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Resisting wh-questions in business coaching
Frédérick Dionne1, Melanie Fleischhacker1, Peter Muntigl2,3
1Department of English and American Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria.
Frontiers in Psychology
|March 7, 2024
Summary
Clients resist business coaches' wh-questions through various practices, including refusing to answer, complaining, or actively refocusing the conversation. This study categorizes these resistance tactics, offering new insights into coaching interactions.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Psychology
- Communication Studies
- Applied Linguistics
Background:
- Client resistance to coaches' wh-questions is under-researched in business coaching.
- Understanding client resistance is crucial for effective coaching dynamics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate clients' resisting practices in response to business coaches' wh-questions.
- To analyze the sequential organization and interactional accomplishment of client resistance.
- To categorize the forms of resistance along a passive-active continuum.
Main Methods:
- Conversation Analysis (CA) applied to a corpus of systemic, solution-oriented business coaching sessions.
- Analysis of four dyadic coaching processes (eleven sessions total).
Main Results:
- Identified various forms of client resistance on an active-passive continuum.
- Found 'moving against' resistance tactics like refusing to answer, complaining, and disagreeing.
- Discovered 'moving around' practices where clients actively refocus or deviate the coaching agenda.
Conclusions:
- Client resistance is a sequentially organized practice with passive and active forms.
- Clients employ diverse strategies to circumvent coaching constraints.
- New categories like 'moving around' enhance understanding of client agency in coaching.
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