Penny Potter | George Mason University (original) (raw)

Papers by Penny Potter

Research paper thumbnail of A call for clarity and pragmatism in coach education

International Coaching Psychology Review

While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been onl... more While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been only a handful of articles that discuss coach education and few have discussed what constitutes good pedagogy. In this conceptual article based upon observations from the field and our own ongoing action research, we review those discussions and offer a pragmatic, scholar-practitioner approach to coach education that supports the five intentions of coach education (Bachkirova et al., 2017). We offer Ostrowski’s The Four Provinces model (2022) – which includes the coaching context, relationship, process, and self – as a navigational map for coaching students as they begin their journey to becoming a coach. Because it is agnostic of any specific knowledge areas, the model affords coach educators the flexibility to emphasise their preferred coaching knowledge areas (such as systems theory, humanistic psychology, adult learning theory, and developmental psychology), while providing structure to...

Research paper thumbnail of A call for clarity and pragmatism in coach education

International Coaching Psychology Review, 2023

While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been onl... more While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been only a handful of articles that discuss coach education and few have discussed what constitutes good pedagogy. In this conceptual article based upon observations from the field and our own ongoing action research, we review those discussions and offer a pragmatic, scholar-practitioner approach to coach education that supports the five intentions of coach education (Bachkirova et al., 2017). We offer Ostrowski's The Four Provinces model (2022)-which includes the coaching context, relationship, process, and self-as a navigational map for coaching students as they begin their journey to becoming a coach. Because it is agnostic of any specific knowledge areas, the model affords coach educators the flexibility to emphasise their preferred coaching knowledge areas (such as systems theory, humanistic psychology, adult learning theory, and developmental psychology), while providing structure to their curriculum development. We also share early feedback resulting from the implementation of the Four Provinces within a credit-earning graduate-level concentration in Leadership Coaching and explore implications for future research and practice.

Research paper thumbnail of The Complex Choreography of Becoming a Coach

Emerald Publishing Limited eBooks, Apr 3, 2020

Ask a coach about their coach training experience and you are likely to hear something like, “I... more Ask a coach about their coach training experience and you are likely to hear
something like, “It was transformational!” This is largely true, regardless of the coach
training program s/he attended. Is there a connection between these consistently
enthusiastic reports and what scholar-practitioners refer to as adult development?
As an instructor in coaching education programs, I have witnessed inexplicable
deep personal transformations, as well as a predictable pattern of regression in
performances, followed by more artful deliveries. In this book chapter, I provide an
overview of calls to bridge the developmental divide and make the case for why
coaching skills training may be one way to stretch a leader’s ability to better
manage complexity. I describe the few studies of coaching students that have
been conducted, then describe in more detail my own study that set out to answer
whether coach training incites development. I then propose a theoretical model
to explain these transformations. This is a first step to look into a relatively
unexplored question: what might we learn about facilitating adult development
from the process of becoming a coach?

Research paper thumbnail of Becoming a coach: Transformative learning and hierarchical complexity of coaching students

Research paper thumbnail of A call for clarity and pragmatism in coach education

International Coaching Psychology Review

While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been onl... more While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been only a handful of articles that discuss coach education and few have discussed what constitutes good pedagogy. In this conceptual article based upon observations from the field and our own ongoing action research, we review those discussions and offer a pragmatic, scholar-practitioner approach to coach education that supports the five intentions of coach education (Bachkirova et al., 2017). We offer Ostrowski’s The Four Provinces model (2022) – which includes the coaching context, relationship, process, and self – as a navigational map for coaching students as they begin their journey to becoming a coach. Because it is agnostic of any specific knowledge areas, the model affords coach educators the flexibility to emphasise their preferred coaching knowledge areas (such as systems theory, humanistic psychology, adult learning theory, and developmental psychology), while providing structure to...

Research paper thumbnail of A call for clarity and pragmatism in coach education

International Coaching Psychology Review, 2023

While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been onl... more While literature on coaching has grown exponentially in the past two decades, there have been only a handful of articles that discuss coach education and few have discussed what constitutes good pedagogy. In this conceptual article based upon observations from the field and our own ongoing action research, we review those discussions and offer a pragmatic, scholar-practitioner approach to coach education that supports the five intentions of coach education (Bachkirova et al., 2017). We offer Ostrowski's The Four Provinces model (2022)-which includes the coaching context, relationship, process, and self-as a navigational map for coaching students as they begin their journey to becoming a coach. Because it is agnostic of any specific knowledge areas, the model affords coach educators the flexibility to emphasise their preferred coaching knowledge areas (such as systems theory, humanistic psychology, adult learning theory, and developmental psychology), while providing structure to their curriculum development. We also share early feedback resulting from the implementation of the Four Provinces within a credit-earning graduate-level concentration in Leadership Coaching and explore implications for future research and practice.

Research paper thumbnail of The Complex Choreography of Becoming a Coach

Emerald Publishing Limited eBooks, Apr 3, 2020

Ask a coach about their coach training experience and you are likely to hear something like, “I... more Ask a coach about their coach training experience and you are likely to hear
something like, “It was transformational!” This is largely true, regardless of the coach
training program s/he attended. Is there a connection between these consistently
enthusiastic reports and what scholar-practitioners refer to as adult development?
As an instructor in coaching education programs, I have witnessed inexplicable
deep personal transformations, as well as a predictable pattern of regression in
performances, followed by more artful deliveries. In this book chapter, I provide an
overview of calls to bridge the developmental divide and make the case for why
coaching skills training may be one way to stretch a leader’s ability to better
manage complexity. I describe the few studies of coaching students that have
been conducted, then describe in more detail my own study that set out to answer
whether coach training incites development. I then propose a theoretical model
to explain these transformations. This is a first step to look into a relatively
unexplored question: what might we learn about facilitating adult development
from the process of becoming a coach?

Research paper thumbnail of Becoming a coach: Transformative learning and hierarchical complexity of coaching students