ABSTRACT

This chapter explores a number of practices of relevance to a relational orientation to coaching in order for coaches to consider how this might look and feel for the practitioner and coachee. It shows that readers will be versed in the basics of coaching, and intends to point to how practitioner orientation and practice might be expanded by integrating a more relational approach. The principle of epoche involves being prepared to put aside or 'bracket' whatever assumptions and presuppositions as coaches might be bringing to a particular client or organisational context. It involves developing the capacity to pay attention to how the assumptions as coaches and familiar ways of making sense, and those of our coachees, inevitably mediate how we perceive and go on to act as a result. The chapter considers coaching as an emergent process of collaborative meaning making, often in the face of increased complexity and uncertainty in human systems.