Rethinking Coaching:
A Q&A WITH ANGÉLIQUE DU TOIT AND STUART SIM
Angélique du Toit and Stuart Sim come from
seemingly different academic traditions—Angélique
is an Executive Coach and scholar who studies
coaching in the workplace, while Stuart is a literary
critic. However, as colleagues at the University of
Sunderland, they found synergy through their shared
interest in critical theory as an analytical tool.
During the global economic downturn, Angélique and Stuart’s
conversations turned to the question of how critical theory
could frame a coaching practice that promotes a new mindset in business and helps to avert crises. These discussions
planted the seed of an idea that grew into a 2010 monograph,
“Rethinking Coaching: Critical Theory and the Economic Crisis
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).”
We sat down with Angélique and Stuart to discuss some of the
central arguments of “Rethinking Coaching.”
Coaching World: Although we have reason to
believe that professional coaches are using
elements of critical theory in practice, the
term “critical theory” is probably unfamiliar
to many readers outside of academia. Can
you give a brief definition and discuss what
critical theory encompasses? How can it help
shape the way we understand the world
around us?
A&S: Philosophy as a discipline has always been
centrally concerned with the art of interpretation
and providing ways of testing the validity of the
judgments that interpretations inevitably involve.
Critical theory is essentially a kind of applied
philosophy, consisting of the development of
analytical methods by which to study systems
(of any kind, in any area of life). Each critical
theory has its own set of procedures by which
to conduct analysis, and they yield particular
interpretations of whatever is being studied—
such as organizations. Critical theory can
help us to understand the mechanisms of an
organization, revealing its internal politics and
dynamics. It can also help us to understand what
beliefs underpin organizations’ practices, and also
to judge whether these are logical or not, which is
where skepticism comes in.
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Coaching World |
August 2013
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