Coaching on the Axis: Working with Complexity in Business and Executive Coaching

This book offers an approach to business and executive coaching that properly aligns the practice in the culture of business through the use of a relational coaching axis that helps to manage the complexity of the organisation and the individual as dual clients. Business and executive coaching occurs within an organisational context with the goal of promoting success at all levels of the organisation by affecting the actions of those being coached (Worldwide Association of Business Coaches, 2007). This form of coaching is distinct from other types in two ways, firstly it is focused on achieving business outcomes, and secondly, both the individual being coached and the sponsoring organization are simultaneously the client. This book explains how a coach manages the complexity of helping these two clients by acting as a narrative bridge between their stories. It offers a relational approach which resists remedial or curative notions born from coaching’s human science roots and instead aligns to workplace realities.