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Coaching approaches

Adlerian coaching

Adlerian coaching looks at what a behaviour is aiming for, the beliefs about yourself and others that shape it, and how you contribute to the people around you. It draws on the individual psychology that Alfred Adler developed in the early twentieth century, and on the writing of later Adlerian practitioners. No controlled outcome research on Adlerian coaching turned up in the searches for this page. A 2018 article in the Journal of Individual Psychology is titled Adlerian Therapy and the Need for Outcome Efficacy Research, which fits the approach being graded as practitioner tradition.

What it is

A session starts with a concern and what you want to be different, described in concrete terms. The coach then looks at what the behaviour seems to achieve or protect, which Adlerian writing calls its purpose, and at the beliefs about yourself and others that shape how you go about it. The coach works from present behaviour and goals rather than from a diagnosis, and treats you as someone who can choose differently.

The approach uses a few recurring ideas: social interest, meaning feeling part of and useful to others; encouragement, meaning attention to effort and progress rather than to results; discouragement, the feeling that makes change seem pointless; and the style of life a person builds early and can revise. Early memories are one way into those patterns, and a coach may ask about them. Memories that are distressing or connected to harm belong with a qualified therapist.

Where it comes from

Alfred Adler developed what he called individual psychology in Vienna in the early twentieth century. His book Understanding Human Nature remains a primary text of the approach (Adler, 2013).

Later practitioners have taught the approach through textbooks such as the Primer of Adlerian Psychology (Mosak & Maniacci, 2013). The Journal of Individual Psychology discussed the approach's evidence base in 2018 (Sperry, 2018; Watts, 2018).

The principles underneath

Behaviour has a purpose

What a person does is organised toward something they are aiming for. The coach asks what a behaviour is for before asking why it happened (Mosak & Maniacci, 2013).

Social interest

Feeling part of, and useful to, other people is treated as a healthy direction of growth. Discouragement is often read as a sign of lost connection or of feeling unable to contribute (Adler, 2013).

Encouragement over praise

Encouragement focuses on effort, progress and contribution rather than on judging the result. The nearest controlled study, titled Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance, belongs to growth mind-set research (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). That research is contested: a 2018 pair of meta-analyses reported weak overall effects of growth mind-sets on academic achievement (Sisk et al., 2018).

Beliefs formed early can be revised

Beliefs about how life works, formed early on, shape later choices. They can be examined and revised, and the coach can help you see which ones are running now (Mosak & Maniacci, 2013).

How a session runs

  1. You describe the concern and what you want to be different, in concrete terms.
  2. The coach asks what the behaviour seems to achieve or protect, and what you appear to be aiming for in that situation.
  3. The coach may ask about early memories and what they suggest about the beliefs you formed about yourself and others. Distressing memories are not explored in coaching; they go to a qualified therapist.
  4. The coach names any discouragement you describe, and notices the strengths and contributions you already make to others in this area.
  5. You choose one small contribution or change to try before the next session, and review it together.

When it tends to fit

  • You keep ending up in the same kind of conflict with different people, and cannot see what you were aiming for in those moments.
  • A setback has left you feeling that trying is pointless, and you want to understand that feeling before deciding what to do.
  • You are weighing two paths and want to look at what each one says about the people you want to be useful to.

What the research shows

Evidence: Practitioner tradition — little or no outcome research

No controlled outcome study of Adlerian coaching turned up in the searches for this page. In 2018 the Journal of Individual Psychology published a special issue titled Evidence-Based Adlerian Therapy (Sperry, 2018), and an article in the same issue is titled Adlerian Therapy and the Need for Outcome Efficacy Research (Watts, 2018). The title of the article in that issue, Adlerian Therapy and the Need for Outcome Efficacy Research (Watts, 2018), points the same way; its abstract was not read for this page. The nearest adjacent research is a controlled study titled Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance (Mueller & Dweck, 1998), which bears on Adler's distinction between encouragement and praise. A 2018 pair of meta-analyses of growth mind-set research reports weak overall effects on academic achievement (Sisk et al., 2018), so how far that study reaches into encouragement is uncertain. A large study of birth order (Rohrer, Egloff & Schmukle, 2015) tested a claim that appears in some Adlerian writing on birth order. It found birth order related to measured intelligence, but no birth-order effects on the personality traits it examined.

Where the evidence is thin: The adjacent studies do not test Adlerian coaching or Adlerian therapy. Much of the Adlerian literature describes theory and case work rather than reporting controlled outcomes, so its descriptions are useful for thinking about a person but are not tested results.

Sources

  1. Adler, A. (2013). Understanding Human Nature (Psychology Revivals).
  2. Mosak, H., & Maniacci, M. (2013). Primer of Adlerian Psychology.
  3. Watts, R. E. (2018). Adlerian Therapy and the Need for Outcome Efficacy Research. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 74(3), 277–280.
  4. Sperry, J. (2018). Evidence-Based Adlerian Therapy: Special Issue. The Journal of Individual Psychology, 74(3), 245–246.
  5. Rohrer, J. M., Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2015). Examining the effects of birth order on personality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(46), 14224–14229.
  6. Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33–52.
  7. Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Two Meta-Analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571.

Where it stops

Birth-order and early-childhood explanations can sound certain. The large study cited here found no birth-order effects on the personality traits it examined, so treat such explanations as possibilities to check against your own experience, not as facts about you.

Adlerian work looks at purpose, belonging and encouragement. It is not a treatment for depression, trauma or an eating disorder, and thoughts of harming yourself need immediate help from a qualified professional or emergency services.

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