ABSTRACT
The humanistic, integrative, and constructive approaches offer ways of seeing the world and insights into how — as human beings — we might make sense of and engage with the world. This, in turn, informs our philosophy as coaches and coaching psychologists, which guides how we practise with our clients. Whilst these approaches offer an abundance of techniques and tools, consideration of the principles of the approaches and what this might mean for our practice is perhaps more useful as it offers flexibility beyond each tool and technique. Understanding the underlying principles allows us to maintain integrity in our practice and integrate across approaches the right intervention at the right point in time for the coachee(s) we are working with. When starting your coaching practice, understanding what to draw from where and for what purpose is an important grounding.
We have space to offer the very lightest insight here. This chapter shares:
the basic ideas of these three areas of coaching and coaching psychology practise, and signpost you to additional resources to explore each in more depth;
the interconnectedness of these approaches and how theory informs practice, together with some of the coaching psychology models associated with each;
broadly how each is applied, including what particular coaching interventions might benefit from one of these approaches and in what sort of context; and
specific skills together with challenges and limitations.
