Blogging as a form of practitioner research – meaningful personal and professional development in coaching by Yvonne Thackray
Updated Dec 2021, First published Feb 2016
It seemed timely to update this piece. I was recently invited to share my experiences of writing for influence with peers in APAC. It had been over five years since I last reviewed and reflected on this blog, especially when this is part of our regular operations and another seven years since I presented on this topic. This became an opportunity to realise how far we have come at the good coach, and at the same time, recognise that more needs to be done to encourage practitioners to have the courage to write something about their coaching practice.
Everything that I shared that day and what is written here still resonates. What I’d like to explore a little further is more the psychology we might have with writing. According to a short poll of those who attended, at least one third had something to say whilst two-third thought they didn’t have anything to say at all. At every stage of the writing process, there always seems to be a hurdle that needs to be crossed and even when you cross that hurdle, will it get the result you’re looking for. That ROI keeps popping up for practitioners. Does the pain of writing outweigh the gains that you will receive from writing?
Ultimately, this will entirely depend on the practitioner on what their intention is to write.
If the intention is to write to earn money, I’d recommend you work with a publisher with solid sales and marketing to help you reach that intention.
Suppose the intention is to market your coaching business. In that case, I’d recommend writing relevant pieces, whether as articles, reports, or blogs, for your platform and be published in magazines, newspapers, and/or journals.
Suppose the intention is to develop your coaching practice to build your coaching practice, connect with potential clients, and be part of a community wanting to raise coaching standards. In that case, I’d recommend that you write your practitioner blogs with the good coach and know that one and two (listed above) can follow.
Practitioner blogs focus on your experiences of delivering coaching,
What is it you do that’s making a difference with your client?
How do you make that impact that consistently gets the results you want?
Why are you confident being a coach?
If you want to connect it to relevant academic articles and published pieces, that’s a great addition. However, in most cases, what you do may not even be captured fully by those pieces. Therefore your pieces are valuable because you’re capturing the real ‘nitty- gritty’ experiences of what is happening during coaching – the good, the bad, and the ugly – as well as sharing your learning-development cycle of how to be an even better coach.
Writing your practitioner blog helps you see your practice in a new light as it requires you to,
Objectively reflect on the work that you’re most proud of, and
Understand what you’re doing that’s making a difference.
This might be something you already do when you’re working with your supervisor and/or reflecting/reflexing on your practice. Bringing this into the public domain will also let others know what you’re most professionally proud of achieving and often overcoming and inspire other practitioners to consider how they want to develop their practice who may be facing a similar challenge or will be facing, as well as allowing potential clients do their due diligence with their future coach. Often when you write your practitioner blog, you don’t know when it will help others…it might be immediate, it might be a few weeks later, it might even be three, ten, twenty years later. It’s important to know that this was helpful to you at that moment in time, and it will be beneficial to those in a similar situation when it’s the right time for them. I think this is the real beauty of writing.
Knowing when to begin writing your practitioner blog or even a series that may eventually become a book happens when you’re ready to say something about what you do as a coach that you’re proud of and want to share with others. The keyword here is ‘say something’ as it relates more closely to your confidence of being the professional coach you want to be. Another way to think about this is you have a question you want to answer, and writing is one of the outputs for completing this, as recommended by Maria Biquet to begin writing your blog.
Even when you’re at this stage, there is always a fear that sits inside us that can derail us from writing a practitioner blog, e.g. What do I have to say? No one is even going to bother reading this, so why even start? Once it’s out there, I can’t take it back? How will others judge me for what I have written? Why should I share what I do as it will mean others can copy what I do, then who does it benefit? When it’s my second or even third language, writing in English makes me panic and what happens if people don’t understand what I’ve written because of my grammar. I’m sure there are many more that we can add to the list, and these are common fears which most people have when they decide to commit themselves to writing anything. This is normal, and just like in coaching, know that the editors/blogitors who are at the good coach are coaches and they also coach practitioners to write their practice blog operating at their pace, with encouragement, care and commitment for you to share your voice as a coach that aligns with what you do when you coach. We’ll work alongside you as you permit yourself to share what’s most important to you, and rest assured that even when you publish with us, retain ownership of your piece whilst giving us the license to publish your work under the creative commons attribution 4.0 international license.
Below we list some further benefits of writing and publishing with the good coach gifted by some of our recent coaching practitioners. And please enjoy reading why the good coach chose blogging as its medium. Hopefully, as this updated blog suggests, it allows us to reflect upon and build on top of, or even refute, what we shared earlier as we continue learning from our experiences and both broaden and deepen our understanding of our practice and coaching.
Experience of writing with the good coach
Very welcoming of all contributions and accepts a wide range of coach practitioner-oriented articles which gives considerable latitude for authors but is particularly interested in the experience of the coach, their motivations, their style, and their reasons for adopting a particular style.
Very prompt response with suggestions on submissions made and always approachable. This means I can be sure of a place to publish once I’ve written the article, provided of course it is up to standard. This acts as a stimulus to write.
