the coach achieved this.

Feedback and Reflection. “Spending time understanding their situation, allowing [the participant] to feel heard and understood” was an essential part of the coaching conversation. The coach used feedback and reflection to let the participant feel heard and supported. This involved summarising important talking points to ensure that both the coach and the participant were on the same page. Summarising also helps participants feel heard in their struggles or achievements:

Reflection and feedback takes up a lot of the coaching conversation on the platform, and I find it bring a lot of value to the conversation for multiple reasons. Firstly it helps make sure we’re both on the same page before moving on to the next stage of the conversation, but it also increases the users awareness, helps break up the questioning and goal setting to sit with the user, makes it a more collaborative process, and it allows users feel heard and understood.

The coaching conversation is a journey and a collaborative process between the coach and participants to create a realistic, feasible, and achievable goal. Creating moments for reflecting on, paraphrasing or rephrasing the participant's experience helps move the coaching conversation into a collaborative process and encourages awareness within the participant. While this is essential to all coaching conversations, it is not a natural element of text-based communication.

Nothing I do in my conversations on the platform are reinventing the wheel, everything that’s done by text like being non-directive, sitting with the user using reflection and feedback, and using the opportunity to reflect and give feedback to break up the questions. But because this isn’t natural for text-based conversations, it takes conscious effort to put it into the conversations we’re having on the platform.

During the Coach Connect intervention, it became clear that feedback and reflection benefitted the rapport building and relationships between coach and participant, ensuring common ground.

Opening Space Through Reflection. Questions are usually the primary focus of modern-day text messaging. Although questions helped progress the conversation, it was essential for the coach to sit in the participants' narrative through reflection and paraphrasing. By intentionally breaking up the string of questions with the abovementioned techniques, the coach felt that goal setting became a more collaborative process with the participant. It also allowed participants to sit and explore their situation and increase awareness. In coaching, participants are experts in their own life. Feedback and reflection helped bring this to the forefront in text-based coaching.

Matching language and emotion. As mentioned, without nonverbal cues, the participant's and coach's words and sentence structure became the focal point of the conversation. In the absence of nonverbal cues, the coach found benefits in matching participants' language and mirroring their emotions. Matching the participants' language involved understanding and mirroring their communication style, emotions, choice of words, and even sense of humour. This ensured that all information aligned with the participants and avoided making assumptions. It also helped build rapport with participants by making them feel heard and helping them find common ground with the coach.

…you need to be a bit of a chameleon. It is important to remain authentic and find your own voice in the protocol, but there is an argument for adjusting your wording, expressions and way of writing to match the user. Firstly, this keeps me safe from assuming - Not going beyond what the user says. But also I noticed that adjusting my approach to match the users way of communicating creates a better experience for users. If a user likes humour, it works to feed into this. If a user likes to chat, make time to have a chat with them. If a user a likes to get straight to point, there’s no point holding them up with the general chit chat that another user enjoys.

The coach had one caveat about matching the participants' language. The coach found that keeping the same energy regardless of how the participant engaged created a space for them to open up, and build confidence in participants that were hesitant about text-based coaching or just coaching in general.

I’ve experienced hesitancy and a short, to the point messaging approach from users and both look quite similar. There is an urge to match this, but… keeping enthusiasm, positivity and optimism in your language in the face of hesitancy or reluctancy… allows the user to get more comfortable and open up as the conversation progresses. If the user remains ‘to the point’, that’s okay. You can follow this approach while still giving them the same validation and feedback you would to ‘chatty’ users.

Opportunities for Engaging the Participant: Buy-in to Digital Coaching

The techniques explored above utilised the space that naturally occurred in text-based coaching to build rapport and increase participant engagement. The coach observed that this depended on the technology that mediated the coaching conversations. There were two ways in which technology impacted the coaching session: (1) the stability and quality of the technology used and (2) buy-in to the tech. It became apparent that coaching outcomes were heavily dependent on the stability and quality of the technology: “I’ve had so many instances where I’m coaching, we’re in a flow, and the participant is 100/ in the conversation and tech fails, and engagement completely goes”. While the platform allowed the coach to increase the volume of participants they reached, she realised that coaching on the digital platform was more volatile than in person and could harm engagement if not stable.

The coach was aware from the outset that buy-in to the tech would always be an aspect of the coaching relationship on a digital platform. Nonetheless, the coach understood that they “can’t control the user’s buy-in to the tech”, but they can “control the coaching conversation, to engage the participant through this and hope the trust in tech will follow with this”. It became evident that while technology optimised the reach and accessibility of the coach in this project, there was still some apprehension around the digital health platform. If the technology failed on the platform, it inhibited engagement and stunted rapport building between participant and coach. This is a key difference between digital and FTF coaching.

Discussion

This paper presents a coach’s experience using a synchronous text-based digital platform to provide positive health coaching to healthcare professionals. The coach's reflective diary offered a unique opportunity for the coach and the research team to analyse the feasibility of text-based coaching and the challenges and opportunities it brings to coaching as a profession that is typically not captured in empirical research. Through the analysis of the reflective diary, it is clear that the coach had a largely positive experience using a text-based coaching approach on the digital platform. The coach primarily reflected on the mechanisms and processes of text-based communication that allowed for meaningful coaching conversation between the coach and participant through text. These mechanisms were identified through the themes of space and time, building relationships, and language and discourse.

