'A Qualitative Exploration of Coach in-the-Moment Decision-Making' Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation Research Seminar

Dr Hannell is an award winning executive coach and organisational psychology doctoral researcher, with over 10 years of coaching and consultancy experience, specialising in mental health and wellbeing. Before becoming a member of faculty, she previously completed the Henley Business School MSc Coaching for Behavioural Change course, where she discovered her love of researching.

Her research into mental health within coaching practice has gained global recognition. This has led to her presenting her research findings at many international coaching events, facilitating engaging and interactive workshops and discussions about mental health. In 2022, she was honoured to be named British HR Coach of the Year for her pioneering research.

She is now an organisational psychology doctoral researcher exploring experiences of mental ill-health at work. She has worked with organisations, coaching companies and professional bodies to raise awareness of mental health, providing training so coaches and employees can engage confidently and ethically with mental health. She is also an advocate for mental health inclusivity within coaching and the workplace.

Dr Denyer is the module convener for Stage Two of the MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change. She completed her PhD in 2023, exploring the reality of a just transition for UK oil and gas workers, and her research interests focus on the individual experience of work and careers, particularly voluntary and involuntary transitions.

Prior to academia, she worked extensively with private sector clients in the finance, travel, energy, pharmaceutical, retail and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries. She has also worked with the UK Civil Service, the military and the NHS.

The topic of this presentation is 'A Qualitative Exploration of Coach in-the-Moment Decision-Making', along with a showcase of the coaching group's research highlights. The seminar will focus on the premise of coaching as a one-to-one learning and development intervention that uses a collaborative, reflective, goal-focused relationship to achieve professional outcomes that are valued by the coachee (Smither, 2011). A key characteristic of coaching is that the coachee leads and directs the focus of the coaching session based on the goal they would like to address (Jones, 2021). Therefore, each coaching session is unique, with the coach responding in-the-moment to input from the coachee, adjusting their coaching approach in response to the coachee's needs (Powers, 2023).

A broad aim of coaching is to evoke awareness or facilitate coachee insight and learning, which is achieved by the coach's use of coaching skills such as questioning, silence, metaphor or analogies (International Coaching Federation, 2024) or tools and techniques such as constellations mapping (Jones and Andrews, 2025), letters from the future (Flower, 2021) or LEGO serious play (Wheeler and Leyman, 2024) to name just a few. In fact, the number of potential tools and techniques available to coaches is vast, with a recent series of books publishing a collection of over 200 coaching tools and techniques (Passmore et al., 2021; 2022; 2023). Given this huge range of potential tools, techniques and skills that coaches can draw on in a session, how do coaches decide which approach to take?

This presents an important concern which the literature has yet to address. A lack of understanding of how coaches make in-the-moment decisions, coupled with underlying assumptions of coach rationality in decision-making and the continued growth in the number of tools and techniques made available to coaches, means that there is a knowledge gap about what happens during coaching sessions and how this might influence coaching outcomes. Furthermore, the lack of understanding of coaches in-the-moment decision-making processes inhibits the ability to support and develop novice coaches, as coach educators are unable to resource them with the requisite skills needed to understand how to make decisions during coaching sessions.

To address this important concern, a qualitative study was conducted, adopting an approach which enables the examination of the cognitive processes of expert coaches during coaching sessions. Cognitive task analysis, specifically process tracing, is an approach which enables the identification of the cognitive activities underpinning work performance (Patrick and James, 2010) and is therefore the proposed approach to enable an understanding of how coaches make in-the-moment decisions during coaching sessions.

In doing so, this will contribute to the theory, research and practice of coaching in three ways. Firstly, the theory contribution is developing a framework of coach in-the-moment decision-making which can be used to explain how coaches make decisions during coaching sessions. Secondly, the research evidence contribution is providing the first robust examination of the cognitive processes of coaches during coaching sessions, opening the 'black box' of coaching. Finally, the practice contribution is providing insights to support coach educators when training novice coaches, highlighting what is important to pay attention to as a coach when optimising in-the-moment decision-making.

The seminar is for an internal audience and will be held on 5 June 2025, 1:00pm, in room LG01 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

LOBR research seminars are co-ordinated by Professor Bernd Vogel and Dr Anastasiya Saraeva.