Experiences of receiving career coaching via Skype: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

Research on video-mediated coaching is sparse, with literature on video-mediated communication in general and different aspects of technology-assisted coaching existing. Therefore the qualitative study researches the question "What is the impact of the camera in Skype coaching on coachees’ experience of being coached?", taking a constructivist epistemological stance and employing the methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as developed by Smith from the late 1990s. It aims to provide a better understanding of the coachee's lived experience of being coached in a camera mediated encounter. Article history Accepted for publication: 16 January 2019 Published online: 01 February 2019 © the Author(s) Published by Oxford Brookes University Introduction Since coaching evolved as an industry in the 1990s, the target groups and application fields for coaching have multiplied (Kanatouri & Geissler, 2017, p.715). At the same time, "technology has changed the way coaches and clients interact" (Sherpa, 2017). Penetration and usage of the internet are high, with, for example, 89% of UK households having internet access and 82% using the internet every day (Office for National Statistics, 2016). Coaching practitioners also increasingly make use of technological media and the dyadic face-to-face meeting in real time is no longer the standard mode in which a coaching session takes place. To enhance convenience, locationindependence and cost effectiveness coaching also happens via video, text-messages, email or via specifically created platforms, either synchronously or asynchronously, using a single way of delivery or choosing a blended approach (Clutterbuck, 2010; Boyce & Hernez-Broome, 2010; Otte et al., 2014; Kanatouri & Geissler, 2017). One seemingly obvious way of re-creating a face-to-face situation for the coaching encounter while reaping the benefits of technology, is the use of a web-cam or video-conferencing device in order to connect a physically dispersed coaching pair. The ICF Global Coaching Study (2016) reports that two thirds of 15.380 coaches from 137 countries use an audio-video platform. The Sherpa (2017)