Stages of coaching development

Coaching was born in 1970 in USA. Beginning with 80s it was officially acknowledged in Western countries, in 90s it developed into a separate field, and in 2001 the profession “coach” was officially acknowledged. In Russia it appeared much later- in 90s XX century (according to some information, in 1998). And, relatively, if in all the developed countries nowadays coaching is actively applied in different life spheres and is in confidence and popularity among the population, in Russia it just starting its not easy way. 

It is difficult to say who was the founding father of coaching, who was the first Russian coach. And it is not even important. In any case, Timothy Gallwey, Thomas Leonard and John Whitmore were standing at the origin of a modern coaching. Those, who took up the influence of Western culture in Russia, of course did a good thing, but did not bring anything new into it.

As in the West, coaching goes through the following stages: 

• acknowledgement;
• spread;
• usage in scientific researches;
• unification into professional clubs and organizations.

And if we take into attention that in our country until now a lot of people think that coaches are charlatans and coaching as an industry is cheating, what is more, very few enterprises use coaching as their chiefs also do not understand fully what for the coaching is, then you could suppose that it is now between the first and the second stage. However, it should be noticed that branches of Western companies in Russia actively use services of coaches. 

In big cities, such as Moscow and St Petersburg, the situation is much better, then in regions, where a lot of people even do not know the word “coaching”. Also, it should be pointed out that there are very few companies which deal only with coaching. Usually this service is an extra one to consulting or as a follow up in the project. However, there are separately working coaches, who provide only with relevant services.  

A big problem, which prevents from more effective application and soonest development of coaching is absence of certification and licensing of the activity, absence of professional associations of specialists and control from the side of the state. This, in its turn, provokes many other problems, such as absence of the unique interpretation of coaching, absence of system’s transparency, a big number of impostors in the market and lack of specialists. Also, a very important moment is the mentality of Russian people, especially in part of staff management. And though the priority of development personnel traits over professional ones is actively supported by Western specialists, in our country until now the accent is made on the development of professional skills.

Depending on how quickly in Russia these problems will be recognized and started to be resolved, our coaching would be able to enter the professional level.