Abstract
Welcome to the August 2025 issue of our journal. In this issue we have a combination of peer reviewed papers focusing on coaching (nine papers) and mentoring (five papers) as well as four papers in the ‘Reflections from the Field’ category. The Reflections category captures insights, observations and lessons learned by researchers or practitioners working directly in their own fields of study or practice.
Coaching Papers
We begin with nine coaching papers. The first two papers are from colleagues researching at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. The first concerns the impact of coaching the career trajectories of African female CEOs. Here Russell and Hewitt explore the role coaching plays in influencing CEOs career paths using semi-structured interviews with seven participants. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), findings suggest systemic gender and racial biases actually hinder their leadership journeys, but that coaching is an important tool to foster self-awareness, enhance leadership skills, and facilitate career transitions.
The second paper from colleagues at the University of Johannesburg, presents a framework for developing and sustaining manager-as-coach competencies for long-term impact. Lattuca, Hewitt and Coetzee also used IPA for a study exploring the lived experiences of nine managers in order to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based manager-as-coach framework aimed at educating managers to coach and sustain coaching as a practice.
Our third coaching paper looks at the relationship between academic supervisors’ coaching leadership styles and doctoral students’ self-efficacy. Undertaking a cross-cultural analysis in UK, Israel, and China, Lai, Wang and other colleagues from universities in each country examine the impact of principal supervisors’ coaching leadership on doctoral students’ self-efficacy. A quantitative survey of 657 doctoral students from the three countries was used to validate the relationship between supervisors’ coaching behaviours, the working alliance, and the students’ self-efficacy. Results suggest coaching skills and a strong working alliance enhance students’ self-beliefs in their academic pursuits. Additionally, a cross-cultural analysis reveals perceptions of power and uncertainty influence supervisory relationships.
The role of goal content in the formation and function of trust in workplace coaching is the topic of the next paper which comes from Gamgee researching at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. In this grounded theory study, the difference that goal content makes on trust in one-to-one workplace coaching is explored. Through semi-structured interviews with eight coaches and three coachees, three superordinate themes were identified: 1) “Different kinds of trust”, 2) “The strange triangle of trust”, and 3) “As I got to know them”. Findings suggest that the formation and function of trust may vary depending on goal content, including in relation to time and context.
The fifth paper examines the impact of team coaching on organisational results. In this paper César Fernández-Llano and colleagues from the University of Barcelona in Spain, present a mixed-methods study exploring the team coaching process of a team of 24 people within a major bank. The findings reveal improvements in team capabilities as well as other key business indicators. The results endured after the conclusion of the coaching intervention, providing longitudinal evidence of the outcomes of the team coaching process.
Our next paper focuses on the impostor phenomenon in leaders and its implications for coaching. Marguerite Farmer from the University of East London and Julia Papworth from Oxford Brookes University used semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis to explore seven leaders’ perceptions of impostor phenomenon. The findings offer new insights into the use of self-efficacy sources via two key themes: i) the perpetual cycle of holding on to an impostor phenomenon identity and ii) reflexive awareness.
For our seventh submission, Pierre Gérain and colleagues from the University of Brussels in Belgium, researched how healthcare professionals and coaches view the definition, role, and integration of coaching within cancer care. They conducted thematic analysis of responses from thirteen healthcare professionals and five coaches in French-speaking Belgium. The findings suggest that both groups see coaching as valuable psychosocial support but for different reasons: healthcare professionals view coaches as first-line providers, while coaches stress empowerment and post-treatment support. It is argued that addressing this discrepancy is essential for guiding the implementation and evaluation of coaching in oncology care.
The eighth coaching paper, from Jonathan Passmore and colleagues, examines coach attitudes towards seven areas of coaching practice: digital, AI, team and group coaching, CPD, supervision, risk taking and fee rates. The study, conducted in partnership with EMCC Global, used a survey method to explore coaches’ experiences across the different areas of coaching practice. The results reveal that coaches are increasingly embracing a variety of different practices, including digital, but that they remain reserved about AI. They also reveal a disparity in fee rates between different coaching services.
Our final coaching paper is a critical perspective of the neuroscience of organisational coaching. Tatiana Bachkirova and Simon Borrington from Oxford Brookes University recognise how, in organisational coaching particularly, many practitioners have begun to identify themselves as specialists in interpreting neuro-research studies for interpersonal interventions such as coaching. However, the authors argue that critical perspectives on the ‘neuroscience of coaching’ are lacking. In this paper they offer a conceptually framed analysis of the role of neuroscientific findings as applicable to organisational coaching and address important issues such as the legitimacy of understanding the brain as causal for behaviour, and the limitations of neuroscience for addressing what is crucial for coaching: action, change, context and ethics.
