The Coaching Relationship. Putting people first. An introduction

There is no denying that the essence of coaching is ‘putting people first’. Regardless of which techniques, frameworks or psychological underpinnings a coach might draw on, basic coaching processes all rest on interpersonal interaction in some way or another. The ultimate aims of coaching are to facilitate personal, and usually also professional, growth, learning and optimal functioning (e.g. Downey, 1999). Thus, the initial motivation is a focus on optimisation and improvement of performance as opposed to the elimination of any problems, the typical initial motive for counselling (Bachkirova, 2007). The importance of the relationship for both processes is equally high, however (Bachkirova, 2007). While there is research that provides a frame for understanding and managing the counselling relationship (we return to this issue in Chapter 3), the same is yet to be developed for coaching and coaching psychology (see O’Broin and Palmer, 2006). This recognition of the fundamental importance of relationships in coaching provided the impetus for editing this book, which is particularly timely given the dearth of extant research on the subject and the growing importance of networks and relationships in society at large. In the following sections we provide a brief introduction to relationships in general, before linking our observations to a coaching context. The last section of this chapter provides the reader with an introduction to each of our main chapters