The Executive Coach and Clients in Reflective Practice: Levelising as a Special Case

The purpose of this study was to investigate how my executive coaching clients and I engaged in reflective practice through a model of dialogical interaction called Levelising. Four individual coaching clients, representing a variety of management expertise, participated in this study. I engaged them in coaching by both inquiring into their experiences and reflecting on my own. Data consisted of verbatim transcripts from the coaching sessions, which were analyzed qualitatively using a structured, typological approach. Findings indicated that as my clients and I engaged in a reciprocal reflective process centered on the Levelising model, they experienced uncertainty along with insight into their practices, the issues they faced, and themselves. Our Levelising experiences also shaped my own questions and reflections as their coach. By incorporating the Levelising model into my coaching practice, I was able to help my clients move beyond simple problem-solving approaches by deliberately reflecting on their experiences and assumptions and exploring new ways of framing their experiences. Further, I observed that engagement in Levelising evolved our professional relationship as we both became more aware of how our assumptions, values, and beliefs shaped our interactions. Implications for executive coaching and research on Levelising are discussed