Very helpful suggestions and feedback to improve the content. e.g., Title/ headline, Picture depicting the main theme, suggestions to add details when the message is not clear, Reflection on learning from the case, sharpening the argument, improving writing style, considering other perspectives, adding new references into the article
Very encouraging as it motivates me to write further blogs and it helps overcome my tendency to postpone writing.
Contributing to tgc is both efficient and enjoyable as their 'editor' pulls out threads/themes from our conversation and form the skeleton of a story worth sharing - that makes the process simple (it's a conversation) and effective (from the refined themes I add additional context/content to emphasise them).
The value of writing blogposts coach is that it provides an outlet for me to channel my insights and thoughts about my practice of coaching. It is a forum for both self-reflection and moderated sharing of thoughts with other coaches. As I go about my coaching practice, I often have realizations about “things that hold true”, insights, general observations about what works with clients and what doesn’t, at least for me. I appreciate that Yvonne is clearly and consistently focused on the phenomenology of coaching, and has taught me to use her lens to look at my own practice.
Added Value of being published with the good coach
Being able to say I’ve published on a certain topic adds credibility to my claiming expertise in a given area
Coaches I respect in the region rate the good coach
The final look of the article with our choice of photos looks professional
Reach to other and larger target audiences through their social media platform as well as opportunities to share final article on our individual LinkedIn site
Comment function gives useful feedback on how the article is being received and possibly pointers to future directions.
From a personal point of view I believe that the journey of a coach is unique - but the shared experiences show different perspectives which can be equally relevant. The ability to share my practice enables me to reflect on coaching experiences I have had and to look at them in a new light through the lens of others' practices too.
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Encouraging coaches to blog about their practice both broadens and deepens the quality of content that is currently shared. Writing requires us to expend energy describing and giving attention to all that is happening and going on during a coaching session. Talking in the moment allows us to recreate and focus on what's important to the other and makes use of all the cues (consciously or unconsciously observed) that is normally harder to articulate and write intimately about. It requires conscious thinking, sense-making, and re-engaging with a skill that we use less frequently. Importantly, this really starts when we are able to express what's actually happening in our own words, in order to bring out that ambition of being the best coach we each can be!
The good coach intends to bring together the personal, commercial and academic reasons for blogging because:
We want to engage with other like-minded professionals who practice coaching (formally and informally) because they are the leading edge practitioners who are continually developing new knowledge in our field (the commercial/the market), and
Altogether we can demonstrate a level of rigor and apply the more attainable and positive strengths of learning that can be found in more traditional institutions as form of practitioner research (academic),
And importantly make it an enjoyable … even fun … learning and developmental experience for and amongst the diverse practitioners (social/community)!
Background
The purpose for blogging is shifting in the current technological landscape. At the start, for companies it was a marketing/advertising piece to encourage potential clients/customers and a gateway into their real services. For individuals, it was a personal way to share/log what’s happening/important to them and has morphed into a lot of Self Help and Critical review of everyday items through to the most esoteric subjects that attract an audience.
For both commercial and academic blogging, it increases the blogger and/or organisation to greater public scrutiny and criticism whilst enhancing their status.
Fast forwarding to 2016, it seems that every type of organisations that exist are dabbling in or focusing their efforts on writing some form of blog because it’s another way that can connect, and have when the conditions have been met, to engage in a two way dialogue that provides accesses to audiences beyond the normal groups the organisations tend to focus on.
For commercial organisations, blogging is part of their strategy to connect directly with the customers, and learn what’s working or not working. In essence, the customers are being directly engaged to participate in the design process and standard engagement of the product process.
According to Mark Shaefer from {Grow} (Social Media Explained) – the top 5 categories for what’s defined as ‘the best big company blogs in the world’ include[1]:
Quality of content (is it interesting, creative, well-written, human?)
Consistency of publishing
Engagement with audience
Social sharing activity
Alignment with corporate objectives
For academic organisations, academic blogging is described as ‘conversational scholarship’, an alternative means to find a more engaging style of writing to connect with a wider and more diverse audience (Gregg 2006).
Following Debra Lupton[2] and Eszter Hargittai[3] research on academic blogging there are 5 key reasons for academics to blog:
It is argued that the practice forces academics to think about their research and writing in new ways, bearing in mind the multiplicity of potential audiences and the ways readers can respond to the material presented (Kitchin 2014, Kitchin et al. 2013).
Some bloggers use their writing as a way of developing ideas and seeking engagement with others before they formalise their ideas into a more traditional academic piece (Adema 2013, Carrigan 2013, Daniels 2013, Estes 2012, Gregg 2006, Maitzen 2012).
This use of social media for developing scholarly writing and ideas has been described as being an ‘open source academic’ (Carrigan 2013).
The mechanisms for exchange and feedback on some blogs are akin to the formal review process at some journals, and, to the extent these mechanisms differ, one is not necessarily superior to the other.
Blog posts are now often cited in more traditional academic forums, some scholarly journals are incorporating blogs, multimedia or open access repositories as part of their online presence presence and academic presses are experimenting with new digital modes of publication, including shorter online book formats with faster than usual turn-around times between acceptance of the manuscript and publication.
