This book is a collection of contributions from people working as coaches in various parts of the world, with various ethnic groups, with different genders and with different age groups. The book covers the way executive coaching has established itself in various parts of the world – a brief but interesting history – and the experience of coaches working in those areas. Much of this experience is analysed in terms of the established theories of international cultural difference (Hofstede and Trompenaars). This book will be of interest to both executive coaches and managers developing coaching skills across a diversity of national and international settings.
This is the third book in this series. The previous two were Excellence in Coaching and Psychometrics in Coaching.
The book starts with a chapter by Passmore and Law on “Cross‐cultural and diversity coaching” – an overview of dimensions of culture derived from Hofstede's and Trompenaars' work, followed by an overview of Rosinski's cross‐cultural coaching model and finishing with a description of the universal integrated framework, which pulls together definitions of various competencies and models useful for coaching people from groups other than your own.
The next chapter is entitled “Coaching in Europe” and provides an historical overview. Coaching has not been a profession for very long, but writers are now beginning to chart its development across Europe. This chapter describes where coaching is well established and where executive/management coaching, as a profession, is just beginning to take off. There is also the question of whether, or how coaching will be accredited across the European Union. This chapter also touches on cultural differences between European countries, noting that whereas in Belgium the top strength of a manager is to be consensual, in Italy is to be dominant, and in France to be persuasive.
The chapter on “Coaching in North America” offers an analysis of the different ways coaching is done in the USA and Canada. Studies tell us, for example, that 63 per cent of business coaching is done over the phone, but only 1.4 per cent by e‐mail. There is an interesting illustration on page 49 showing, as a tree diagram, the different roots and branches of coaching – the current state of the coaching there. The chapter also goes into the emerging field of multi‐cultural coaching.
The detail of coaching across ethnicity, age and gender difference is picked up in later chapters. One chapter is on “Coaching with men – alpha males”, another on “Coaching with women”. There are also chapters on “Coaching with black British coachees”, “Coaching with black American coachees” and “Coaching Indian sub‐continent heritage coachees”. These are written by different authors who relate their own experience as coaches, offering general points to take into consideration when working with different coachees plus some case studies of individuals they have worked with. These help the reader understand how these coaches have dealt with some of the more sensitive areas to coach on. The case studies are about individuals, but also deal with group issues – both group issues based on ethnicity, race and gender, but also group issues caused by the organisation, e.g. managing a diverse team.
In addition to Europe and North America, there are chapters on coaching in Australia, South Africa, Brazil, the Middle East, China, Russia and Japan. These, each in their own different way, cover the history of coaching in that country or part of the world, the way that different traditions or social history affect the mindset of the coachee, and the way that coaching relationships are likely to be established and work successfully. Most of these chapters have case studies. The chapter on South Africa has a brief social history of the country through the colonial era and apartheid leading on to how theories of social identity explain the models of coaching being developed there now. The chapter on “Coaching in the Middle East” concentrates on developing culturally appropriate coaching with its own “development pipeline” to explain the model its authors advocate. The chapter on China spends a good chunk of time explaining how Confucianism influences the thinking of Chinese people, and how coaching models can be adapted to take this into account.
There are three sets of potential readers for a book like this:
- 1.
Those interested in how coaching as a profession is developing across the globe.
- 2.
Coaches interested in broadening their clientele or the areas of the world they can work in.
- 3.
People with a broader interest in developing people – managers or trainers – who are interesting in how approaches to person development might be developed for people from different cultures and groups.
It is this third group that gives a book of this nature its greatest potential. There are numerous theories and models explains in a cultural or group context that can be really useful information for both managers and developers, given that managing diversity is a challenge in most organisations. It is a shame that the book shifts, uncomfortably at time, between the “what” and the “how”. Some chapters in the books achieve the balance better than others. Coaches are clearly becoming interested in the history, however brief, of their profession. However, there is a lot of what coaches have been doing in various parts of the world, which will be less relevant for those who are interested in the broader development perspective. The case studies, on the other hand are probably more valuable as examples of how to manage an individual's development than how to adapt coaching models. Many of these could equally feature in a book on how to do performance management in a diverse or international business.
The book is called “Diversity in coaching” and in its attempt to cover the full range of diversity of people who might benefit from their own distinct approach to coaching, may well be attempting to cover more that it can comfortably manage. The final chapter in the book “Coaching people through life transitions”, although an important topic, no doubt, seems a bit out of place in a book where all the other chapters are about coaching members of groups, e.g. national, ethnic or gender groups. Diversity is a very broad topic, and age discrimination is now part of the legislative equality framework in a number of countries. Perhaps that is why a chapter on life transitions seemed appropriate as an inclusion.
There is nothing in this book about coaching people through gender transition, even though this is covered by equality legislation in the UK, and a legitimate topic for a study on diversity.
All in all, an interesting collection of contributions from a very diverse group of authors and a useful addition to the literature on coaching.