Mentoring Papers
The first of our five mentoring papers is from Gergely Horváth and Aranka Varga from the University of Pécs in Hungary. In a paper entitled ‘Bicultural and Monocultural Mentors in a Hungarian University Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Programme’ the authors present a survey of a programme designed to support primary school pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study focuses on the sociocultural backgrounds of the mentors and results suggest that bicultural mentors emphasize supporting their communities, whereas monocultural mentors prioritise personal development.
The second mentoring paper explores peer mentoring for financial wellness. Taylor, Ray, and five other colleagues researching in the USA, look at how college student peer financial mentors conceptualize their work and reflect upon financial peer mentorship in postsecondary settings. They sampled from institutions over a period of three years, conducting 22 focus groups with 54 peer financial wellness mentors across seven higher education institutions. Findings suggest soft skills, especially listening, is critical for financial mentors, in addition to knowledge of community financial resources.
Our third paper in this section also studies peer mentoring in higher education. Louise Lima, and colleagues from Lusofona University in Porto, Portugal, set out to understand the influence of a peer mentoring activity on the experience and academic performance of students. The mixed method case study, undertaken over two academic years at a private university in the north of Portugal, considered the implementation of a mentoring activity aimed at increasing the academic success rate of first-year students Findings showed an increase in problem-solving and academic success.
The fourth paper focuses on the perceived effects of mentoring and induction programmes on the career decisions of beginning teachers. Theodore Kaniuka and colleagues from Fayetteville State University and Mount Olive University, North Carolina, studied how mentoring support is viewed by new teachers and influences their decisions to remain in education. Factor analysis was used to evaluate and validate using three constructs derived from the 2018 North Carolina Teachers Working Conditions Survey. The subsequent mediated analysis revealed that 1) beginning teachers viewed the support and engagement in mentoring related activities as important factors in their decision making, and 2) they viewed mentoring as influential in their commitment to stay in their current school.
Our final mentoring paper is titled: ‘Culture in mentoring-to-work programmes for migrants: An integrative review.’ Here, Kerstin Kuyken, from the Université du Québec in Montréal, Martina Maletzky de Garcia, from Universität Passau in Germany and Judie Gannon and Peter Lugosi from Oxford Brookes University in the UK present a critical literature review examining how culture has been conceptualised in studies of mentoring schemes supporting labour market integration. The review reveals limited engagement with cultural concepts in past research. However, some studies on migrant mentoring-to-work have approached culture as an asset offering enrichment, as a potential barrier, and as part of power structures. Drawing on insights from the field of cross-cultural management, the authors utilise the approaches of cultural comparison, and interpretive and critical intercultural management to identify new ways to enrich studies on migrant mentoring-to-work programmes.
Reflections from the Field
The first paper in the ‘Reflections’ section is by Bruce Grimley of Achieving-Lives Ltd, Cambridge and explains how the 7Cs coaching model contributes to coaching psychology by construing the self as a multiplicity. In the paper, four premises are provided as to why it is necessary to acknowledge multiplicity in coaching psychology. Mentions of multiplicity already current in the psychological literature are explored and then the author shares his 30-year action research journey culminating in a coaching model that incorporates the “Multiplicity Thesis.” Grimley shows how the model is based on six theoretical perspectives, and illustrates its use in a professional context with observations from a client.
The second reflection from the field is from Róisín O’Donovan and colleagues from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The study looks at the feasibility of a coach-led online wellbeing programme for Irish hospital workers. After an initial online anonymous needs assessment, consenting hospital workers (n=24) were randomly stratified into intervention and waitlist control groups for 12 weeks. Feasibility was examined using the first three elements of the RE-AIM Framework: Reach, Effectiveness, and Adoption. Secondary outcomes examined changes in burnout and wellbeing. Results showed improvements in wellbeing and reduced burnout in the intervention group.
Our final two papers are by Iain McCormick, an executive coach in New Zealand. The first is a qualitative study of end-of-life coaching. The coaching psychology literature covers related topics such as grief and loss, however much of this focuses on the individuals left behind rather than the person facing death. Despite this gap, coaching psychology does offer several relevant approaches which include existential, phenomenological and narrative coaching. In addition, there is a wealth of important knowledge from the research on the effectiveness of grief counselling, recommended end-of-life client communications, and the value of palliative care. This paper uses four case studies on end-of-life coaching to explore these issues.
The second of McCormick’s papers is also a qualitative study, this time of client experiences using Stress Inoculation Coaching (SIC), which utilises the same approach as Stress Inoculation Therapy but applies it to the non-clinical workplace population. SIC has four phases: awareness and knowledge building, skill development, application, and review and improvement. The study used a qualitative interpretative phenomenological method to provide insights from ten clients who had experienced SIC. They regarded the approach as useful and the author concludes there can be cautious optimism about suitably trained, supervised and ethically adherent coaches using this approach, although further research is needed.
Elaine Cox
August 2025