ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the tensions and challenges that coaches operating in different contexts face as they develop and practice the craft. A recurring theme from our informal conversations and more formal interviews with coaches relates the nature and status of coaching as perceived by themselves and clients. A paper by Moore and Koning, based on a narrative and auto-ethnographic account of sense making of participants on a university coaching programme and the relationship with identity work, highlights intersecting aspects that influences the identity work performed by novice coaches. The feedback received from the commissioners and consumers of coaching might differ. Indeed the feedback may necessarily be consistent given the different expectations of these different stakeholders. In addition some of the feedback that a coach receives might be vicarious. The chapter concludes with some the reflective questions for individual coaches to consider when developing their practice.
