Coaching as a tool for learning: An interplay between the individual and the organisational level

Abstract

Managing oneself, as a vector of personal and professional development, presents an ambiguity that merits assessment. From this perspective, coaching in business may prove to be a judicious empirical field of study. The proliferation of discourses illustrates a rhetoric that is both organisational and societal, and which is self-renewing, making it possible to bring together practices, however heterogeneous, in a generic discourse, federating and unifying, providing order, in which ‘learning through the lifecourse’ appears to occupy a central position. The first part of the paper, from a theoretical standpoint, focuses on the functions of managerial discourse based on personal development. In this context, the notion of performance occupies a crucial place, despite the increasing complexity of this notion when it incorporates human aspects. The second then focuses on an empirical study of circumscribed and stabilised material—French-language coaching literature over a 12-year period. Both parts lead to the identification of the diverse functions provided by the development of a coaching discourse. Coaching appears as a vector for renewal of the link between the organisation and the salaried individual. Moreover, coaching also appears as a vector purveying sense within the existential concerns that remain significant in business and social organisations.

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