“Blogs that allow comments make it possible for others to discuss the posted material. … Not only is the original post available to all subsequent readers but so are the reactions of others. Sure, there are all sorts of limitations present. It may be that the most appropriate people are not reading the post and so those who would be able to offer the most helpful and relevant critique are not present in the discussion. But this is often likely true in the journal refereeing process as well. ”
The good coach’s approach to blogging
@@Blogging can provide the means to offer the blogger-practitioner an honest and humble sharing of what’s important to them.@@ This is because the blog can also be very experiential and personal to the writer and differs from other forms of published material such as articles, journals, reports, papers etc.
It’s a space for the blogger-practitioner to reflect, ground, integrate and share aspects, opinions and views of their practice,
Offers insights to the reader of the blogger-practitioner that might stimulate their thoughts, compare their own approach with, or learn more of the practice and increase their understanding of working with healthy individuals.
It also fills a gap, and attempts to readdress the balance between technical (scientific) and practitioner knowledge. Eraut (1994) suggests that “the dominant conception of learning is our culture – so dominant that children have been socialised into it by the age of 7 or 8 – is that learning involves the explicit acquisition of externalised codified knowledge[4]. [And when] people are so accustomed to using the word ‘knowledge’ to refer only to ‘book knowledge’ which is publically available in codified form, that they have developed only limited awareness of the nature and extent of their personal knowledge[5].” This means that without realising it we unconsciously hold technical knowledge, what Eraut refers to as externalised codified knowledge, as having a higher status than practitioner knowledge because it is implicit and less understood.
Accessing this implicit knowledge holds the premise that during the process of coaching learning takes place, and what works in one context may not work in another context and so further learning needs to take place because each recipient behaves differently. Observing what happens during coaching is never the same as the individuals participating in the coaching who sees from within the action – that moment by moment behavioural responses (verbally and non verbally) – during the coaching conversation.
Bridging and raising the status of practitioner knowledge begins with practitioners sharing their experiences in their own words – of what works and their limitations – and together build both the knowledge base and rigor of reporting through blogging. Furthermore this,
Allows the blogger-practitioner to develop some further rigor in their practice and contribute towards the practitioner knowledge base and towards standards of practice, and
Gives the reader another way to connect to the blogger-practitioner and get to know them: this does require the writer to carefully balance their professional and personal persona on the digital platform.
This doesn’t mean that ‘trolling’ or ‘backlash’ doesn’t happen because others will have a differing opinion. This becomes about managing inappropriate comments (i.e. directly attacking the individual) vs. negative comments or critiques that’s based on the arguments presented in the blog and creating a safe space for positive interactions and engagement to take place.
Let me share some other views of how other blogger-practitioners see the benefits of blogging:
We’re part of a community that’s adopting available technology and adapting common approaches to sharing, exchanging and engaging in coaching practitioner knowledge. In our way, and in our own words, the real benefits of blogging further include increasing both our confidence and articulation of why we do what we do – are you interested in participating?
Share what you think we’re missing or curious about in the comment sections … and when you’re ready to blog you can find out how to start here with the Bloggers Guideline.
Finally here are some other thoughts to consider –
Being validated amongst your peers and key influencers in your network and being able to draw relevant disciples to your practice, how might that support you and the field of coaching in raising the standard of practice and available practitioner knowledge in the field?
Now imagine after writing between 6 and 12 blogs, each blog varies between 1000 and 2000 words, and published over 1 or 2 years on the good coach, you’ll have written the equivalent of a Masters dissertation, or perhaps even a short book of your professional practice. Firstly congratulations! And secondly, how might you celebrate that?
Let us know how you discern between an advertorial and shared insight amongst the plethora of blogs which you use in enhancing your practice?
Read other blog-articles by Yvonne Thackray via tgc The Bloggers
References
http://www.businessesgrow.com/2015/01/12/best-company-blogs/
https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/research-on-academic-blogging-what-does-it-reveal/
http://crookedtimber.org/2004/11/18/the-academic-contributions-of-blogging/
Eraut (1994) Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence pg 39
Ditto. Pg 25.
Selected References (shared from Deborah Lupton’s blog)
Adema, J. (2013) Practise what you preach: Engaging in humanities research through critical praxis. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16 (5), 491-505.
Carrigan, M. (2013) Continous publishing and being an open-source academic
Daniels, J. (2013) From tweet to blog post to peer-reviewed article: how to be a scholar now. Available from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/09/25/how-to-be-a-scholar-daniels
Estes, H. (2012) Blogging and academic identity. Literature Compass, 9 (12), 974-982.
Gregg, M. (2006) Feeling ordinary: blogging as conversational scholarship. Continuum, 20 (2), 147-160.
Kitchin, R. (2014) Engaging publics: writing as praxis. Cultural Geographies, 21 (1), 153-157.
Kitchin, R., Linehan, D., O’Callaghan, C. and Lawton, P. (2013) Public geographies through social media. Dialogues in Human Geography, 3 (1), 56-72
Maitzen, R. (2012) Scholarship 2.0: blogging and/as academic practice. Journal of Victorian Culture, 1-7.