There is conflicting research surrounding the efficacy of text-based communication in professions like coaching. Some researchers report challenges in establishing rapport and creating connections through text due to the lack of nonverbal cues (Mitchell, 2021; Van Coller-Peter & Manzini, 2020). An essential part of coaching and the coaching conversation indeed rests on using nonverbal cues to build relationships and create connections. However, the reflexive analysis conducted on the coach's diary validates research suggesting that people adapt to the limitation of nonverbal cues, and apply it to the coaching conversation (Walther, 1995; Walther et al., 2015). The research team found that mechanisms reflected in the coach's diary concerned adapting to the absence of nonverbal cues to feel connected and provide meaningful conversations. These mechanisms included taking advantage of the space between messages to utilise the cues available to them and to recognise the alternative cues used by the participant (i.e., choice of words, language, and writing style).

The research team also found that coaches possess the training and skills in the alternative cues used to promote connection and co-presence in text-based coaching. The coach reflected on flexibility, feedback and reflection, and mirroring language and emotion, all of which are core skills developed by coaches and used in FTF coaching. However, implementing these cues into a text-based conversation requires much more intention. In addition, these cues hold much more importance in text-based communication than FTF, as these cues compensate for nonverbal cues in building connections and relationships. Currently, there is a lack of research and guidelines for coaches to understand how these cues can be used in the text-based context. To the author's knowledge, the coach's reflections under the theme of ‘language and discourse’ provide the first articulation of text-based coaching skills and mechanisms used to adapt to the absence of nonverbal cues.

Challenges

Outside of time management, A large part of the challenges the coach experienced was the technology used to facilitate the coaching conversation. The coach's experience working with technology reinforced Kanatouri’s (2020) hypothesis of the transparency of technology in the coaching conversation. When the participant was familiar and confident with the technology, the connection was strong, and the platform was stable; the technology retracted to the background, and the relationship between the coach and participant could grow, and rapport could flourish. However, when technology failed, it became visible, and frustrations grew. While technology is key to the scalability and accessibility of digital coaching, it requires close attention to glitches and bugs that would not be expected in face-to-face coaching. The research team learned from the reflective diaries that technology plays just as important a role in the coaching conversation as the coach and the participant. Without the stability of and buy-in to technology, the coach can't implement processes, mechanisms or cues to create co-presence and connection.

Opportunities

This paper provided a coach's narrative around the feasibility of text-based coaching. Both the coach and the research team found that synchronous text-based communication on a digital platform was a feasible approach for coaching. Moreover, the coach found opportunities in scalability through text-based coaching, using the response times to engage with multiple users at once. The research team affirms the scalability of text-based coaching validated through previous research. The coach has the opportunity of scalability through the space between receiving and responding to messages. This opportunity is unique to text-based communication because of the disembodiment that occurs in this mode of communication. Since neither body, face or voice is used for text-based communication coaches can detach from their physical presence into cyberspace and be in multiple (digital) places at once (Kanatouri, 2020). The research team suggests that the combination of space and disembodiment creates the opportunity to coach multiple participants simultaneously. The technology facilitating the text-based coaching conversation also plays an important role in the opportunities found. Technology allows the coach and participants to interact regardless of their geographical location (Kanatouri, 2020; Passmore et al., 2021), hence increasing the reachability and accessibility of coaching.

Future Research

With the rapid developments of technology in coaching, research surrounding these developments must be up-to-date and transparent. Research on the processes needed to adopt coaching in the digital sphere successfully would greatly benefit digital coaching and promote transparency. The coach's reflection in this paper provided one of the first insights into cues and mechanisms a coach uses during text-based coaching conversations. It is recommended that further research surrounding communication and digital literacy skills would benefit the development of synchronous text-based coaching and encourage a seamless transition from face-to-face to text-based coaching for those interested. Finally, this paper intends to lay the foundation for coaches’ experiences in digital coaching and encourage other coaches in research to share their experiences and challenges in this rapidly expanding area.

Limitations

This project had a small sample size (n=24); it is, therefore, essential to consider this limitation when interpreting the findings presented. Likewise, the research team analysed the experience of only one coach. This is an initial reflection of a new coaching approach; as research in digital and text-based coaching expands, the themes discussed should be reviewed. As mentioned throughout the paper, the themes generated are from the coach's personal experience on this project. While the themes generated aligned with the literature, this is a novel reflection from a feasibility project that is still learning and expanding in a coaching area with very little research and validation.

Conclusion

This paper intends to expand the discourse around digital coaching and to encourage feedback and further research in the area. Therefore, we welcome an open discourse on each of the themes presented. The coach’s reflections in this article align with the literature, affirming that digital coaching has the potential to positively impact the coaching profession through accessibility and scalability, providing the technology behind it is of high quality and participant-friendly. With technology becoming the crux of coaching since the onset of COVID-19, research must catch up with these rapid advancements. This article hopes to spark thought-provoking discourse around the possibilities coaching has in the digital space.

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