187 KB
Can coaching strategies help experts share expertise?

S Blow International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring 2005

Knowledge is the life-blood of organisations, but the larger they grow the more difficult it becomes to share that knowledge and expertise. The purpose of this qualitative study was to try to establish whether coaching strategies have a part to play in the exploration and transmission of expertise. The study was carried out with a group of nineteen experts and coaches. For the analysis I used a qualitative phenomenological methodology. The results indicated that not only would experts value someone to help them explore the nature of their intuitive understanding, they also thought that coaches could help them to think through the political implications of their work in order to get their ideas championed by others and thus implemented. Furthermore, experts also tend to use words that have both a limited technical meaning and different popular associations: an example is ‘tacit knowledge’. The coach therefore also has a potential interpretive role, helping the expert to use language that will be understood beyond his or her immediate field. The conclusion of the study was that coaching strategies would indeed seem to have a part to play in helping experts share their expertise.

Report a Problem