The Ascent and Fragmentation of Professional Coaching Associations

This book focuses on the ascent then fragmentation of professional coaching associations over the past thirty years. It makes fleeting reference to the proliferation of ‘life coaching,’ which has exploded across the Western world, and the influence of life coaching’s central focus on positive psychology upon the development of professional coaching. However, the main focus is on the practice of coaches working with clients situated within organisational settings, and of the professional associations that seek to serve them. This book adopts a critical perspective that challenges the foundation narratives of professional coaching associations, mostly told by the associations themselves, whose unsurprising tendency is to valorise their own ascension and their worthy passage thereafter in pursuit of raising standards of performance and ensuring ethicality.

It describes a generalised stage model of associations' progression through a predictable life cycle. This life cycle moves from early emancipatory beginnings, through a bureaucratic middle passage, towards the adoption of many of the characteristics of an aristocracy in its later stages. The book comments on usurpers who enter the market to challenge this decline stage, but nevertheless find themselves pursuing a trajectory through the life stages of organization development not dissimilar to that of their predecessors. The general nature of this stage model means that it does not apply to all associations in all instances. Not all case studies supporting the robustness of the model, given the shortness of the book, can be cited. Specific cases are available on request, subject to confidentiality. Apologies to associations who do not recognise themselves within this model.

Dr Daniel Doherty has spent much of his working life in and around the professional coaching world, firstly as a practitioner, then increasingly acting as a critical commentator and activist in the management consulting and coaching field, challenging from an insider positioning. In his mid-fifties, Daniel enjoyed a variety of roles within Higher Education, where he learned to become a critical academic researcher. From this stance, he has challenged professional coaching associations’ basic assumptions, from an external perspective. Now independent of academic affiliation, Daniel continues to act as an external examiner of PhD and Masters degree candidates, as well as evaluating university-based coach education provision.


Daniel has led the Critical Coaching Research Group (CCG) since 2006, whose membership includes seasoned coaching practitioners, in addition to leading academics in the coaching and mentoring field. The CCG persists in its purpose of casting a critical eye on developments within coaching, including looking at the influence of professional associations upon practice. PhD students and masters students are attracted to join the CCG to test their theories and ideas, among those who are open to considering transgressive approaches. Daniel has served in a variety of roles across a number of coaching associations, including efforts to introduce research rigour into association practice.

Daniel has been awarded the highest level of professional accreditation from two separate professional associations, as well as being a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. His doctorate investigated the development pathways of independent management consultants and coaches over a twenty-year period; a period during which coaching associations came into being.

He has published widely in the field but is probably most pleased with his creation of two satirical novels, 'Nest of Rakes' and 'Rakes Resurgent,' charting a coach's progress through the ups and downs of making a living out of the profession he has signed up for, a passage which contrasts starkly with the expectations raised while in training.