Short-term cognitive coaching interventions: Worth the effort or a waste of time?

Can short-term cognitive behavioural coaching interventions be effective and add ‘significant’ personal and professional value? If so, are there changes in people’s self-reported scores on a measure of cognitive style preference? Fiona Beddoes-Jones, author of Thinking Styles, answers these questions.

As Einstein said, “The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” Taking a cognitive approach to coaching means understanding the relationship that a coachee’s thinking has to the generation of their internal dialogue, motivational drivers and values. It also means understanding the role that thinking has in generating their subsequent behaviours. Therefore, within a cognitive behavioural approach, understanding an individual’s thinking comes first. From a coaching perspective, it is important to really understand an individual’s cognitive style preferences and how they combine together to produce that individual’s unique leadership and management style.

The Study

Following the identification of occupationally focused coaching objectives, four one-hour telephone coaching sessions were conducted one month apart over a three-month period. The psychometric instrument Thinking Styles was employed in a test retest design, at the beginning of month one and the end of month three.

An opportunity sample of eight working adults with managerial and leadership responsibilities participated in the study. Participants completed the Thinking Styles questionnaire and received individual feedback reports. These were used as a framework to scaffold the cognitive behavioural coaching intervention, together with a small number of questions designed to identify participant outcomes and objectives for the short-term coaching process.

The Outcome

All participants felt that they had made changes in certain areas, and that these changes were ‘significant’ to them. All felt that they had achieved a greater understanding of themselves and others as part of the coaching process. Where participants had chosen to focus on specific thinking styles, their self-reported scores did change, although sometimes by a reduction in their dis-preferences rather than an increase in their positive preference scores. All participants reported increased confidence in their personal decision-making processes and feeling more ‘authentic’ and more ‘themselves’.

Conclusion

This research suggests that short-term cognitive coaching interventions can be effective and can add ‘significant’ personal and professional value. Therefore, extended coaching interventions of more than three months’ duration may not be the only approach available to clients and executive coaches.

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To learn more about Thinking Styles, click here.