Together with Jonathan Passmore I argue that it is imperative that the coaching profession must do more high quality research to determine the effectiveness of coaching and the approaches used in it. At the moment much of the evidence relies on uncontrolled studies, which are subject to the placebo effect, regression to the mean and the impact of other things that are happening in the client's life. This could mislead coaches (and clients) into believing that coaching is more effective than it is. This is an ethically problematic position for the profession, and runs the risk that clients lose confidence in coaching. While there is some good evidence that coaching works, we need to do more to develop scientific evidence to underpin our work.
This article (George and Passmore, Coaching at Work (2019), 14: 44-47) is published in Coaching at Work. For a text only version for people who are not subscribers use this link.