Diversity in Coaching: Working with Gender, Culture, Race and Age

Diversity in Coaching is the third book in a series of best selling coaching books for the Association for Coaching. As coaching has emerged as more than a passing fad, the need for more rigorous texts on this new field continue to grow. Like its predecessors from the range: “Excellence in Coaching” and “Psychometrics in Coaching” this book, Diversity in Coaching: Working with Gender, Culture, Race and Age seeks to address a specific theme within coaching and offer a substantive review of the literature. Moreover, it also sets a challenge to all practicing coaches to understand and embrace the challenges of working with an increasingly diverse marketplace. In the words of Idrani Choudhury, who contributed the chapter “Coaching Indian Sub‐Continent Heritage Coachees”: “It is essential to understand our own cultural heritage and world view before we set about understanding and assisting other people. Lack of such understanding may hinder effective intervention. Subtle ethnocentric bias could lead the coach to make inaccurate inferences about a client's motivations and other personal attributes”. It is with the acknowledgement that heritage and background play a vital role in understanding and therefore helping a coachee that this book was compiled.

The book is divided into three main parts, and while individual contributors come from all over the world – the bias is strongly for a UK and North American audience. This is to be expected, however, as the field of coaching is most established in those two areas and there is great heterogeneity in the populations of those two countries – making diversity a key issue for employers as well as coaches who will work with a wide array of people over a lifetime. In almost every chapter, the contributing authors provided detailed case studies or theoretical models to illustrate their points.

The first section focuses on coaching as it is practiced in North America, Europe and New Zealand/Australia. Whilst coaching is increasingly widely practiced in these countries, there is huge variation. According to the authors, in North America there is a proliferation of coach training schools, publications and professional associations whereas in Australia and New Zealand, however, there is enthusiasm for the practice but a dearth of rigorous training programmes, which is causing confusion in the marketplace. Similarly, there is huge variety to be seen even across Europe – which is the second largest consumer of coaching services, with each member nation favouring a differing level of directness of communication, main topics of interest and even preferences for how coaching is delivered.

The second part of the book focuses on coaching practices in emerging markets and the key challenges faced by coaches who take into account cultural references and belief systems when working with clients new to coaching. I personally found this part of the book amongst the most fascinating. It illuminated trends I have seen in my own coaching when working with ex‐patriots, as well as reminded me how blind coaches can be if they ignore cultural background and the meaning it creates for each client individually. For example, coaching is being increasingly used in the fast‐growing economies of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) yet in each case cultural heritage plays a part in the way clients may view the world and the coaching process itself. The authors were very succinct in describing how the cultural lens could impact and even hinder a coaching process, which would be useful for any practitioner to be aware of.

In India and China for example, there is a cultural avoidance of naming one's own ambitions outright or from critiquing the work of one's “superiors” in the workplace – both of which could pose challenges to traditional topics faced in career and executive coaching. Similarly, in Russia, there has historically been a great value placed on characteristics such patience, steadfastness and achievement through suffering – a classic “be strong” type of personality as defined by Transactional Analysis, for example. The challenge then is in reconciling cultural values with what it means to work in a global marketplace and engage in a process, coaching, that is born out of a very Western viewpoint. On the other hand, I would have appreciated a critique somewhere in the text of how a Western viewpoint impacts coaching and personal development. Namely the high value Westerners place on the “individual” above the team and community (as many Asian countries espouse) and the unrelenting belief in creating one's own destiny, which in itself is normally positive but places enormous responsibility on the individual to overcome workplace structures and situations, that in some cases, they cannot feasibly impact alone.

The third section focuses on coaching within the UK and USA but from a lens of ethnicity, gender and age. It is in these countries where coaching is more established, that we can look at issues faced by coachees who do not fit the normal corporate profile of white male. Chapters on coaching those of Indian or African descent detail the challenges faced by those attempting to ascend a “snowy peak” – where most people in leadership positions are white. These chapters also detail the impact of “micro‐inequalities” in the workplace which can cause non‐majority group members to question their decisions to the detriment of their health, well‐being and self‐esteem – all essential components of any competent leader. As an executive coach myself, who specialises in working with women in male‐dominated fields, I particularly enjoyed the chapter by Kate Ludeman on “Coaching Women” – as many of the same issues that arose for minority group members in other chapters also rang true for women in leadership positions. That being said, I equally enjoyed the preceding chapter on “Coaching Alpha Males” by Eddie Erlandson – as it highlighted a worldview that may be highly adaptive in certain corporate environments but may be detrimental to collaboration and team cohesion. Essentially, the book is a worthwhile read for any professional who works with people who are different to themselves and who is genuinely interested in the increasingly vital interplay between culture and effective coaching.