• Start date: 01/10/2025
• End date: 01/10/2027

Theme and Context

“Coaching Bloomers – Developing by navigating tensions in coaching education” explores the evolving landscape of coach education—a field still in the process of defining itself. While development is central to the coaching profession, it is rarely examined from the coach’s own perspective. This project asks: How do coaches learn to become coaches? And why do they choose this path?

In a fragmented ecosystem of training providers, universities, and certification bodies, pedagogical approaches vary widely—from competency-based models to more holistic frameworks. These diverse approaches often generate tensions that, when thoughtfully engaged with, can become powerful catalysts for growth.

Project Objectives

The project aims to map the developmental trajectories of coaches in training, from their initial motivations to key turning points marked by epistemic tensions—moments when their worldview and sense-making are challenged. These experiences call for reflexivity: the ability to critically examine one’s assumptions and practices in order to build a coaching practice that is both ethical and sustainable.

To explore these dynamics, we are conducting a qualitative study with participants enrolled in university-based coaching programs. Using the Critical Incident Technique, we interview them at three stages of their training—beginning, midpoint, and end—to capture how they navigate tensions and reflect on their learning.

Duration and Funding

This 24-month project is funded by the Institute of Coaching, affiliated with Harvard Medical School. It includes phases of data collection, qualitative analysis, and dissemination through academic and institutional channels.

Benefits for GEM

This project strengthens GEM’s position as a thought leader in innovative pedagogy and emerging professional fields. It contributes to:

• Showcasing GEM’s expertise in coaching and adult learning
• Advancing pedagogical innovation in management and professional development
• Bridging academic research and coaching practice
• Enhancing GEM’s international visibility through strategic partnerships, including with Harvard

Scientific and Societal Relevance

Scientifically, the project contributes to understanding professionalization in a loosely regulated field, highlighting reflexivity as a core developmental process. It offers a nuanced and critical perspective on formative tensions as drivers of transformation.

Societally, it sheds light on the conditions for ethical and responsible coaching practice and education in a changing world of work—where relational and reflexive capabilities are increasingly vital.

• Principal Investigator: Pauline Fatien, RIW
• Associate Researchers: Fabien Moreau, IDRAC