A ground-breaking study will be published this October (2021) in the form of a manifesto for anti-racism in coaching.
The study will be published by Henley Business School and co-authored by researchers Jonathan Passmore, professor of coaching and behavioural change, and director of the Henley Centre for Coaching and Charmaine Roche, an accredited executive coach and PhD researcher at Leeds Beckett University.
The project was supported by a global team of academics who recruited four region-specific focus groups of coaches identifying as Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour (BIPOC) from Africa, New Zealand, the UK and the US. The question posed to these groups was, ‘What would need to change for the world of coaching to adopt an anti-racist approach?’
The research study aimed to explore a range of coaching stakeholders’ perspectives on race in executive coaching and to develop a programme for change that could be implemented across the coaching eco-system from coach education delivered by universities and private coaching schools to professional bodies through to executive coaches. A central part of the study was to explore the views of BIPOC coaches.
The research design was constructed first to give primacy to the voices of BIPOC coaches, said Roche. An unstructured focus group method was selected to allow themes to emerge as freely as possible from the interactions within each focus group in response to the research question.
In addition, one-to-one interviews were conducted with the global representatives of four professional associations, with data collected and analysed by Roche, and one-to-one interviews were carried out with directors of coach training in the four geographical regions, and coach suppliers to the corporate sector, with data collected and analysed by Passmore.
“This design enabled us to seek a global, non-euro centric perspective in relation to the research question. It was hypothesised that while structural racism is a global phenomenon it might not show up in the same way in each context for specific historical reasons. What we found was that despite the geographical differences, very strong common themes emerged,” said Roche.
“Our aim in deciding to share the findings in the form of a manifesto is to educate, advocate and effect change in line with our partners in the corporate world and wider, in creating greater equity, inclusive diversity and support social justice,” she said.
- The manifesto and supporting research will be explored further in a forthcoming issue of Coaching at Work