Coaching as a profession A sociological view

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Coaching as a profession? A sociological view

• Stephen Mugford
• MD of QQSR
• Adjunct Prof, School of Social Work, ACU

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• What is a profession?
• The commonest answer uses the trait approach.
  Well known professions like medicine and law are
  examined, their common features are identified
  and this is then offered as the definition of a
  profession.
• Once the traits are understood, a common next
  step is to try to acquire these traits, by
  various means in order to enjoy the status of
  profession

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• A common set of traits would be that a profession
  is
• a full-time occupation
• a calling, that is, an occupation that places
  behavioural and ethical demands on the person who
  engages in it
• based on special, often esoteric, knowledge that
  usually involves training of exceptional
  duration
• regulated by a credentialing process usually
  administered by a peer organisation and thus
  excludes those not so trained, which is backed up
  by licensing by the state
• dedicated to the service of the community and is
  not intrinsically self-serving
• allows professionals considerable autonomy as
  they exercise their own judgment and authority.
  (In practice this leads to an elitist occupation.
  As Shaw said all professions are a conspiracy
  against the laity.)

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• On the other hand,
• Terry Johnson in a classic analysis Professions
  and Power (1972) argued that a profession is one
  form of occupational control.
• Occupational control is necessary because,
  except for very simple transactions, there is a
  social distance between a producer of a good or
  service and the consumer.
• In short, how does the consumer know for sure
  that s/he got a fair deal and a good
  product/service?
• Johnson argues that there are three ways that
  this can be resolved.

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• The three ways
• 1 Patronagethe consumer decides.
• 2 Professionthe collective group of
  producerswho have an interest in protecting
  standards for alldecide.
• 3 Mediationa third element decides. Two sub
  variations are
• Market mediation
• Government registration
• When Johnson wrote in the early 70s, the
  conditions for new profession in the full sense
  e.g. the free market of the late 1800s with a
  non interventionist Stateseemed to have
  vanished. There would, it seemed, be no new
  professions.

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• Since then
• Some of the things we thought were fixedsuch
  as powerful Nation States with a large taxation
  base, a welfarist approach and a desire to
  regulate the populationhave tended to be
  replaced by (in very sketchy terms)
• The Reagan/Thatcher/Hawke-Keating model of the
  role of the State, with more free market
  approaches, more downsizing and outsourcing less
  welfare, lower taxes etc.
• A globalised and glocalised economy with more
  travel, trade, information flows, etc, etc and a
  Post-Cold War/War on Terror political context.
• At the level of work and careers we have seen the
  drive towards, performativity, the portfolio
  self, the end of careers, etc. These and other
  forces have led to a focus on personal
  development of workers rich fodder of coaches.

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• The questions
• First, given the changes just referred to, it may
  be possible to imagine that the conditions now
  allow professions (as a form of occupational
  control) to emerge once more.
• If this was thought to be the case we could ask
• Could coaching become a profession in the
  full sense implied by Johnson and exemplified by
  the traits or would it be better to roll along,
  governed either by patronage (customer decides we
  are/arent giving good service) or by the market
  (unhappy client shops for new coach)?
• IF coaching could become a profession, should
  it?
• I wont answer these questions, but instead will
  offer just a few quotes to help you chew on an
  answer.

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• IS THIS WHAT WE WANT TO SOUND LIKE?
• A strategic response to some of the challenges to
  pharmacists privileged status is to pursue what
  has been termed a professional project to
  persuade the State and public of the value of
  their work. a number of strategies could
  contribute in that they afford opportunities
  to consolidate and enhance their position by
  creating dependence on the service they offer.
• a social distance can be created thus
  enhancing claims to professional status with its
  associated rewards.
• .
• Power, status and pharmacy, Harding Taylor
  (2002) The Pharmaceutical Journal

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• HOW ETHICAL ARE WE BEING?
• Are the professions best perceived as
  occupational monopolies whose anticompetitive
  effects distort the social and economic
  organization of a society. Or are they best
  perceived as institutions and forms of regulation
  which have developed for reasons of public
  worthy of preservation?
• The only satisfactory answer to this question is
  that within-states professions have done both. On
  the one hand they are and continue to be
  self-interested occupational groups using
  internal control of regulation to protect and
  defend their monopoly rights to practice in the
  market. On the other hand, , professions promote
  certain values of moral obligation and public
  service, altruism and a special relationship of
  trust with clients even if such ideals are not
  always universally maintained.
• www.sase.org/conf1999/papers/julia_evetts.pdf

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• CAN WE?
• The stock market is a good case study of the
  Internet's role in the deconstruction of
  expertise. The ranks of brokers have been
  decimated, as individual traders have become
  their own experts, using computers and
  telecommunications. These new traders have cast
  the old rules of trading overboard due to the
  speed with which massive numbers of small self
  directed traders are able to swing the market
  with almost unprecedented volatility. The
  basis for all the foregoing is access to markets,
  information and quick communication. These same
  factors will be brought to bear on the
  therapeutic relation in the near term.
• Psychotherapy and the Consumption Principle,
  Christopher Heard NEW THERAPIST 7. Emphases
  added.