There is a clear movement towards differentiation in the professional practice of coaching, as a result of a movement to recognize and deal with increasing complexity at all levels. This movement is as of yet undefined and un-researched. This brief expose is designed to further the conversation in the industry about distinguishing the various niches or practice areas of coaching into five areas: personal, career/hrd, organizational, business and executive. It is not designed to be the beginning or final word. It is presented for discussion as an attempt to begin to further clarity around the various distinctions currently sorting themselves out in coaching.

The following is a classification of sorts indicating the various areas of practice using the least possible number of areas of practice to define the greatest number of situations currently being experienced in the profession of coaching.

A Less Differentiated View of the Coaching Areas

In explaining the contrast between the two views of the major coaching areas, we notice less of a distinction in the practice areas in the more compact view. In some ways this could represent the early stages of differentiation or perhaps, a limited recognition of the differences in competencies between the coaching areas.

As more and more differentiation occurs in defining the specific competencies involved in each area, the similarities between core competencies shared by all areas are bolstered with further differentiation between the niches.

Also, the increased differentiation will be required as environments become more and more complex with respect to multiple perspectives having personal, business and systems (network) effects as people advance in level of responsibility, accountability and authority.

Additionally, another differentiating factor in distinguishing coaching areas of practice is the number of perspectives that govern the interaction. The simple diagram below indicates a continuum from single to multiple perspectives and how each of the five areas of practice relates to perspective.

Obviously, this over simplifies the complex nature of the coaching interaction, but it does help us differentiate the various characteristics of each niche in a pure form.

The key to many of the points of differentiation is experience in terms of the area. Many beginning or general practice coaches will contest the fact that differentiation is needed. However, with recognition of increasing complexity and uncertainty as increasing levels of differentiation and sophistication are manifest in the operating environment, coaching itself will create more value over time with differentiation as does medicine, law, psychology, etc. I believe this will also bring to a head the legal issues involved as coaching becomes recognized as a profession. These issues are extremely important to coaching and can be used to further self-police and self-regulate as opposed to becoming regulated by statute because practitioners fail to respect their limitations in area of expertise.

In the past—in stable, slow growth paradigms—content was not necessarily king in coaching terms regarding its effect on results in the business environment. However, as hyperchange environments consistently become more important, content—experience with content--becomes a more and more important part of the coaching equation, as does the critical ability to innovate.

In a recent book on Executive Coaching by Berquist and others, it is stated that "executive coaching is better accomplished by those people coaching who have been executives themselves." The acceptance of this premise could extend the movement to content and experience as being a defining characteristic of a niche or practice area in view of rising complexity. Many coaches attempt to practice "across" niches in order to attract higher volumes of clients however as in consulting, there should be a significant ethical movement to limit practice to areas of expertise, indicating content and experience required in order to create efficiency AND proficiency in the area of practice.

Time and markets will tell us which point of view is most efficient, but my contention is that coaches should strive to develop niche practices centered around their content and experience. In a new form of coaching called "value coaching," even more emphasis is placed on the content and experience exchanged in the coaching interaction, as it is applied to innovation. This reflects the growing need for perspective taking outside of one’s current capability and at the same time the value of experience and content being a part of the coaching interaction. It is the same premise that one must be able to speak the language to communicate at a deeper and more complex level of understanding and development.

There was a study done in the eighties reflecting that approximately 60-80 % of the required content for a job was at the command of the person doing the job. However, recent studies, which I am unable to quote, have shown that only 30-35% of the content required for a job is resident with the person doing the job. While I can’t cite the precise reference indicating these factors, it is important to value the concept of what the statistics point to in the future. It is becoming increasingly more important that we realize that the knowledge we hold is either insufficient or incomplete in terms of achieving appropriate system effects. Information continues to double almost every 18 months along in concert with Moore’s Law.

Differentiation will create the opportunity for the coaching conversation/interaction to carry a higher value component in the form of content and experience. As I indicated previously, delivery differentiates the coach and others when the ratio of delivery to the other four key abilities [listening, observing, discerning and modeling] is lower then in other disciplines such as leading, managing, teaching and consulting.

The mere presence of content delivery is insufficient to disqualify a person from achieving a low ratio of total delivery to listening, observing, discerning and modeling. What is becoming even more clearly evident is that well-timed content is critical to creating efficiency and value in the coaching interaction. Therefore further differentiation of coaching into niches is going to be precipitated at increasing rates in the future.

This will dilute the conceptual notion that coaches can function efficiently in any environment without differentiating themselves through content and expertise. We will begin to see sub-specialties in these five broad dimensions or areas of coaching as speed, innovation, diversity and proliferation of knowledge increase at a higher rate in the coming years.